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From the Air & Space magazine May 01, 2010. Bob Hoover, Simply the best. That Shrike and a bright yellow North American P-51 Mustang he called “Ole Yeller” were Hoover’s signature showplanes, and he flew them all over the world. But they represent only two of the more than 300 types of aircraft he flew, many of those in aerobatic demonstrations. In 1938, when he was 16, he flew his first show, entertaining his family with a Piper J-3 Cub. By the end of his career, 62 years later, he had flown more shows for more people than anyone else in history. “He was the one that everyone wanted,” veteran airshow announcer Danny Clisham says. “He was able to take four distinctly different airplanes in one day and make them all dance in a different way from any other airplane.” At 88, he is still in demand. Through a speaker’s bureau, he entertains audiences with stories revealing a skill so uncanny that it enabled him to perform low-level aerobatic demonstrations in dozens of types of airplanes the first time he flew them. Once, in Moscow, he was arrested for doing that because he upstaged the Soviet pilots in their own Yak-18s. During World War II, as a military test pilot evaluating aircraft delivered to bases in North Africa, Hoover entertained his fellow airmen by improvising an aerobatic routine in a newly arrived Lockheed P-38. Perhaps his most famous first-flight story takes place at the end of the war: After spending almost 16 months in a German prisoner-of-war camp, Hoover escaped, found a Fw 190, hopped in, and flew it to Holland.