Hughes Flying Boat - McMinnville, Oregon - Engineering Landmarks on Waymarking.com

Most people recognize the name 'Spruce Goose' and many think that the plane was Howard Hughes idea, but it wasn't. The original idea of building large flying boats to move material and troops to Europe was proposed by Henry Kaiser, an industrialist and builder of “Liberty” ships. He discussed the idea with Howard Hughes to try and reduce the losses to the Allied war effort. By early 1942, over 800,000 tons of shipping had been sent to the bottom by German U-boats.
Together, they formed the Hughes Kaiser Corporation. This company received an 18 million dollar contract from the Government to build 3 of these huge planes. The first prototype was called the HK-1 (Hughes Kaiser design one) After the project took too long to get results, Henry left it and Howard changed the designation to H-4 (Hughes design four)
The plane only flew once on November 2, 1947 (60 years ago) then was kept 'Flight ready' for 33 years at a cost of around $1,000,000 per year. The plane was then placed on display in Long Beach until the Disney Corp. bought the company that owned the property the Goose was on and decided that they didn't want to continue the display. So after screening a few proposals for the aircraft, the owners (The Aero Club of Southern California) gave custody of the Goose to Evergreen Aviation.
Pictures do not do this piece of engineering history justice, a visit is the only way to get a feel for it's size.

Location: Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum 500 NE Captain Michael King Smith Way McMinnville, Oregon 97128 Type of structure/site: Aircraft Date of Construction: 1943 - 1947 Engineer/Architect/Builder etc.: Hughes Aircratft Company Engineering Organization Listing: American Society of Mechanical Engineers Primary Web Site: [Web Link] Secondary Web Site: [Web Link]

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