Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose
by Johnny McDonald

Spruce Goose makes a move in Long Beach.

Boondoggle or not, the Spruce Goose was flown a short distance and revolutionized jumbo flying bodies and large-lift capabilities in aviation.

It happened on Long Beach waters 56 years ago, when eccentric Howard Hughes proved to skeptical senators his cumbersome-looking giant seaplane could fly.

As if to demonstrate that he hadn’t defrauded the government, Hughes, who always test-piloted his planes, flew it about a mile in less than a minute during what was supposed to be a taxiing test in 1947. It reached 70 feet above the water and flew at 80 mph before making a perfect water landing.

A few years earlier, Hughes and industrial magnate Henry Kaiser had been issued a government contract to build three wooden cargo planes to supplant the duties of Kaiser’s venerable Liberty ships that were being tormented by German torpedo runs.

Photo courtesy of W.K. “Pete” Peterson (son-in-law of Ramona’s Theo and Lee Claric) who was flight manufacturing supervisor and flew on the Spruce Goose.

The idea for a giant seaplane was initially championed by Kaiser, but he knew nothing about airplane building. He was happy at first to hook up with Hughes, who had assembled a team of crack aeronautics engineers who had helped him design a plane that set a speed record in 1935.

Also known as the HK-1 Hercules, the Spruce Goose was built of wood because of the shortage of metals and was constructed with birch — not spruce.

With a wingspan of 320 feet, the Hk-1 had enough cargo space to carry two railroad boxcars. It had eight massive engines with 17-foot propellers and weighed 300,000 pounds. Some felt Hughes was lucky the wings didn’t break off during its one flight.

The short trip was questioned. Did Hughes detect a vibration or pulsating in the aircraft frame or in the control wheel right after he lifted off?

Hughes’ eccentricities had hobbled the project from the start; Kaiser found his partner impossible to work with and was relegated to the sidelines. Hughes micromanaged every design detail and work soon fell far behind schedule.

By early 1943, the metals shortage had eased and many urged that aluminum be substituted for wood, but Hughes declined to switch. The war ended before the plane was assembled into one piece and the project dragged out until 1947, when a U.S. Senate committee began investigating Hughes for defense contract irregularities.

Even before the flight, Hughes admitted the plane was too large to be economical. Claiming there were still research lessons to be learned, he stubbornly kept the work going until around 1952.

In 1977, the U.S. Navy seriously considered test flights with the Hk-1 as part of research into low-altitude transoceanic flight. The long-shot project could make only minimal use of strategic materials such as metals. That meant using wood, common in small aircraft but untested in one so large.

After Hughes’ death in 1976, the plane was put on exhibit in a spacious pavilion near the Queen Mary in Long Beach. In 1992, it was acquired by Evergreen Inter-national Aviation of McMinnville, Ore. It was barged up the coast to the Columbia River and then down the Willamette River toward McMinnville. Its final miles were made overland by trucks.