Spruce Goose Flies: Hughes' Giant Takes Flight

Howard Hughes pushed the throttles forward on the largest aircraft ever built, and the H-4 Hercules lumbered across the waters of Long Beach Harbor. The massive flying boat, constructed almost entirely of laminated birch due to wartime restrictions on aluminum, lifted off the surface on November 2, 1947, climbed to approximately 70 feet, flew for about a mile, and then settled back onto the water. Hughes never flew it again. The aircraft's origins lay in the desperate logistics crisis of 1942, when German U-boats were sinking Allied cargo ships faster than they could be built. Industrialist Henry Kaiser proposed a fleet of enormous flying boats to bypass the submarine threat entirely, and he recruited Hughes to design and build a prototype. The government contracted for three aircraft at $18 million. Hughes, consumed by perfectionism, built only one and spent $22 million, $7 million of it his own money. By the time the Hercules was ready for testing, the war had been over for two years. Critics in Congress, particularly Senator Owen Brewster, had hauled Hughes before a Senate committee investigating war profiteering, publicly mocking the unfinished aircraft as the "Spruce Goose," a name Hughes despised. The brief flight on November 2 was widely interpreted as Hughes's defiant answer to his accusers, proof that the machine could actually fly. The H-4's specifications remain remarkable. Its wingspan of 320 feet exceeded that of any aircraft built until Stratolaunch flew in 2019. The eight Pratt & Whitney radial engines each produced 3,000 horsepower. The cargo hold could accommodate 750 fully equipped troops or two Sherman tanks. Hughes kept the Hercules in climate-controlled storage in Long Beach for the remaining 29 years of his life, employing a full maintenance crew at an annual cost of $1 million. The aircraft now resides at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon, a monument to ambition that arrived too late for its purpose.