When This American POW Stole a German Fighter to Escape — His Own Side Almost Shot Him Down JJ

 

At 11:32 on February 9th, 1944, First Lieutenant Bob Hoover pulled his Spitfire Mark 5 into a climbing turn over the Mediterranean, watching four Folk Wolf 190s diving out of the sun toward his flight of four American fighters. 22 years old, 58 combat missions, one of the best pilots in the 52nd Fighter Group. The Germans had sent four of their deadliest fighters from Yaggish Fodder 2, the Rtophen Wing, named after the Red Baron himself. Leading them was Lieutenant Ziggfrieded Limkkey, a rising ace who would claim

four Spitfires before lunch. Hoover’s flight was caught at the worst possible moment. They were escorting bombers back from a strike on shipping off the coast of southern France. Fuel running low, external drop tanks still hanging under the wings. The extra tank made the Spitfire slower, less maneuverable. A death sentence in a dog fight. Hoover reached for the tank release handle. He pulled. The handle came off in his hand. The tank stayed attached. His wingman went down first, then another Spitfire,

trailing smoke, spinning toward the sea. Hoover was now alone against four German fighters. He did what any aggressive pilot would do. He turned into the lead folk wolf and opened fire. His bullets struck the Germans engine. Black smoke poured from the cowling. His first confirmed kill. It was also his last. Limkeky’s wingman caught Hoover from below. A high deflection shot that Hoover had calculated as impossible. Cannon shells ripped through the Spitfire’s belly, tearing into the engine, the fuel lines, the cockpit

floor. Fire erupted around his feet. The drop tank was still full of aviation fuel. Hoover had seconds before it exploded. He rolled the burning Spitfire inverted and dropped out of the cockpit at 8,000 ft. His parachute opened. Below him, the cold February waters of the Mediterranean stretched to every horizon. No ships, no coastline, nothing but gray waves and white caps. Hoover hit the water hard. The impact knocked the wind out of him. His May West Life preserver inflated, keeping his head above the swells. He floated alone,

watching his parachute drift away, watching the distant shapes of aircraft disappear to the north. 4 hours passed. The water temperature was 54°. Hypothermia was setting in. His fingers had stopped working. His legs felt like they belonged to someone else. The survival statistics for down pilots in the Mediterranean were brutal. Most who landed in the water were never found. Search and rescue aircraft rarely spotted a single man in open ocean. The average survival time in winter waters was 6 hours. Hoover had been floating

for four. Then he saw it. A gray shape cutting through the swells. A German corvette on patrol had spotted his yellow May West against the dark water. Enemy sailors pulled him from the sea, wrapped him in blankets, and gave him hot coffee. They had saved his life. They had also ended his war. Within 48 hours, Hoover found himself behind barbed wire at Stalog Luft 1, a luftvafa prison camp on the Baltic coast near the town of Bar in northeastern Germany. The camp held 9,000 Allied airmen, American

pilots, British bomber crews, Canadians, Australians, men who had been shot down over occupied Europe and would spend months or years waiting for liberation. The escape statistics were grim. Stalagluft 1 had multiple perimeter fences, guard towers every hundred yards, dogs patrolling between the wire. Of the thousands of prisoners who had attempted escape from German P camps, fewer than 30 had made it back to Allied lines. Most were recaptured within hours. Some were shot. If you want to see how Hoover’s 16 months behind that

wire turned into one of the most incredible escapes of the entire war, please hit that like button. It helps more people discover these forgotten stories. Subscribe if you haven’t already. Back to Hoover. He looked at those fences on his first day and made a decision. He was not going to wait for liberation. He was going to find a way out. And over the next 16 months, he would try to escape more than 20 times. Stalagluft 1 was not designed to be escaped. The Germans had built it specifically for captured airmen, men

they considered the most dangerous and resourceful prisoners. The camp sat on a flat sandy peninsula jutting into the Baltic Sea. No trees for cover, no hills to hide behind, open ground in every direction. The barracks were wooden structures raised 8 in off the ground on foundation posts. German engineers had dug shallow trenches beneath them, allowing guard dogs to patrol underneath and detect any tunneling. Microphones had been buried in the soil around the perimeter. Seismograph equipment monitored vibrations. The Germans knew

