In 1944 Stalag Luft prison camp was no place you wanted to be. Its residents were entirely allied airmen who had been shot down by the Germans during the course of the war, and while conditions in air camps were designed to be better than those present in other POW camps, the conditions were still nothing short of awful.

 

The lack of food, hygiene and dignity boiled over in early 1945 and several thousand inmates sparked a full scale riot. While guards battled to maintain order in the camp Bob Hoover, who had been in the camp just over a year, seized the opportunity. Lost in the confusion, he scaled the fences and fled. After stopping for a meal at a German farmhouse, he stole a bicycle and rode for several miles before coming upon an abandoned airfield. Being a pilot, Hoover began inspecting the aircraft. Most were badly damaged and unworthy of flight, but eventually he found a Focke-Wulf FW 190 spy plane. It wasn’t entirely free from damage, but it had a full tank of fuel, and seemed like it may get off the ground.

 

Hoover did not even take the time to taxi to the runway. He hit the throttle and headed straight out across a field gaining speed. As his speed grew he lifted off the ground and his crippled spy plane headed for allied lines, and into even greater danger. While he was an American pilot, to any who saw him, he would appear as a Nazi spy. He had no parachute, and no way to know whether he was safely in allied territory. His strategy was simple. When he could see windmills, he must be over Holland.

 

He touched down in a field surrounded by Dutch windmills and was immediately surrounded by angry farmers thinking they had captured a German pilot. Eventually, a British supply truck came to the scene and Hoover was able to explain who he was, and at long last make it back to his own side. If you watched "Maverick" and thought, "that ending is so unrealistic", Bob Hoover did it. 

 

Hoover would go on to flight test pilot after the war, befriending Chuck Yeager who would eventually become the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. Hoover was on the crew that achieved that milestone, serving as Yeager’s back up. He continued to fly dangerous prototype aircraft for several years before transitioning to flying in airshows, doing so for nearly 50 years until he retired in 1999 as a member of the aviation hall of fame.

 

For all his accolades, Hoover has been immortalized in print for a different reason. Making his appearance in Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and influence People. Bob was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in the magazine Flight Operations, at three hundred feet in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft maneuvering he managed to land the plane, but it was badly damaged although nobody was hurt. Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the World War II propeller plane he had been flying had been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline. Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his airplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives as well. You can imagine Hoover’s anger. One could anticipate the tongue-lashing that this proud and precise pilot would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”

 

I can assure you that the young maintenance operator who made that grave mistake, would never make such an error again. That is a lesson that all of us can learn.

 

To err is human. There is simply nothing you can do about it. As life unfolds mistakes will be made. You will cause traffic accidents, you will accidentally offend others, and you will most certainly do some dumb things with your money.

 

Those mistakes can look like a bevy of things. Poor investments, racking up credit card debt, forgetting to finish a form, choosing the wrong insurance; the list is endless. When they happen remember this; the only true mistake, is a mistake from which you do not learn to do better.