“The airplane really doesn’t know if it’s flying with two engines running, or one engine, or no
engines. With enough airspeed you can let the aerodynamics do the work. Managing the energy
is what matters.” —BOB HOOVER
doldrums. “Why not duplicate the routine I
performed with the P- 38?” he proposed, and
the idea gained traction in the boardroom.
During World War II Bob had been stationed in North Africa where his duties
included test-flying new fighters after they had
been reassembled from their shipping crates.
The P- 38 Lightning was proving a handful for
some of the less-experienced fighter pilots,
and it had developed a bad reputation, particularly for its often fatal single-engine flying
characteristics. This made sense, given that the
“fighter track” of training did not include any
multiengine aircraft.
Reasoning that fear played a significant
role in many of the P- 38 accidents, the commanders figured that seeing Bob fly a
demonstration would boost their pilots’ confidence, particularly when it came to flying
on one engine.
He toured many of the bases in the theater, performing loops and rolls with one
engine out—followed by a dead-stick landing
with both propellers feathered to the open
mouths of previously skittish Lightning
pilots. These demonstrations were credited
with substantially reducing the accident rate
among the operational squadrons.
“The airplane really doesn’t know if it’s
flying with two engines running, or one
engine, or no engines,” Bob said. “With
enough airspeed you can let the aerodynam-
ics do the work. Managing the energy is
what matters.”
When it came to developing the P- 38
routine for the Shrike, Bob needed to
account for the design differences
between the two aircraft. “With the P- 38, I
had a 7.3g fighter. The Shrike is a 4.4g busi-
ness airplane,” Bob said. “So I took it slow
and committed to telling myself, ‘Take it
easy.’ I started with the idea of limiting
myself to 3g’s. On my first show I hit my
own prop wake on the first loop and pulled