that airmen were educated, technical, creative. They expected escape attempts. Hoover gave them exactly what they expected. His first attempt came within weeks of arrival. He tried to cut through the perimeter wire at night. Guards caught him before he reached the second fence. 14 days in solitary confinement. A concrete cell 8 ft x 4t. No light. Bread and water. Temperature barely above freezing. He tried again. Tunnel. Caught. Solitary again. Wire cutters hidden in a Red Cross package. Caught. Solitary again. Forge papers and

a stolen German uniform. Caught at the main gate. Solitary. The pattern continued for 16 months. Hoover attempted escape more than 20 times. Each failure meant another stretch in the concrete box. Some prisoners broke under solitary confinement. Their minds cracked from the darkness and isolation. Hoover used the time differently. He planned his next attempt. The other prisoners noticed. Some thought he was reckless. Others admired his persistence. But one group found him particularly interesting. The Luftvafa

pilots who had been shot down and captured by the Allies early in the war, then later exchanged or escaped back to Germany, had shared technical information with the camp’s German staff. That information sometimes filtered to the prisoners through guards who talked too much, through documents left carelessly on desks, through the informal economy of cigarettes and favors that existed in every P camp. Hoover learned that a Luftwaffa maintenance facility operated somewhere west of the camp. Damaged aircraft were

repaired there. Folkv Wolf 190s, Meersmid 109s, planes that Hoover had fought against, planes he had studied, planes he knew he could fly if he ever got his hands on one. He began collecting information. Engine start procedures for German fighters, fuel systems, instrument layouts. A fellow prisoner named Gus Lungquist, a pilot who had flown captured German aircraft before being shot down, walked Hoover through the cockpit of an FW190 from memory. Switch positions. Throttle quadrant, the tricky inertia starter

that required a ground crew member to crank the flywheel before the engine would fire. By early 1945, Hoover knew that aircraft better than some Luftwaffa pilots. The war was turning. Allied bombers passed over the camp daily, heading east toward Berlin. Soviet artillery could be heard rumbling in the distance, growing closer each week. The camp guards grew nervous. Some began disappearing, slipping away before the Russians arrived. The rigid discipline that had made Stalag Luft 1 escaproof began to crack. On April 20th, 1945,

Hoover woke to the sound of explosions. Soviet forces were pushing hard from the east. The camp’s senior American officer received word from General Eisenhower himself. All prisoners were ordered to stay in place. Liberation was coming. Escape attempts were forbidden. The risk of being shot by either side in the chaos of the front lines was too high. Hoover heard the order. He understood the logic. He ignored it completely. That night, as Soviet shells lit the eastern horizon and German guards

abandoned their posts one by one, Hoover gathered two fellow prisoners. They had a wooden plank, a pistol stolen from a distracted guard, and a plan that depended entirely on chaos. By midnight, the perimeter fence would be the least guarded it had been in 16 months. The riot started just before midnight. Thousands of prisoners surged toward the eastern fence, shouting, throwing debris, creating the kind of chaos that pulled every remaining guard away from the western perimeter. Some prisoners genuinely believed liberation was hours

away. Others simply wanted to watch the German authority collapse. A few knew exactly what the distraction was for. Hoover and his two companions moved through the darkness toward the western fence. They carried a single wooden plank 8 ft long scavenged from a damaged barracks. The perimeter consisted of two parallel fences separated by 15 ft of open ground. Trip wires rolled barbed wire at the base. Guard towers every hundred yards, though most now stood empty. They reached the first fence. Hoover laid the plank across the top of

the wire, pressing it flat. He climbed. The barbs tore at his prison clothes, ripped into his hands. He dropped into the space between the fences. His companions followed. They repeated the process at the second fence. 90 seconds from first wire to last. They were outside. For the first time in 16 months, Bob Hoover stood on ground that was not controlled by German guards. They ran west. Behind them, the riot continued. Search lights swept erratically across the camp interior, focused entirely on the eastern

disturbance. No alarm sounded for the western perimeter. No dogs pursued them. They disappeared into the darkness of the German countryside. The three men traveled on foot for the rest of the night, moving parallel to roads, avoiding villages, navigating by the stars the way Hoover had learned during flight training. By dawn, they had covered nearly 8 miles. Exhausted, starving, dressed in torn prison uniforms. They needed shelter before daylight exposed them. They found a farmhouse standing alone at the edge of

a field. A German woman answered their knock. She was elderly, alone. Her sons had been sent to the Eastern Front years ago. She had not heard from them in months. She looked at the three ragged men on her doorstep and made a decision that could have gotten her executed. She brought them inside. She fed them the first real meal they had eaten in over a year. Potatoes, bread, a thin soup made from whatever vegetables remained in her cellar. While they ate, she retrieved something from a cabinet, a pistol. Her

