The Spruce Goose's Maiden (and Only) Flight at Massive Expense

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Today's Daily Dose short history film covers the solitary flight of the Spruce Goose, an obsolete flying hulk that would cost taxpayers $350,000,000.00 in today's currency. The filmmaker has included the original voice over script to further assist your understanding:

Today on The Daily Dose, The Expensive Flight of the Spruce Goose.

During World War Two, German U-boats reeked havoc on Allied convoys, as they ferried men and war materiel into the battlegrounds of Europe. As a result of these heavy losses, the U.S. government signed a contract with Hughs Aircraft Company to build a massive float plane that could carry 750 troops or two 30 ton M4 Sherman tanks over the Atlantic. The man contracted by the U.S. Department of Defense to design and build the H-4 Hercules was a larger-than-life figure named Howard Hughs, who was a pilot, plane maker and film producer. While the contract was signed in November of 1942, it wasn’t until ’44 before construction began, almost a year after the U-boat threat had been largely eradicated and the plane no longer needed.

Built entirely of wood due to wartime shortages of aluminum, Washington finally had enough and cancelled the project, but Hughs’ vigorous lobbying campaign reached an agreement with lawmakers that one airplane could be completed. Two years later, parts of the massive plane were moved to an assembly site near Long Beach Harbor, where more delays in final assembly caused more rumblings in Washington. After the construction project had swallowed vast sums of public money—nearly $350 million in today’s currency—Hughs was summoned to a Senate committee investigating the project. It’s chairman, Senator Owen Brewster, was on the warpath.

Insert Hughs’ defiance.

On November the 1st, 1947, the Spruce Goose or the Flying Lumberyard, as critics nicknamed the behemoth, conducted taxiing trials with approximately 40 reporters and engineers aboard. After several faster and faster taxi runs, with Hughs in the pilot’s seat, he unexpectedly called for 15 degrees flaps down, throttling up the eight-engine plane for its only time aloft. The Spruce Goose never flew again, but it remains to this day the biggest aircraft ever built. At Hughs’ insistence, the plane was stored in a specially-built, climate-controlled hanger, entombed in mystery for the next 32 years, at an annual cost of $1 million. After Hughs passed away in 1976, the plane was put on display in Long Beach Harbor next to the Queen Mary, until she was moved to McMinnville, Oregon in 1993, where she resides at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum.

And there you have it, the expensive flight of the Spruce Goose, today on The Daily Dose.

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Excellent collection of historical footage.

foesfly

It's now the highlight of an aviation museum near McMinnville, OR. (Which is six miles from where I grew up.) Both my wife and I have visited the museum, both have sat in the pilot's seat about 10 years ago....and have photos to prove it.

blackholeentry

Been up in the cockpit, the stairs going up to it are super cramped. They give tours of the plane, it's really amazing in person

keithwthomas

Very interesting! EXCELLENT footage! THANK YOU for posting! =)

CNMS

Should have a flying version it would sell out for decades.

fanatamon

It would be so cool to fly in a plane like that one.

DelightLovesMovies

An-225 is the largest plane ever built actually.

CrashesAndDestruction

Every one of these videos we have guys talking telling us what they had for breakfast and just a few clips of the flight ? How bout a video of the taxi lift and touch down it’s a short flight.

richardthomas

Would of been nice if the Hughes competitors didn't block him from getting the materials they needed to build it with modern day materials of the day.

cyclonicblade