The Spruce Goose is the largest airplane ever constructed, and flown only one time on November 2, 1947. The Hughes Flying Boat represents one man's greatest attempts to conquer the skies. The single prototype was built as a personnel and materiel carrier. The aircraft was designed to fly trans-Atlantic to avoid the World War II German submarines that were sinking Allied ships.To produce the giant, Howard Hughes and his staff worked from 1942 to 1947, spending $18,000,000 federal dollars and $7,000,000 of Hughes' own money. Henry Kaiser, steel magnate and "Liberty" shipbuilder, conceived the idea of massive flying transports, and turned to Howard Hughes for aviation expertise. Hughes took on the mammoth task, along with the government mandate not to use materials critical to the war effort (such as steel and aluminum). Nearly six times bigger than any aircraft of its time, the Flying Boat is made out of wood!
The press insisted on calling the Hughes Flying Boat the "Spruce Goose". A name that Howard Hughes despised. The funny thing about the nickname is that most of the huge plane is actually made of birch, with only small amounts of maple, poplar, balsa, and yes, spruce. Birch was chosen because testing proved it to be light, strong, and resistant to splitting, dry rot and deterioration. The aircraft is mostly made of duramold, using laminated layers of birch veneer. Glued together under heat and pressure, this plywood is so strong that if a piece of duramold is broken, it does not split along the glue lines.
Millions of nails were used and then removed. To shape and form the wooden pieces needed to create the Flying Boat, seven tons of small nails were used. Once the glue set, workers removed every nail.
The wingspan is longer than a football field! If you place the Hughes Flying Boat on top of a football field, the wing tips would extend over both end zones. The nose and the tail would extend well into the spectator sections.
The tail span is wider than the wingspan of a Boeing B-17, with a span of 113.5 feet while the B-17 is 103 feet, 9 inches. The vertical tail rises nearly 80 feet in the air, the same as an eight story building.
Completed in 1947 after the end of World War II, the winged giant made only one flight. The unannounced decision to fly was made by the pilot, Hughes himself, during a taxi test. The flight went only a little over a mile at an altitude of 70 feet for about one minute. But, the short hop proved to skeptics that the gigantic machine could indeed, fly!
The Hughes Flying Boat went into hibernation after its famous flight. Stored away in its special hanger, it was out of the public eye for thirty-three years. All the time, Howard Hughes kept the plane in immaculate shape and ready to fly. It was rumored that it cost Hughes $1 million per year to preserve the aircraft.
After Hughes' death in 1976, it appeared that the Hughes Flying Boat was to be disassembled. The giant plane was saved by entrepreneur Jack Wrather, who moved it into a massive domed hanger, next to the famous ocean liner, the Queen Mary, in Long Beach, California. Beginning in 1983, the plane was put on public display. In 1988, the Wrather Corporation was bought by Te Walt Disney Company. Disney didn't see the plane in its future plans, so the search was on to find a new home for the aircraft.
The photo above of me sitting in the cockpit of the Spruce Goose was taken when the aircraft was in its Long Beach Hanger. I do not remember the date that it was taken???
It was some aircraft!!!
That is all for now..... until later, Candy and Johnny