husbands, she explained, he had died before the war. She pressed it into Hoover’s hands. Hoover left her a note written on a scrap of paper. He asked any American soldiers who found it to treat her kindly. She had risked her life for enemy airmen. She deserved protection. The three men continued west. They found bicycles abandoned on a road and rode them until the tires went flat. They walked. They hid from German patrols that seemed more interested in fleeing the advancing Soviets than in hunting escaped prisoners. The front

lines were collapsing. The Third Reich was dying, and everyone in uniform knew it. On the second day, they spotted it. an airfield, hangers arranged in a row, a control tower, and lined up on the grass a dozen aircraft in various states of repair. Some were missing wings, others had engines pulled for maintenance, but a few looked intact. Hoover studied the field from the tree line. German mechanics moved between the aircraft, but they worked slowly without urgency. No guards patrolled the perimeter. No anti-aircraft positions

protected the approach. The base had the feeling of a facility that had already been abandoned in spirit, waiting only for the physical retreat that would follow. Among the damaged fighters, Hoover spotted a shape he recognized. The distinctive profile of a Faulk Wolf 190, long-nosed, radial engine cowling, the same aircraft that had shot him down 14 months ago. It sat at the edge of the flight line, apart from the others, as if waiting for someone to claim it. Hoover waited until late afternoon. The

mechanics began drifting away from the flight line, heading toward the barracks buildings on the far side of the field. Dinner time. The chaos of a collapsing war had disrupted military discipline everywhere. And this maintenance depot was no exception. No centuries, no patrol schedules, just tired men waiting for the end. The three escaped prisoners moved along the tree line until they reached a drainage ditch that ran toward the hangers. They crawled through mud and standing water, keeping below the

sighteline of anyone who might glance toward the perimeter. It took 20 minutes to cover 200 yd. Hoover reached the first aircraft, a Messid 109 with his propeller removed. Useless. He moved to the next, a Faulk Wolf with bullet holes stitched across the fuselage and a shattered canopy. The third aircraft was missing its entire tail section. The FW190 he had spotted from the treeine sat 50 yard away. Up close, it looked better than he had hoped. The airframe appeared intact. The propeller blaze showed no visible damage. A thin layer

of oil stained the cowling beneath the engine, but that was normal for radial engines. They all leaked. Hoover climbed onto the wing and looked into the cockpit. The instrument panel was complete. Throttle quadrant in place. The stick moved freely when he tested it. He checked the fuel gauge. The needle rested just above full. Someone had serviced this aircraft recently, preparing it for a ferry flight. That would never happen. One critical problem remained. The FW190 used an inertia starter system. A hand crank mounted on

the right side of the fuselage connected to a heavy flywheel inside the engine compartment. Ground crew had to spin that flywheel to high speed, building up rotational energy before the pilot could engage the starter and fire the engine. Without someone on the ground to operate the crank, the aircraft would not start. Hoover needed a German mechanic. He found one. A middle-aged Lufafa enlisted man emerged from behind a nearby hanger carrying a toolbox. He spotted the three men in prison uniforms standing next to

the fighter and froze, his mouth opened to shout. Hoover’s companion raised the pistol. The mechanic closed his mouth. He set down the toolbox. His eyes moved from the gun to the aircraft to the desperate men who clearly intended to steal it. The calculation on his face was obvious. The war was lost. The Soviets were coming. A bullet in the chest would not change any of that. Hoover pointed to the hand crank mounted below the engine cowling. The mechanic understood. He walked to the right side

of the aircraft, inserted the crank handle, and began turning. The flywheel inside the engine started to spin, building momentum with each rotation. The whining sound grew higher in pitch as the stored energy increased. Hoover climbed into the cockpit. The controls were arranged differently than American fighters, but Gus Lungquist lessons in the prison barracks had prepared him. Fuel selector, magneto switches, primer pump. He worked through the start sequence from memory, his hands finding switches he had never physically touched

before. The mechanic signaled that the flywheel had reached sufficient speed. Hoover pulled the starter engage lever. The massive BMW 801 radial engine coughed once, twice, then roared to life. 14 cylinders firing in sequence. 1,800 horsepower shaking the airframe. Hoover looked at his two companions standing on the wing. The cockpit had room for exactly one person. They had known this moment would come. One of them, a pilot named Jerome Enis, shook his head. He had spent too many months as a prisoner. He never wanted to fly

