Nov. 2, 1947 - The Spruce Goose Flies

[scotrace]

Today is the anniversary of the single flight of of the famous airplane.

 

[Mr. 'H']

Wow! I watch The Aviator last week and I love that scene.

 

[SamMarlowPI]

i did as well, great film...

 

[carter]

Today is the anniversary of the single flight of of the famous airplane.

I would like to have seen that single test flight. I wonder if anyone is alive today who did.

 

[Mike in Seattle]

And Mom & Dad and my aunt & uncle were out on the boat - Dad was pretty sure beforehand Hughes was going to get the Hercules up in the air and it wasn't just going to be the announced taxi-ing and turning test on the water.

 

[Twitch]

Here's an article I wrote several years ago. Hope someone my get some info out of it.

HERCULES UNCHAINED

It’s big. It flew only one time. The Hughes H-4 Hercules is a wartime transport that visionaries of 1942 saw as a feasible project.

UNLIMITED IDEAS
Of course the era had so many ambitious ideas from all sorts of inventors, scientists and designers to help win WW II that they seem outlandish now. Ambitious then- outlandish now. In 1942 people thought the U.S. as a nation could do just about anything that it set its collective mind to.

Besides, why build five, four-engine air transport planes to carry, maybe, 100 soldiers each to a battle zone when one plane carrying 500 would be more economical overall. An eight-engine machine with a whole extra relief flight crew could do the same job by using less than the twenty engines that five planes would with five aircrews tied up. Fewer raw materials would be used and that was good for the war effort.

Henry Kaiser, of Liberty ship construction fame, had an idea for a twin-hull flying boat but knew nothing about aircraft construction. Howard Hughes knew aircraft design and production and won out on the single hull concept when the pair entered partnership for the construction of the plane in October 1942.

With U-boats sinking Kaiser’s ships in wholesale numbers in the Atlantic the idea to fly to Europe and the Mediterranean was much safer. Transporting of war materials would be faster and safer too. So the project was begun.

Designated the HK-1 for Hughes-Kaiser, the War Production Board authorized $18 million from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for the project. But non-critical materials were specified for it leaving only wood as a viable bas material.

IT’S ALL YOURS HOWARD
As things evolved and the war turned in the Allies’ favor Kaiser lost interest in the idea and by 1944 Hughes alone pursued the plan using his own money. The project was re-designated the H-4 and construction began at Hughes’ Culver City facility.

Hughes crashed a Sikorsky S-43 flying boat in Lake Mead while examining weight and balance concepts. A mechanic and inspector died in the March 1943 crash. A year later the millionaire was back on his feet and construction began using laminated birch, some spruce and even balsa wood. Later dubbed the “Spruce Goose” by a Senator and the media, Hughes hated the misnomer. Of course “Birch Bitch” was even worse.

This author believes that Hughes saw the coming of post-war commercial aviation in passenger liners as a certainty and wanted to cash in with a grand trans-continental airliner in the H-4 Hercules. Being an astute businessman it was easy to realize that the military was not going to use it so he pursued its other possibility.

It was assembled at Terminal Island’s Pier E in Long Beach California. Sections were trucked twenty-eight miles through the streets from the Culver City plant in 1946 causing thousands of onlookers to stop what they were doing and gawk at the leviathan’s massive proportions of the segments as they moved to the assembly area.

Howard Hughes was nearly killed in July 1946 when his sleek XF-11 crashed in Beverly Hills. The photo-recon plane was typical Hughes- ahead of its time at concept but already outdated due to the growing development of jets.

The XF-11 was a twin-boom layout, similar to a large P-38, but used two 3,000 HP Pratt & Whitney R-4360 radials each driving a pair of four-blade contra-rotating props on it 101 foot wingspan. Speed was 295 MPH at sea level but further performance data was either not released or probably never explored by the time of the crash.

IT FLIES
Once again Howard Hughes cheated death and by 1947 the Senate War Investigating Committee was plaguing him for answers as to what the $18 million was used for. Hughes stated that if the plane “fails to fly I will leave the country. And I mean it.”

On November 6, 1947 it was towed into the harbor for taxi tests. There it sat weighing 300,000 lbs. resting on its massive 218.5-foot long hull 79 feet high and 25 feet wide. Its wings stretched out 320 feet with the tail alone spanning 113 feet and 2,610 square feet. The wing area was a colossal 11,430 square feet and the wings were 11.5 feet at their thickest. Alone the vertical stabilizer had an area of 1,699 square feet. Its payload was to be 130,000 lbs. 14,000 gallons of fuel was the maximum load good for a 3,500-mile range at 175 MPH. Top speed was figured at 218 MPH yet a landing speed of 78 MPH was gentle. A combined horsepower of 24,000 came from the eight 28-cylinder P & W R-4360 radial air-cooled engines that turned massive 17-foot diameter four-blade props.

From a flight deck bigger than most large bathrooms, Hughes, with the press aboard taxied at slow speed and then at a bumpy 90 MPH. The engineer in the co-pilot’s seat, Dave Grant, was not a pilot.

One radio reporter stayed on board as the rest rushed off to phone in their stories. Grant later said he knew Hughes was going to take off since he instructed him to lower the flaps fifteen degrees- takeoff position- for the next taxi run. The behemoth picked up speed and at 65 MPH lifted clean of the water and was airborne for a mile at seventy feet. Hughes would later lie to reporters saying, “I like surprises. It felt so buoyant and good I just pulled up.”

The Hercules returned to its pier hanger and Hughes dictated a list of things he wanted improved. Hughes Aviation engineers and workers made modifications totaling $22 million by 1951. No military branch wanted anything to do with it. It rested in its climate-controlled hanger for years but by 1976 NASA and the U.S. Navy expressed interest in it. The Navy wanted to use it as a mobile launch bed for ICBMs! Howard Hughes did not corner outlandish ideas.

After a long wrangling of ideas the H-4 was finally set to be displayed in Long Beach in 1982, housed in a gargantuan dome alongside the Queen Mary which has been there since 1968. A liberated floating German naval crane dubbed “Herman the German” had been in use for decades since WW II in harbor. It lifted the colossal plane in one piece onto a barge, which moved it to its display dome.

Whether it made money as a tourist attraction is unknown but in the late 1990s it was finally shipped with wings removed to Oregon where it recently went on public display again.

GOOD IDEA OR NOT?
Given all the hoopla surrounding the enormous transport plane, we must look at its intended purpose. It certainly could have fulfilled the job it was designed for. Rate of build in a production environment is a guess only. But ferrying 500 troops per plane to far-off locales was a good idea compared with many thousands crammed on a troop transport ship chugging across the Atlantic seeded with U-boats or the vast distances of the Pacific. Combat soldiers could arrive relatively fresh and in short order.

350 litters could be transported with medical personnel attending the wounded on a trip home. An aerial fleet of the Goliath-sized flying boats could have expedited parts, foodstuffs, ammo and supplies of all types. Me 323’s six-engine transports were built and used by the Germans for the same purposes. Certainly engines with enough power only came along at the end of the war when the plane was superfluous. Had they come a bit earlier the Hercules could have been viable.

But post-war civilian air transport held the promise. It would have been the 747 of its time. With more accommodations for passenger comfort, probably 300 seats was plausible. With more powerful piston and turbo-props performance could have been greatly improved.

OTHER BIG BOYS
The Hercules was not alone as a big airliner in concept. In the U.K. Bristol went through a journey similar to Hughes bringing its Type 167 Brabazon land plane to fruition eight years after conception in 1942. The 80-seat prototype had eight Bristol Centaurus 20 engines of 2,500 HP each on its 230-foot wingspan. The engines were buried in the sleek wings and coupled in pairs to drive contra-rotating props. It was 177 feet long and weighed 290,000 lbs. for take off. It could cruise at 250 MPH at 25,000 feet and travel 5,500 miles.

The Brabazon MK II would have been a B.O.A.C. 100-seat ship with four 7,000 SHP Double Coupled Proteus 710 turboprops but development was never realized. Internal political rows, not lack of technological soundness, killed it. It was scrapped in 1953

Another flying boat of huge proportions and ambitions was built by Sander-Roe in 1947 for commercial service. The SR.45 “Princess” was to have twelve Rolls-Royce Tweed turboprops coupled in pairs but the delay of that engine revised the specs to use ten Bristol Proteus 600 turboprops of 3,780 SHP. Eight were coupled in four nacelles with the final pair in single, outboard ones.

Size was similar to the Brabazon with a wingspan of 219.5 ft. and length of 148 ft. It was heavier at 330,000 lbs. including its 40,000 lb payload. But it was fast, with a 360 MPH cruise at 37,000 ft., and range was substantial at 5,270 miles. Two decks carried 105 passengers in luxury with lounges, bars and a galley plus it had a large cargo hold. Alternate seating for 200 combat troops was planned.

With B.O.A.C. committed to land-based aircraft little interest in a flying boat was seen and the prototypes sat cocooned for years with the last one of three being scrapped in 1967.

Late 40s-early 50s contemporaries of the era seated 24-50 passengers at most. Only with planes like the 1956 DC-6C at 107 high-density seats was the big boys’ passenger capacity equaled though certainly not surpassed in luxury.

The large cargo/passenger plane concept was simply ahead of its time. With jet engines of sufficient power the idea works, though the planes are smaller in most proportions. Only monsters like the C5A Galaxy is longer at 228 feet though the wingspan is “only” 222.5 feet. The Antonov An-124’s wing measures 240.5 ft. and is 226.5 ft. long. And the “little” Boeing 747 measures 195.75 ft. across it wing but is 232 ft. long accommodating 500 passengers.

http://www.aafo.com/goose/index.html For info and pics on the H-4’s new location
http://www.air-and-space.com/sprucea.htm For pics during the Long Beach Harbor move

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Grobaty, Tim
The Spruce Goose
Press Telegram, Long Beach, May 13, 1983

Gunston, Bill
The Encyclopedia of Modern Warplanes
Aerospace Publishing Limited, London, 1995

Hatfield, D.D.
Howard Hughes H-4 Hercules
Historical Airplanes, Los Angeles, 1972

Munson, Kenneth
Civil Airliners
The MacMillian Co. NY, 1967