SoCal Trip: Spruce Goose

10 March 1985

After our time aboard the Queen Mary, we spent time getting to know the Spruce Goose, more formally — the H-4 Hercules.  At the time, the plane was on display in a giant white dome in Long Beach.

The Spruce Goose and Queen Mary ... when they were both in Long Beach.
February 11, 1982: The Spruce Goose being prepared for the final move into her new home.
Howard Hughes’ spruce goose arrived safely after a five-mile (8 km) ocean voyage by barge.
[scanned from postcard]

Spruce Goose with Howard Hughes at the controls.

At 400,000 pounds (181,437 kg), the Spruce Goose is the biggest aircraft the world has ever seen.  It’s 320-foot (98 m) wingspan is longer than a football field.  It has a tail broader than a Boeing 727, and it is taller than an eight-storey building.  It took the world’s largest self-propelled crane to lift her when she was moved to Long Beach.  The Goose was once housed in the world’s largest self-sustaining aluminum dome.

(Click the size-comparison chart of the Spruce Goose to see a larger version.  For more information about the Goose, click here.)

Howard Hughes, an American aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer, director, philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest people in the world, convinced President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that giant air transports were essential to winning the war.  At a time when Liberty ships were being summarily sunk by German u-boats, Hughes claimed that a fleet of flying boats would overfly them.  He won a contract to build a single aircraft.  Undaunted when Congress prohibited him from using any strategic materials, Hughes designed a mammoth structure that would be built from laminated birch and would carry 750 combat-ready troops … or two Sherman tanks … or seven amphibious tractors with 156 troops … or eight helicopters.

Collage of photographs from the brochure we picked up at the exhibit.

On November 2, 1947, Hughes made history flying the world’s largest ever airplane at an altitude of 70 feet (21 m), and for a distance of over one mile.  That was the one and only time the Spruce Goose flew.

[scanned from postcard]

After Disney’s decision in 1990 to discontinue the dome exhibit where the Spruce Goose was housed, the Hughes Flying Boat was transferred to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, located in McMinnville, Oregon.