again. They would take their chances on the ground. Hoover raised his hand in a final salute. Then he shoved the throttle forward. The fuckwolf lunged forward like a startled animal. Hoover had no time to taxi to a runway. German mechanics were already running toward the flight line, shouting, pointing. He aimed the fighter’s nose across the grass field and held the throttle wide open. The 190 accelerated faster than any American fighter he had ever flown. The BMW radial engine produced nearly twice the

horsepower of a Spitfire’s Merlin. Within seconds, the tail lifted off the grass. A moment later, the main wheels broke free of the ground. Hoover pulled back on the stick and climbed away from the airfield at a steep angle, trading speed for altitude, putting distance between himself and anyone who might find a weapon. He leveled off at 3,000 ft and took his first breath since the engine had started. The situation was straightforward. He was an American pilot flying a German fighter with full

Luftvafa markings, a black cross on the fuselage, a swastika on the tail. To any Allied aircraft, he was the enemy. to any German aircraft. He was a deserter. The skies over collapsing Germany in April 1945 were filled with fighters from half a dozen nations. All of them armed. Most of them shooting first and asking questions never. Hoover had no parachute, no radio, no maps, no flight suit, just the torn remnants of his prison uniform. His only navigation tool was the position of the sun, now dropping toward the western horizon.

West meant allied lines. West meant Holland. West meant survival. He turned the FW190 toward the setting sun and opened the throttle. The aircraft handled beautifully. Despite its reputation as a killer of Allied pilots, the 190 was a pilot’s airplane, responsive and honest. The controls were heavier than American fighters, requiring more physical effort to maneuver, but the response was immediate and precise. Hoover understood now why German pilots loved this machine. Under different circumstances, he might have

enjoyed flying it. These were not different circumstances. He flew low, hugging the terrain, using hills and forests to mask his approach from anyone who might be watching. The German countryside below him was chaos. Columns of military vehicles clogged the roads, all heading west, away from the advancing Soviets. Smoke rose from burning villages. Refugees streamed across fields with whatever possessions they could carry. Twice he spotted aircraft in the distance. The first was a formation of four fighters too far

away to identify. He dove into a valley and lost them behind a ridge line. The second was a single twin engine aircraft that crossed his path at higher altitude heading east. It did not turn toward him. After 90 minutes of flight, Hoover began looking for landmarks. The coastline of northern Germany should appear soon. Beyond that the North Sea, and beyond that Holland, which Allied forces had liberated months ago, he found the coast. Gray water stretched to the northern horizon. He turned to follow the shoreline westward, staying

over land, knowing that a water landing in the cold North Sea would kill him as surely as enemy fire. The fuel gauge had dropped to one quarter. The FW190 burned fuel faster than American fighters. a consequence of its powerful engine. Hoover calculated distances in his head. Holland was still at least a hundred miles away. The math was going to be close. Then he saw them. Windmills. The iconic Dutch windmills that dotted the land countryside, their massive wooden blades turning slowly in the afternoon

wind. Holland, Allied territory. Safety. He crossed the front lines without incident. No anti-aircraft fire. No intercepting fighters. The German defenses had collapsed so completely that an enemy aircraft could simply fly across without challenge. But Hoover’s problems were not over. Below him lay territory controlled by British and American forces. Forces who would see a German fighter and react exactly the way they had been trained to react. The fuel gauge needle touched empty as Hoover crossed into Dutch airspace. The

BMW engine continued running, but he knew from experience that fuel gauges and fighters were optimistic. When they showed empty, pilots had minutes of flight time remaining, not hours. He needed to land immediately. He scanned the ground below. The Dutch countryside was flat, wet, and divided into countless small fields separated by drainage ditches and canals. Most fields were too short for a fighter landing. The ditches would catch the landing gear and flip the aircraft onto its back. Even a survivable crash could kill him

if the fuel tanks ruptured. Then he spotted it. A grass field larger than the others, relatively dry, running east to west. No visible obstacles, no power lines. It was not an airfield, but it would have to do. Hoover pulled the throttle back and began his approach. He lowered the landing gear manually, pumping the hydraulic handle until three green lights confirmed the wheels were down and locked. The flaps extended. The faulk wolf slowed, its nose rising as air speed bled away. He crossed the

