During World War II, ships supplying the Allied forces in Europe faced the risk of being sunk by German U-boat submarines. The Hughes Flying Boat was conceived as a way to transport supplies across the Atlantic without being at risk of the U-Boats.
Photo by Cliff West
Howard Hughes ("The Aviator") designed an airplane six times larger than any other airplane of the time. It was powered by eight 3000 horsepower engines, and its wingspan was longer than a football field. No runway would be able handle an airplane of this scale, so it was designed as a seaplane, a Flying Boat, and due to wartime rationing, it had to be constructed almost entirely of wood.
World War II ended before the plane was finished, making the plane largely irrelevant, but Hughes was determined to complete it. The press doubted the multi-million-dollar plane would ever fly and had derisively nicknamed it the Spruce Goose (it was really made of laminated birch), but on November 2, 1947, Hughes stunned the world. During taxi tests of the finished plane, Hughes took the controls and took off, flying over a mile at an altitude of 70 feet over Long Beach Harbor, much to the surprise of the assembled reporters.
Photo by Cliff West
After that single flight, Hughes ordered the plane locked away in its hangar, to be kept in flight ready condition. It remained there until Hughes death 33 years later. It never flew again.
After Hughes death, the plane was donated to the Aero Club of Southern California. A special dome was built near the RMS Queen Mary to house the plane, and it was opened to public display in 1983.
In 1990, the Walt Disney Corporation forced the plane to find a new home, and it was eventually decided that the Evergreen Museum would be that new home. In 1993, the plane was moved in pieces to McMinnville, where it remained in storage until the new museum building opened in 2001. Reassembly of the Hughes flying boat was completed on the 60th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 2001.
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