Overall the theme of Forever Flying is Simple, you can achieve any goal that you set if you work hard enough and work through your problems and issues you can achieve greatness. Bob Hoover does an excellent job of displaying this theme throughout the entire book an example of this would be him setting a goal at a young age of earning his pilots license and the struggles that he went through from working all day to pay for 15 minutes of flight instruction that hard work paid off when he finally earned his license.(Pg. 3-12)Another great example of Bob setting a goal and working through his issues would be when he gets shot down while dogfighting with the Germans in World War 2 and becoming prisoner of war and attempting escape 3 times before he was successful on the forth attempt by escaping in a stolen German Fokker wolf airplane.(Pg.35-46) I Think it's amazing that Bob was able to muster enough courage to attempt escape 4 times from his captors and being successful at it. To further support this theme Mr. Hoover's career choice after defending this amazing country was a experimental test pilot the job of a test pilot is reach a goal set by engineers(pg.65-76) and all but too often while trying to reach those goals many problems arise Bob has to work through them almost all of these problems were life or death split second decisions. Mr. Hoover's still alive (birth certificate) today and I think that in its self explains how well he was able to work through those issues and reach the set goals. In the end of the book you learn of the issues that Bob is having with the FAA over his medical and whether he'd be fit to fly again.(Pg. 276-283) I did some research and found out that his medical was reinstated he was again deemed fit for flight.(US air and space museum) Therefore I believe that this was biggest goal that Bob Hoover set out to reach but Bob wasn't able to achieved it till after the book was finished. The awards / achievements presented to Robert A. "Bob" Hoover include both military and civilian military awards include Distinguished flying cross, Soldier's Metal for Valor, Air Medal with Clusters, Purple Heart, and French Croix de Guerre. Civilian awards consist of National Aviation Hall of Fame, Lindbergh Medal, Kitty Hawk Award, Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Aerospace Hall of Fame, Aviation Pioneer Award, and International Aerobatic Pilot of the Year, (Pg. xxi) I can keep going on But I think you get the idea, as you can see Bob Hoover worked extremely hard to where he got to where he is today.
(Majority of the citations above come from the book but one is from: http://blog.nasm.si.edu/aviation/robert-a-bob-hoover-the-greatest-stick-and-rudder-man-is-honored-in-hollywood/)
(Majority of the citations above come from the book but one is from: http://blog.nasm.si.edu/aviation/robert-a-bob-hoover-the-greatest-stick-and-rudder-man-is-honored-in-hollywood/)