Bob Hoover To Receive 2009 Howard Hughes Memorial Award
Robert A. “Bob” Hoover, World War II fighter hero,
postwar U. S. Air Force and civilian test pilot, and for many years
a popular air show star, has been chosen by the Aero Club of
Southern California to be the 31st recipient of its Howard Hughes
Memorial Award.
Bob Hoover
The annual award, to be presented at a banquet in Los Angeles on
Feb. 4, 2010, recognizes aerospace leaders who have made
significant contributions to the advancement of aviation and space
technology, said Aero Club president Nissen Davis.
“Hoover’s exciting demonstration flights at air
shows around the world inspired countless thousands to take an
interest in aircraft and aviation,” said Davis.
Hoover worked at a grocery store in Nashville, Tennessee to pay
for flying lessons in the 1930s before enlisting in the National
Guard. During the war he was sent to North Africa, to flight test
fighters assembled there, before being assigned to the
Spitfire-equipped 52nd Fighter Group in Sicily. On his 59th
mission, his malfunctioning aircraft was shot down and he was taken
prisoner. After 16 months in a German POW camp, he escaped, stole a
Focke-Wulf FW 190 fighter from a German airfield and flew to
freedom.
After the war he was assigned to flight test duty and became
Chuck Yeager’s back-up pilot for the Bell X-1 rocket plane,
which, in 1947, became the first aircraft to exceed the speed of
sound.
Hoover left the USAF in 1948 and became a test/demonstration
pilot for North American Aviation (which later became North
American Rockwell) where he went on bombing missions with the F-86
Sabrejet over Korea.
In the 1960s he began demonstrating one of his company’s
most famous products, the P-51 Mustang fighter, at air shows around
the country. He is best known for his demonstrations of the twin
piston-engine business aircraft, the Aero Commander. To show the
plane’s strength, he would roll and loop it, with a grand
finale that involved shutting down both engines and executing a
loop and an eight-point slow roll before making a “dead
stick” landing.
Bob Hoover With Aero
Commander
Following an accident when both of his piston engines shut down
on take-off due to a refueler putting jet fuel in his tank instead
of aviation gas, Hoover invented a nozzle for use on jet fuel pumps
that insured that such mix-ups could not occur.
Throughout his career, he flew 300 different types of
aircraft.
Hoover’s awards include the Distinguished Flying Cross,
the Soldier’s Medal for Valor, the Air Medal with Clusters,
the Purple Heart and France’s Croix de Guerre.
Founded in 1925, the Aero Club of Southern California, also
known as the Southern California Aeronautic Association, increases
public awareness of the new and expanding uses of aviation, awards
scholarships to students pursuing careers in aviation and
aerospace, and is credited with saving the famed Hughes HK-1 Flying
Boat, now the centerpiece of the Evergreen Aviation Museum in
McMinnville, OR.
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