Bob Hoover was awarded the 2014 Wright Brothers Memorial Award by the National Aeronautic Association.
His legendary career includes escaping a WWII German prison camp, serving as Chuck Yeager's backup for the first Mach 1 flight, and performing groundbreaking airshow aerobatics.
Hoover is renowned for his unique airshow performance, which involved flying aerobatic maneuvers and landing a North American Shrike Commander with both engines shut down.
Like everyone else, I had assumed that Bob Hoover was already a Wright Brothers Memorial award winner. Now we can say that he really is.
Yesterday the National Aeronautic Association’s selection committee voted Bob Hoover the winner for 2014, beating out a very distinguished group of nominees in the process.
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A commercial pilot, Isabel Goyer has been flying for more than 40 years, with hundreds of different aircraft in her logbook and thousands of hours. An award-winning aviation writer, photographer and editor, Ms. Goyer led teams at Sport Pilot, Air Progress and Flying before coming to Plane & Pilot in 2015.