{"id":42072,"date":"2017-10-27T00:30:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=42072"},"modified":"2017-10-26T21:54:56","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T00:54:56","slug":"usafa-class-of-2020-chooses-bob-hoover-as-exemplar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/27\/usafa-class-of-2020-chooses-bob-hoover-as-exemplar\/","title":{"rendered":"USAFA Class of 2020 Chooses Bob Hoover as Exemplar"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past few years each class at the US Air Force Academy has chosen an “exemplar<\/a>,” a program USAFA describes as an opportunity for the class to<\/p>\n

honor and identify with a past military giant, alive or dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This year, the USAFA Class of 2020 chose Bob Hoover<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"Among other stories,<\/p>\n

1st Lt. Robert Hoover, a former Army Air Corps, Air Force and civilian test pilot…of Nashville, Tennessee, was taken captive by the Germans after being shot-down by the Luftwaffe over France during World War II. He spent 16 months in Stalag Luft I, a German POW camp, before sneaking into a German FW-190 aircraft and flying to Holland. It was his fourth attempt to escape the prison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though officially listed as a general “military giant, alive or dead,” the exemplars chosen to date<\/a> appear to be almost exclusively Air Force (or Army Air Corps) officers who have died — in most cases, very recently. (The Wright Brothers, for the Class of 2015, are the sole civilians.) For example, Louis Zamperini<\/a>, Col Bud Day, Neil Armstrong<\/a>, and now Bob Hoover have all been chosen in the months following their passing.<\/p>\n

That might be one reason (among others) why Bob Hoover was chosen — and Chuck Yeager has not. Hoover was the backup to Yeager for his sound barrier-breaking flight in 1947, the act for which he is most well-known. Yeager — often viewed as brash and arrogant — stayed in the Air Force and had a colorful career, while Hoover exited soon after and became famous in his own right as an extraordinarily skilled aviator (and generally nice guy).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past few years each class at the US Air Force Academy has chosen an “exemplar,” a program USAFA describes as an opportunity for the class to honor and identify with a past military giant, alive or dead. This year, the USAFA Class of 2020 chose Bob Hoover. Among other stories, 1st Lt. Robert Hoover, a former Army Air […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[6455,134,6454,2820,5285,1525,2751,2,6456,2335,182,65,1229],"class_list":["post-42072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-6455","tag-air-force","tag-bob-hoover","tag-chuck-yeager","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-george-bud-day","tag-louis-zamperini","tag-military","tag-neil-armstrong","tag-pow","tag-test-pilot","tag-usafa","tag-wright-brothers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}