Spruce Goose Flies For First And Last Time – Dale’s Daily Data [VIDEO]

It was the largest airplane ever built and made only one flight.  With a wingspan longer than a football field, it was designed to carry more than 700 soldiers into battle anywhere in the world.

That was the idea when Howard Hughes went to work on it.  He was a successful Hollywood producer, but also a pilot who broke all kinds of records for flying across the country and around the world.  He founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932 and when the United States entered World War Two, his company was asked to build an airplane big enough to carry large amounts of men and equipment over long distances.

Because metal was in short supply, Hughes used wood - laminated birch and spruce covered in fabric.  It was powered by eight giant propeller engines but it took so long to build, the war was over by the time it was finished.  But at a cost of an incredible $23-million – Washington wanted proof that it could fly before they paid for it.

So Hughes took what was nicknamed the Spruce Goose on it’s maiden and only flight across Long Beach harbor in California.  Thousands turned out to watch as the plane lifted only 70 feet into the air and flew for a mile before landing.

It happened on this date, November 2^nd, 1947.

Detractors said because of its weight it would never hold together on long flights, but it never made another
flight.  At a cost of a million dollars a year from 1947 until he died in 1976, Hughes kept that plane ready to fly in a climate controlled hangar.

Today it’s kept at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon.