It’s midday on February the 9th, 1944, near the harbor of Nice, in southern France.
4 Supermarine Spitfires belonging to the 4th squadron of the 52nd Fighter Group circle their targets like eagles stalking their prey.
On board one of these fighters is pilot Robert Anderson Hoover.
He dives for his target and releases the ordnance. The bombs whistle as they fall and strike the sea,
exploding around the enemy vessel.
Hoover then pulls up;
it was a missed drop but he doesn’t have any time to fret over the mistake as he suddenly feels his aircraft is down on power.
Simultaneously, high above the clouds, a squadron of FW 190’s looks down upon the allied aircraft below
and they spot an opportunity.
Hoover is trying to control his misbehaving aircraft when he looks up and spots four enemies barreling down towards him.
He instantly radios the other Spitfires for help as he steers his crippled plane towards the enemy.
He fires upon the 190s and the enemy pull away from their head-on attack.
They speed past each other and the German pilots turn around to get on the American’s tail.
But Hoover won’t let it happen so easily.
He dives, twists, and turns, evading the gunfire and surviving while his fellow Spitfires race to the rescue.
They arrive and the chase turns into a chaotic battle.
The Spitfires try as they might, but they are operating an older spec of the iconic aircraft,
one that’s now outclassed by the 190’s in almost every respect.
Their attacks are avoided with ease, and it doesn’t take long before a 190 once again sets his sights on Hoover.
Hoover is making a turn when suddenly a single 20mm shell strikes him at the root of the wing.
In a blur the wing shears off and his Spitfire twists in an uncontrollable tumble.
Hoover hangs on and pulls himself out of the doomed machine.
The parachute opens above the waters of the Mediterranean with a battle raging above him.
The parachute drifts down and Hoover knows capture is inevitable.
He had been fished out of the water by a German freighter.
Since then he’s spent his time bouncing from one detention facility to another,
he was interrogated, tortured, and threaten with execution, but he never responded anything but his name, rank, and Service Number.
14 months later, on the 20th of the April 1945
Hoover wakes up to yet another long day at Stalag Luft I, a prison camp for captured pilots outside Barth, in Germany.
Throughout the morning the prisoners could hear explosions in the distance.
It was the Soviets shelling a target several miles away as they push back the Germans bit by bit.
With the front line encroaching onto the camp most of the German guards had been sent elsewhere,
leaving the camp with little more than a skeleton crew.
Not fancying to fall under Soviet care and with escape enticingly close, Hoover decided it was time for a breakout.
Joining forces with Pilot Jerome Ennis from the same squadron, a Canadian only known as George,
and some cooperation from other prisoners they hatched a simple plan.
Days ago, they found a wooden plank under one of the camp’s buildings. Hoover had hatched an idea on how to use it to escape,
They just needed a distraction.
Late in the evening a few of Hoover’s friends pretended to get angry at one another,
shouting obscenities and escalating to violence.
- Hit me, before i lose my nerve.
- Like, in a face?
- Surprise me
Men quickly gathered around the fight and the shouting was heard across the camp.
The few guards didn’t intervene but kept an eye on the commotion to make sure it didn't blow over.
Meanwhile, out of sight, Hoover, Ennis, and George make a ran for the fence with the wooden plank on hand.
Swiftly they placed the plank over the barbed wire and its weight squished it down.
One by one they carefully walked over it, jumping down the other side to freedom. They swiftly disappeared into the forest, unseen.
Their escape had gone shockingly smooth, even considering how little guards were left.
By the time they reached a nearby town, it was just the two of them.
George decided to go his own way, and Hoover would never know what became of him.
The night falling they found him broke into a farm house where they could stay the night.
The next morning, they were jolted awake by the doors of the farmhouse opening up. They just been caught!
But to their great relief, the woman calmly asked,
“who are you?” in French.
- You escaped a prison!
She appeared to be French relocated to Eastern Germany for labor,
and when Hoover said he is planning to make a journey to American lines
she gave them a small handgun with a couple of magazines.
