Hoover Wins Hughes Memorial Award

Legendary fighter pilot, airshow performer and aviation icon Robert A. “Bob” Hoover, 88, was presented the prestigious Hughes Memorial Award for 2009 by the Aero Club of Southern California last month in a ceremony in Los Angeles.

Hoover joins such aviation luminaries as Jimmy Doolittle, Gen. Charles “Chuck” Yeager, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Pete Conrad, Allen Paulson, Lee Atwood, Bobbi Trout, Frank Robinson and Burt Rutan among its previous 30 recipients. The permanent trophy is housed in the Flight Path Learning Center and Museum at LAX.

It’s a globe and vehicle sculpture with the names of the recipients engraved on the base. It depicts Hughes from the era when he was designing and flying his famed Flying Boat, the so-called “Spruce Goose.”

The reverse side signifies aspects of Hughes’ life, from oil drilling to film making, the state of Nevada, the first communications satellite and the Flying Boat cresting the waves in Long Beach harbor.

Hoover’s career is the stuff of legend. In WW II he was sent to North Africa to flight test fighters being assembled there, including teaching pilots to fly the P-38 Lightning, then was assigned to the Spitfire-equipped 52nd Fighter Group in Sicily. On his 59th mission, his malfunctioning Mark V Spitfire was shot down by a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 off the coast of Southern France and he was taken prisoner.

He spent 16 months at the German prison camp, Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany. He managed to escape from the prison camp, stole an Fw 190, and flew to safety in the Netherlands.

After the war he was assigned to flight test duty and was Yeager’s backup pilot for the Bell X-1 rocket plane, the first aircraft to exceed the speed of sound.

Hoover flew chase for Yeager in a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star during the Mach 1 flight and also flew chase for the 50th anniversary in an F-16 Fighting Falcon.

In 1948 he went to work for North American Aviation, later to become North American Rockwell, as a test/demonstration pilot, flying such aircraft as the P-51 Mustang, the F-86 Sabrejet, the F-100 Supersabre and the Aero Commander and Sabreliner bizjet at airshows around the world.

His bright yellow P-51, called “Old Yeller,” was his most famous airshow plane  and Hoover flew it until his retirement in the 1990s after a dispute with the FAA over his medical exam. In 1997 Hoover sold Ole Yeller to his good friend John Bagley of Rexburg, Ida.

The plane is said to still fly frequently and is based out of the Legacy Flight Museum in Rexburg. His Shrike Commander is on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, in Dulles, Va.

Hoover’s fellow aviators stand in awe of the man Yeager called “the best pilot I ever saw.” He was described by Jimmy Doolittle as, “ ... the greatest stick-and-rudder man who ever lived.”

Anyone who ever witnessed his airshow act in the dead-engined Shrike Commander will attest to that. Well known for his wide-brimmed straw hat and big smile, he’s also considered the most friendly and approachable of all the aviation legends still alive and has an amazing ability to remember the names of people he hasn’t seen in years.

His awards include the DFC, the Soldier’s Medal of Valor, Air Medal with Clusters, Purple Heart and France’s Croix de Guerre. He holds a number of world records and in 1988 was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

He was also made an honorary member of the Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, American Fighter Aces Association, Original Eagle squadron and received an Award of Merit from the American Fighter Pilots Association. In 1992, he was inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor and in 2007, he received the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum Trophy.

He was also presented with the “Aviation Pioneer Award” by Parks College in St. Louis for being “the world’s most notable, decorated and respected living pilot.” The Hughes Award was created in 1978 as a tribute to Hughes by his first cousin, William R. Lummis, chairman and CEO of Summa Corporation.

For more information on the Aero Club, see their website at: www.aeroclubsocal.org.