Bob Hoover: the feat of an American prisoner who managed to escape in a German fighter

@DefAviation ES 2·13·2023 · 7:55 0

World War II is a source of truly fascinating stories, and among them are those of prisoner of war escapes.

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Last month we saw here some curious facts about the true story behind the film "The Great Escape", undoubtedly one of the most famous escapes from a prisoner of war camp during that war. There is another leak that was also very surprising and singular: that of the American Bob Hoover.

Born in 1922, Hoover was a Supermarine Spitfire pilot in the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) during that war. Initially stationed in Casablanca, he was later posted to the 52nd Fighter Group in Sicily. On February 9, 1944, during his 59th mission, he was shot down while flying his Spitfire Mk.V over the south coast of France and was captured by the Germans, being sent to a prison camp in the Luftwaffe, the Stalag Luft I in Bath, in the northeast of Germany (in which, as you will remember, Donald Pleasence, one of the actors in the aforementioned film, was also present).

One night there was a riot in the camp involving thousands of prisoners, and Hoover took the opportunity to escape along with two companions. They were able to hide in a German farm, where a woman gave them some food and a gun. Later they stole some bicycles, and that is how they arrived at an abandoned German airfield where there were damaged planes. Hoover began looking for one that was fit to fly and found a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter. The aircraft had some damage but the fuel tanks were full. Hoover gave his companions the pistol the farmer had given them and prepared to take the risk of flying with a plane in poor condition, without a parachute and with a model he had never flown before and which, moreover, It had all the indicators in German.

Hoover decided not to do the usual taxi down the runway and taxied across the field to take off as soon as possible. Once in the air, he must have realized that he was in a sticky situation: he was flying a plane with enemy insignia and any allied fighter could shoot him down , since he had no way of indicating that he he was a friend. And if he didn't shoot down an Allied fighter, American or British anti-aircraft artillery would. Thus, he could not run the risk of trying to reach England, since it would be suicide, so he decided to go to the area occupied by the allies, with the added difficulty that he had no maps of the territory over which it was flying.

During his flight he finally saw something that looked familiar: windmills that told him he was over the Netherlands. he managed to land in a field in the Dutch town of Zuider Zee , quickly finding himself surrounded by angry farmers armed with pitchforks who logically thought he was a German. Those farmers did not understand English, but fortunately for Hoover, a British Army truck soon arrived and took him to safety.

After the war, Hoover became a backup pilot for famed Chuck Yeager on the Bell X-1 program that broke the sound barrier for the first time. Hoover accompanied Yeager on that historic flight. with a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. Later, he flew combat flights in the Korean War, worked as a test pilot, did air shows, and held several climb and speed records. He flew for last time on October 10, 2003, at the age of 81. He passed away in Los Angeles on October 25, 2016 at the age of 94, being today considered a war hero and a celebrity in aviation history.

The YouTube channel TJ3 History has posted a recreation of the incredible Hoover escape in that Fw 190: