Spruce Goose
A Fascinating Failure?
The world’s largest and most famous seaplane is the centerpiece of a museum in a very unlikely location. The one-of-a-kind Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the “Spruce Goose”, now resides in the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. You would think that McMinnville might be on the Oregon Pacific coast or maybe in the Columbia River valley, but you would be wrong. It is in a broad flat mountain valley with abundant vineyards about an hour southwest of Portland.
The museum itself consists of three buildings, and if you want to see everything it is one of the priciest museums in the country, with a price of $32 per person to see both museums and the IMAX show. You can see just the museum holding the Spruce Goose for $14.
The huge Spruce Goose dominates the museum, and it is impossible to get a single photo shot showing the whole aircraft. There are many other World War II and later vintage planes under the Spruce Goose in the museum, many with oil pans which would indicate that they are taken out and flown on rare occasions. You even get to climb up into the huge fuselage, where very knowledgeable docents tell fascinating true stories about the aircraft.
The plane was in fact a failure. It was designed to provide a fleet of cargo carrying aircraft during World War II for taking tanks and other military cargo to Europe and other locations up and out of the torpedo range of U-boats. But even the single prototype was still not finished when the war was over, and by the end of the war vastly improved four engined land cargo aircraft with transatlantic range made the plane totally obsolete. And one could make a case that the only flight, in a straight line only 70 feet above the water, in fact made the plane the world’s largest “Wing in Ground Effect” or WIG aircraft, not a true airplane.
The government thought that the whole project was a fraud that was never meant to fly, and was threatening action against Hughes. Hughes was a rich and eccentric playboy, his wealth coming from patent payments on oil drilling equipment used all over the world invented by his father. He had been responsible for building and personally flying some extremely innovative and high performance aircraft. One was a very high speed twin engine aircraft which could have been the prototype of a dominant World War II fighter, but like most Hughes projects it never got into production.
In 1947 a Senate committee was investigating Hughes use of government funds for the project, and there were rumors that he would be indicted for fraud in regard to the big wooden airplane. So he had good reason to show it could fly.
The Flight
The memorable and famous November 2, 1947 flight was only supposed to be a two mile taxi test in Long Beach harbor. But it took a mile to get the plane off the water, and Hughes flew it one mile in about 30 seconds, and then took another mile to get it down and stopped. The test was not approved as a flying test or demonstration, and Long Beach officials were very upset that it flew and went three miles, not two.
There were around 29 or 30 people on the flight. Reporters had to get off the airplane as Hughes didn’t like them or trust them. Hughes was a very paranoid individual who had a lot of enemies and who was hated by the news media. There was no copilot, with only Howard Hughes flying the plane. Hughes felt that if there was a copilot that the media would give the copilot credit for having flown the plane. There was a man in the copilot seat, David Grant, an engineer who had built the hydraulics.
Hughes had an artificial horizon installed the night before the flight, another indication that Hughes had intended to fly and that the liftoff wad not accidental. The original throttle quadrant had two of the eight engines on each of the four throttles. It was later changed to eight throttles on the quadrant because Hughes didn’t like how the four worked.
One sign of Hughes’ quirkiness: beachballs. Apparently thinking they would help keep the aircraft afloat if there was a problem, before the flight Hughes ordered a truckload of beachballs. He had them inflated and stuffed into the outer pontoons and parts of the lower fuselage. Many of them are still there in the plane today, a few even still inflated.
One little known fact: The tail of the aircraft almost broke off during the landing of its only flight! Big cracks opened up during the short flight. Hughes had the aircraft repaired, and you can now see big rectangular patches along a vertical seam in the tail, which the museum docents call the “zipper patch”.
When you walk up and step inside the aircraft and look forward, you see a large thing that looks like a furnace in the front lower fuselage. It is a HEPA air filter to pump air from a pipe up to the rear of the pilot seat. Hughes was a paranoid about viruses and bacteria and diseases. Since it was put in after the only flight, it is considered more evidence that Hughes intended to fly the plane again.
Trip to Oregon, the Restoration,
and Interesting Facts
In late 1992-1993, the plane was dismantled in Long Beach for the more than 1000 mile move to Oregon. It was carried up the coast on barges to Portland, where it was offloaded onto huge flatbed trailers for the final move to McMinnville.
The restoration was done across the street from the present and final museum location. The plane was “across the street” for 8 years at the Evergreen restoration and overhaul facility prior to its being moved to the permanent hangar.
When the restorers installed the eight engines, the wingtips drooped 6 inches. They are the real original engines. The only spruce is in the main wing spar. The main (box) spar is 13 feet thick floor to ceiling at the fuselage, 2 1/2 feet at the wing tips. The condition of the wood is still excellent. There are 14 fuel tanks under the floor. Every system was built 5 times redundant.
The empty weight of the aircraft was 300,000 pounds, with a loaded weight of 400,000 pounds. The museum docents claimed this allowed for 100,000 pounds of cargo, but with a 15,000 gallon fuel capacity it may have been only 10,000 pounds fully fueled. It was the largest seaplane ever built, and it still has the largest wingspan of any aircraft built or flown, although the 747, Airbus 380, and AN-225 are longer.
There would have been side-opening clamshell opening doors in the nose and tail of the aircraft. The doors had been built but were never put on the airplane, primarily because Hughes thought they might leak. The aircraft was to have been certified to 20,000 feet, but likely would have only flown at 10,000 feet.
By Jim Ellis