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Post by Boyd Percy on Oct 25, 2016 23:44:27 GMT -5
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Post by Wes on Oct 26, 2016 7:54:18 GMT -5
<Sigh> Another icon of my youth gone. It's happening all too often these days. RIP, Bob.
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Post by Boyd Percy on Oct 26, 2016 17:57:40 GMT -5
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Post by Jase on Oct 31, 2016 1:47:48 GMT -5
I may have mentioned this anecdote before, but I've had the privilege of meeting, among other "greats", both Bob Hoover and Scott Crossfield. Both of them were total gentlemen, and really good guys. I have also met Yeager, and a bigger jackass I hope never to meet. I was at an air show as aircrew with the CAF B-29 B-24 and C-46, and happened to notice a small boy who ran up to Yeager asking for his autograph. He made the mistake of saying "Col Yeager" instead of General, and the poor kid got cussed and Yeager walked off. I'm still pissed and disgusted. Some pretty strong words were spoken to Yeager as a result, later on that day, by me and a few others. Yeager also demolished a friends T-6, trying to impress a much younger woman. He's lucky it didn't kill him, and from what I heard he screwed the T-6's owners because the insurance didn't pay, and he walked away.
Bob Hoover was a class act all the way though...."the greatest stick and rudder man who ever lived". His Aero Commander "glider" display was just beautifully done, energy management at its finest.
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Post by Boyd Percy on Oct 31, 2016 17:39:05 GMT -5
Maybe that is why Yeager rather than Hoover was the first to fly past Mach 1. Sometimes nice guys defer to others too much. I looked at several You Tube videos of Bob Hoover and was amazed at what he could do with an airplane.
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Post by Jase on Nov 5, 2016 5:48:19 GMT -5
Maybe that is why Yeager rather than Hoover was the first to fly past Mach 1. Sometimes nice guys defer to others too much. I looked at several You Tube videos of Bob Hoover and was amazed at what he could do with an airplane. All that was wayyyyy before my time, but I can assure you that Bob, while a consummate gentleman, didn't "defer" so much to Yeager. Politics entered into it from what I have been told, that the USAF Chief of Staff wanted an active duty pilot to be the first to cross Mach 1. You might look online for how hard Bob fought when a pair of rogue FAA inspectors decided they wanted to make names for themselves, and played games with his medical. Somewhere online there may still be a piece by Jon Jordan, who was the chief Aeromedical Examiner for the FAA, which is a marvel of bureaucratic doublespeak. In the article, Jordan first says that cognitive functioning had degraded significantly....then later it mysteriously "got better".  |
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