Captain Cardenas flew in the 44th Bomber Group, 67th Squadron in England as a B-24 Liberator pilot. His airplane (Serial No.: 42-100073, Nickname: «Sack Artists) was severely damaged by aerial barrage on his 20th mission on March 18th, 1944; he bailed out by parachute, injured, near Switzerland. The B-24 Liberator Bomber crashed, without a pilot, in the forest in Fehratltorf. Cardenas just managed to skirt being captured by the Germans and was detained by the Swiss. He escaped to France in May and returned to English in October. In November 1944, he was in the USA and then back to Wright Field, in order to attend the School of Experimental Flight Testing. After graduation, Major Cardenas became the head of the Department of Bombing Missions and the Department of Flight Testing, among other things. He tested, evaluated and collected data about US-American and captured German Airplanes. In 1947, he was stationed in Muroc, California, where he tested the Northrop N-9M Flying Wing as well as the X-42A and the XB-45 and XB-46. In the summer of that year, he was deployed as the officer-in-charge for the Bell X-1 project. He piloted the B-29 mother ship for all X-1 flights, including the first supersonic flight on October 14th, 1947. In January 1948, Cardenas was the officer responsible for the flight testing department in Muro and chief test pilot of the Air Force for the new eight-jet Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing project. General Robert «Bob» Cardenas was able to fly 80 different types of military aircraft by the time he ended his USAF career in