field boundary at 60 ft, 50, 40. The grass rushed up beneath him. The main wheels touched first, bouncing once on the uneven ground. The tail wheel dropped. The fighter rolled across the grass, shaking violently as it crossed ruts and soft spots. Hoover stood on the brakes. The aircraft slowed, slowed, and finally stopped at the far edge of the field. The engine coughed twice and died. The fuel tanks were completely dry. Hoover sat in the cockpit for a long moment, his hands still gripping the stick, his heart pounding against

his ribs. He had done it. 16 months as a prisoner, 25 escape attempts, a stolen enemy fighter, and now he was sitting in a Dutch field, alive, free, and on Allied territory. He climbed out of the cockpit and dropped onto the wing, his legs nearly buckled. The adrenaline that had sustained him through the flight was draining away, leaving exhaustion in its place. Movement caught his eye. Figures were approaching across the field. Dutch civilians emerging from farm houses and barns walking toward the crashed German

fighter with its swastika tail marking clearly visible. They carried farm tools, pitchforks, shovels, sides. Their faces showed the anger of people who had lived under Nazi occupation for 5 years. Hoover raised his hands. He was wearing the torn remnants of an American flight suit under his prison clothes, but from a distance he looked like any other downed German pilot. The farmers advanced. One man raised his pitchfork. Hoover shouted the only thing he could think of, his name, his rank, his serial

number. The words came out in English, not German. The farmers hesitated. English was not the language of the Luftvafa. The standoff lasted for two agonizing minutes. Hoover kept talking, kept his hands visible, kept repeating that he was American, a prisoner of war, an escaped pilot who had stolen this aircraft. The farmers did not lower their weapons, but they did not attack. A truck appeared on the road bordering the field. British army markings. A patrol responding to reports of a German aircraft landing in a farmer’s field.

Soldiers jumped out, weapons raised, taking positions around the fwolf. Hoover walked toward them slowly, hands still above his head. A British sergeant approached, his rifle leveled at Hoover’s chest. The sergeant studied the ragged figure in front of him, prison clothes, American accent, claiming to be an escaped P. The sergeant had seen Stranger Things in the final weeks of this war. He lowered his rifle and called for his commanding officer. First Lieutenant Robert A. Hoover, United States Army Air Forces had just

completed the most improbable journey of his life. But his story was only beginning. The British soldiers transported Hoover to an ally processing center in the Netherlands. Intelligence officers debriefed him for 3 days, extracting every detail about Stalag Luft 1, German defenses, troop movements, and the stolen fogwolf. His story was so extraordinary that some officers initially doubted it. An American pilot escaping a P camp in a stolen German fighter sounded like propaganda, not reality. But the evidence was sitting in

a Dutch field. The FW190 with its empty fuel tanks and Luftwaffa markings, the prison uniform Hoover had been wearing, the testimonies of the farmers who had nearly killed him with their pitchforks. Everything checked out. Within a week, Hoover was back in American hands. The war in Europe ended on May 8th, 1945, less than three weeks after his escape. He had gotten out just in time. The Soviet forces that liberated Stalag Luft 1 treated the remaining prisoners as potential spies, holding them for

additional weeks of interrogation before releasing them. Hoover returned to the United States as a minor celebrity. Newspapers ran his story. Hometown parades welcomed him back to Nashville, but the attention faded quickly. Millions of soldiers were coming home. Every family had stories of sacrifice and survival. One escaped P, however remarkable his journey, was just another veteran looking for his place in peacetime America. The Army Air Forces had other plans for him. Hoover’s service record showed something unusual.

Before being shot down, he had served as a test pilot at a repair depot in Casablanca. evaluating every type of Allied aircraft in the North African theater. Spitfires, P40 Warhawks, P38 Lightnings, B7 bombers. His superiors had noticed his extraordinary ability to climb into an unfamiliar cockpit and fly the aircraft to its limits within minutes. The escape in the Faulkwolf confirmed what his record suggested. Hoover could fly anything. In late 1945, the Army assigned him to Wrightfield in Dayton, Ohio, the center of American

military aviation testing. His job was to evaluate captured German and Japanese aircraft, pushing them to their performance limits so American engineers could understand enemy technology. The same fogwolf design he had stolen was now his daily assignment. Messers 109s, Hankle bombers, Japanese zeros captured in the Pacific. At Wrightfield, Hoover met another young test pilot who had made a name for himself during the war. Captain Chuck Joerger had shot down 13 German aircraft, including five in a