Moved by this gesture, Hoover wrote a note thanking her and asking any allied soldier not to harm her.
She was very grateful, understanding its implications.
Not long after the pair had said their goodbyes to the lady
Hoover and Ennis stole some bicycles and made their way west for several miles
until they stumbled across an oddly quiet German airfield with aircraft lined up.
Seeing a chance for a ticket home, Hoover insists to break in to investigate. Ennis is less keen,
but he accepts and the pair jump the fence.
The field is deathly quiet, apparently abandoned.
Hoover approaches the line of sitting Me 109s but is disappointed to realize the ones before him have been heavily shot.
The base, it seems, was repair shop.
They wade through the line, inspecting each machine.
Some are better than others, a few even seeming air-worthy, but sadly lacking any fuel.
Leaving behind the 109’s Hoover spots an FW 190 and approaches it to inspect it.
It looks intact from the outside so Hoover jumps up to take a peek into the cockpit.
It’s when both are surprised by someone shouting “HALT!”
Instantly Ennis draws the pistol and aims it square to the German mechanic’s chest.
“Freeze!” he orders, and the unarmed German has no option but to comply.
With the mechanic held at gunpoint they prepared the machine for takeoff.
The weapons appear to be inoperable, but fortunately it has a full tank of fuel.
Confident that he can fly the machine , Hoover, waves for Ennis to climb aboard
-Ennis , get in!
but his friend waves back a negative
“I never want to fly again, you go!”
Hoover is hesitant but goes for it.
He salutes his good friend for one final time before closing the canopy and slamming the throttle to full.
The 190 picks up speed quickly.
Hoover doesn’t bother taxiing at all, he sends it straight through the grass and the machine rises into the air.
Gaining altitude Hoover is now faced with the issue of navigation.
He has no idea where he is, but with the altitude he spots the northern coast of Germany
and uses the position of the sun to figure out the cardinal directions.
With those two things to work with, he decides to make his way West hoping to see the iconic windmills of the Netherlands.
The entire time he flies with his heart racing on his chest, the reality of what he is doing beginning to hit.
He’s taking a German plane, with German markings, and flying it straight over a very active front line
hoping to land on allied-held territory.
It was nothing short of a death wish.
He attempted flying just below the clouds to avoid detection, but he knew it was on a wing and a prayer.
He flew and flew, over the Jutland peninsula and following the coast beyond, completely blind as to what exactly lay below him.
He was doing nothing but keeping the aircraft straight, and yet his heart raced.
At any moment he could be pounced upon by a squadron of Allied fighters or shot by an anti-aircraft battery.
And then, a windmill appeared on the horizon.
Somehow he had passed the front undisturbed.
He spots a couple of airfields but fears he could be attacked or land on a mined runway. Instead, he aims for a grass field.
He slows as much as possible, skimming the ground until the aircraft stalls and the belly slams onto the ground.
Hoover is shaken but unharmed. Local farmers swarm the crash site, pitchforks in hand.
They order him to get out in Dutch, believing him to be German.
He is captured by the angry civilians and taken to a nearby town where British army supply truck happened to be passing by.
And he was able to explain the situation,
the British soldiers took him in, and he had finally earned his freedom.
Robert Anderson Hoover would survive the war and go on to gain fame as a stunt flier, test pilot and instructor.
Jerome Ennis would also successfully escape,
they reunited years later during one of Hoover’s airshows,
during which Ennis passed the time telling the story of their escape to the guests.
For his side, Hoover was never proud of that flight, stating “It was about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
Roughly a week after his escape the last of the German guards fled Stalag Luft I,
and it was properly liberated by the Red Army on May the 1st, so Hoover would very likely survived anyway.
Still, he remains one of the very few to have the honor of having stolen a Lufwaffe warplane.
He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for the dogfight that led to his capture.
- Jer, get in, i’ll give you a ride!
- I told you, i never want to fly again
He lived a long life and passed away in 2016, aged 94.
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