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Thanks to many friends, comrades, and acquaintances, two World War Two fighter pilots, both bailing out, captured and imprisoned by the Luftwaffe just weeks apart, were reunited at the Reno National Championship Air Races in 2004. Except for a Dining In at Williams AFB around 1962, they had not seen each other for nearly sixty years.
The story begins when the author met retired Major General Eddie Bracken, USAF, at the Reno National Championship Air races in 2001. Eddie and his lovely wife, Joan, were guests in the VIP box of Gene York, also a retired TWA Captain and a former Marine F-8 driver. I related to General Bracken that I had been trying for several years to locate my former Wing Commander, a Col. Donald H. Ross from Bartow AFB, Florida, circa 1960. My aviation cadet classmates (61-Foxtrot) and I had been led to believe that Col. Ross was shot down and killed in Vietnam in an F-4 around 1966. However, the internet revealed that Col. Ross attained the rank of Major General and retired in 1974. Eddie volunteered to search the USAF General Officers list he receives each year to find General Ross. He succeeded, and we found the General and his bride Ruth living just 30 miles from Reno near Carson City. I wrote to General Ross and invited him to be our guest at Reno 2004. He accepted the invitation.
(There is a story within a story here, which would explain my mission to find the General. Suffice it to say his intercession in 1960 was responsible for my forty year flying career.)
By now you may be wondering who the other pilot was imprisoned with Don Ross in Stalag Luft 1 during 1944-1945: none other than the greatest fighter/aerobatic pilot who ever lived . . . Robert A. (Bob) Hoover. Thanks to a mutual friend, John Towner, aviator and President of Central Air here in Kansas City, and who was responsible for the maintenance of Hoover's Shrike Commander 500RA for many years, I had the privileged of having dinner with John and Bob in Kansas City in 2001, and having the honor of driving Bob and his lovely wife Colleen to KCI after an airshow at Downtown airport in which Bob performed on Sunday .
Bob and Colleen Hoover have celebrated every wedding anniversary since 1964 at the Reno National Championship Air Races. If anyone ever deserved an Air Medal, it's Colleen Hoover! General Ross was only able to attend the Sunday show due to sister-in-law having surgery that weekend in Reno. However, the two pilots were able to meet and chat at a luncheon of the Checkered Flag Club on Sunday where Bob was the featured speaker.
Always gracious and humble, Bob invited Don to the podium to tell a war story or two about their POW days in Stalag Luft 1. Needless to say, the quintessential rebel Bob Hoover was less than a model prisoner. In one celebrated incident, he was to provide the "diversion" while twelve prisoners escaped. This resulted in Bob throwing a "slop bucket" on a German guard. The escapees were re-captured, and thankfully for world aviation, Bob was not executed on the spot. Don later wrote that, "we were young and we gave the German guards a hard time. On many occasions, even the guards laughed at our antics."
To be in the company of these warriors is a great honor in itself, to write about their history is a task that humbles me, but I wanted to share their story with all fellow aviation buffs in the world who admire and respect great aviators such as these.
Authors note: For a complete bio of Major General Donald H. Ross and his exemplary USAF career, go to www.usafpilotclass61f.com and click on "One in a Million", a poem dedicated by the author to him and all former aviation cadets.
The career of Bob Hoover can be read in his autobiography, "Forever Flying", Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, New York, New York.