single day. Like Hoover, Joerger had been shot down over occupied France. Unlike Hoover, Joerger had evaded capture and escaped to Spain with the help of the French resistance. The two men recognized something in each other. Both were natural pilots born with an instinct for flight that could not be taught. Both pushed aircraft beyond what engineers said was possible. They became friends, then competitors, constantly challenging each other in unofficial dog fights over the Ohio countryside. Their

commanding officers pretended not to notice. In 1946, the newly independent United States Air Force selected Joerger for the most important test flight in aviation history. The Bell X1 rocket plane was designed to break the sound barrier, a feat that many engineers believed would destroy any aircraft that attempted it. Joerger would be the pilot. The program needed a backup, someone who could step in if Joerger was injured or killed during the preparation flights. Joerger requested Hoover personally. Colonel Albert Boyd, chief

of the flight test division, approved the request. Hoover became the backup pilot for the X1 program and the primary chase pilot, responsible for flying alongside the rocket plane during test flights, monitoring its performance, and talking Joerger through emergencies. On October 14th, 1947, Hoover climbed into a Lockheed P80 shooting star and followed the B29 mothership to 45,000 ft above the Mojave Desert. The B29 released the X1 at 45,000 ft. Hoover watched from his P80 as the orange rocket plane dropped away from

the bomber’s belly, its four rocket chambers igniting in sequence. The X1 accelerated past him like he was standing still, trailing a white contrail across the blue California sky. Joerger pushed the throttle forward. The airspeed indicator climbed through Mach8.9. The aircraft began to shake violently as it approached the sound barrier, the point where aerodynamic forces had killed test pilots before. Engineers on the ground held their breath. Then the shaking stopped. The X1 punched through

Mach 1 and the first sonic boom in aviation history rolled across the Mojave Desert. Chuck Joerger had broken the sound barrier. Bob Hoover, flying Chase two miles behind, was the first person to witness it. Hoover never flew the X1 himself. A training accident had shattered both his legs months earlier, disqualifying him from the rocket program before Joerger’s historic flight. He always expressed regret that circumstances had prevented him from being the first. But his role in aviation history was far from over.

After leaving the Air Force in 1948, Hoover joined North American Aviation as a civilian test pilot. He flew the first flights of experimental fighters. He demonstrated the F86 Saber to combat pilots in Korea, flying actual missions over enemy territory to prove the aircraft’s capabilities. He tested the F-100 Super Saber, the first American fighter capable of supersonic flight in level altitude. But Hoover’s greatest fame came not from test flying, but from air shows. Starting in the 1950s, he

began performing aerobatic routines in a P-51 Mustang painted bright yellow, nicknamed Old Yeller. Crowds watched in disbelief as he pushed the World War II fighter through maneuvers that seemed to defy physics. Later, he switched to the Rockwell Shrike Commander, a twin engine business aircraft that no one had ever considered aerobatic. Hoover changed that perception forever. He looped it, rolled it, shut down both engines at altitude, and performed an entire routine, dead stick, landing without

power directly in front of the grandstands. His signature move became legendary. At altitude, Hoover would place a glass on the instrument panel and pour ice tea from a pitcher while rolling the aircraft inverted. The tea flowed upward into the glass. He never spilled a drop. The maneuver demonstrated such precise control that other pilots simply shook their heads in amazement. Over five decades, Hoover flew more than 300 types of aircraft and performed at more than 2500 air shows around the world. General Jimmy

Doolittle, the man who had led the famous raid on Tokyo, called Hoover the greatest stick and rudder man who ever lived. Air and Space Smithsonian magazine named him the third greatest aviator in history behind only the Wright brothers and Charles Lindberg. His Shrike commander now hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. A statue of Hoover stands beside it. Robert A. Hoover died on October 25th, 2016 at the age of 94. His memorial service drew 1500 mourners, including actor Harrison Ford. The

United States Air Force Thunderbirds and Royal Canadian Snowbirds performed a joint flyover. A P-51 Mustang pulled up in the missing man formation as taps echoed across the airfield. If this story moved you the way it moved us, do me a favor, hit that like button. Every single like tells YouTube to show this story to more people. Hit subscribe and turn on notifications. We rescue forgotten stories from dusty archives every single day. Stories about pilots who stole enemy fighters and changed aviation forever. Real people, real

heroism. Drop a comment and tell us where you are watching from. United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia. Tell us your location. Tell us if someone in your family served. Just let us know you are here. Thank you for watching and thank you for making sure Bob Hoover does not disappear into silence. He deserved to be remembered and you are helping make that