Dear Friend-Thank you for another very valuable research
article that , but for your kind advices, many of us would never know
about. Much of the early Hughes Aviation development reports have
been made unavailable to American readers over the years..few ever
heard of Hercules in 4 distinct production vbersions, much less
the Henry J Kaiser plans for production of hundreds of Flying Boats
in partnership with Howard Hughes. When contractee Henry dropped out
(for reasons unexplained) Howard continued, independently, with his
own money, to fulfill the contract for 4 airships. He took a
personal active part in the constructions (as is clear from the
photographs that you mentioned). As we all ought to know, there are
24 hours in a day, while Howard's detractors still would have it that
Howard used his time designing "bras" for movie stars-with alleged
12" fingernails yet, as he allegedly wrote pages and pages of
idiotical memos to his underlings on matters notoriously against his
known character and pursuits, in a vernacular not natural to his way
of communication; for he was known to be a vrery articulate speaker
actually eloquent, though shy by nature.
Your information about the H-14 Helicopter adds to the reality of the
situation as here again Howard Hughes in the 1950s was a very
busy man, engaged in ahead of his time aviation developments, far
more than any of his contemporary 'developers". Good now to see
Boeing get its comeuppance with introduction of Europe's Aerobus!
Boeing used to deny Wide Body influence of Hercules in its 747,
saying "only thing of wood in the 747 is toothpicks in the galley-
LIARS, CHEATS THIEVES. .
I'm enjoying every minute of our refutations of the low-lifers'
past false claims and misrepresentations, as they come to be
uncovered one by one!
Sincerely Van

--- In howardrobardhughesmemorial@yahoogroups.com, "imperial78uk"
<frankgray.1@b...> wrote:
> While browsing my collection of Howard Hughes titles, I picked up
> this copy of D D Hatfield's Aircraft Series 'Howard Hughes H-4
> Hercules' published in 1972. This is a 105 page paperback full of
> photographs, with captions, providing a pictorial progress of the
> construction of the Hercules with Howard Hughes featured in several
> of the pictures. The last 8 pages are of individual portraits of
> Howard Hughes at different stages of his life. Also included is the
> specification and other technical data of the Hercules. D D
> Hatfield's introduction states "This pictorial presentation of the
> story of the Howard Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat is intended
only
> as a brief history of the development and not a complete in-depth
> study.....In order to clarify the background of Howard Hughes we
have
> included a few illustrations of his other accomplishments also
> character studies of this remarkable genius." The "other
> accomplishments" featured include images from the movie 'Hell's
> Angels', the Boeing 100 1932, HH in front of the Northrop Gamma
1936,
> the H-1 Racer, the crew of the 1938 Round the World Flight, Hughes
XF-
> 11 1946 and the crash scene, Hughes XF-11A and the Hughes XH-17
giant
> helicopter. That one man could be responsible for so many ground-
> breaking projects is testament to his genius. This is a very
> interesting and useful pictorial reference book and I would
recommend
> it to anyone interested either in Howard Hughes or aviation
> development.