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SPRUCE GOOSE FLIES:
November 2, 1947

The Hughes Flying Boat--the largest aircraft ever built--is piloted
by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight. Built with
laminated birch and spruce, the massive wooden aircraft had a
wingspan longer than a football field and was designed to carry more
than 700 men to battle. Howard Hughes was a successful Hollywood
movie producer when he founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932.
He personally tested cutting-edge aircraft of his own design and in
1937 broke the transcontinental flight-time record. In 1938, he flew
around the world in a record three days, 19 hours, and 14
minutes.Following the U.S. entrance into World War II in 1941, the
U.S. government commissioned the Hughes Aircraft Company to build a
large flying boat capable of carrying men and materials over long
distances. The concept for what would become the "Spruce Goose" was
originally conceived by the industrialist Henry Kaiser, but Kaiser
dropped out of the project early, leaving Hughes and his small team
to make the H-4 a reality. Because of wartime restrictions on steel,
Hughes decided to build his aircraft out of wood laminated with
plastic and covered with fabric.
Although it was constructed mainly of birch, the use of spruce
(along with its white-gray color) would later earn the aircraft the
nickname Spruce Goose. It had a wingspan of 320 feet and was powered
by eight giant propeller engines.Development of the Spruce Goose
cost a phenomenal $23 million and took so long that the war had
ended by the time of its completion in 1946. The aircraft had many
detractors, and Congress demanded that Hughes prove the plane
airworthy. On November 2, 1947, Hughes obliged, taking the H-4
prototype out into Long Beach Harbor for an unannounced flight test.
Thousands of onlookers had come to watch the aircraft taxi on the
water and were surprised when Hughes lifted his wooden behemoth 70
feet above the water and flew for a mile before landing.Despite its
successful maiden flight, the Spruce Goose never went into
production, primarily because critics alleged that its wooden
framework was insufficient to support its weight during long
flights. Nevertheless, Howard Hughes, who became increasingly
eccentric and withdrawn after 1950, refused to neglect what he saw
as his greatest achievement in the aviation field. From 1947
until his death in 1976, he kept the Spruce Goose prototype ready
for flight in an enormous, climate-controlled hangar at a cost of $1
million per year. Today, the Spruce Goose is housed at the Evergreen
Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

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