“You'll never know.” - Howard Hughes replying to his chief designer, who asked if he had meant to take the H-4 out of the water on it's flight.
Nationality: American
Year of Production: 1947
Number built: 1 (3 planned)
Weight (empty): N/A (180 tons for fully laden aircraft)
Wingspan: 97.5 metres
Length: 66.65 metres
Height: 24.2 metres
Speed: 354 to 407 kph (projected, actual attained speed was approximately 217 kph)
Engine: 8x Pratt and Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engines, developing 4000 hp each. (32000 hp in total)
Armament: Unarmed.
Background: The U-boat wolfpacks were impeding America's attempts to supply Britain. Obviously, something had to be done to avoid this problem, either by blowing them out of the water, or by flying the equipment and men in by air, since a torpedo is a very poor anti-aircraft weapon.
This is an example of the latter, a brainchild of a Henry Kaiser, who led the former idea in the form of Liberty ships, which was a program to quickly get more ships into the water, and prevent submarines and surface raiders from being too much of a nuisance.
Mr Kaiser consulted the eccentric Howard Hughes in 1942 to build a massive flying boat, which could carry 750 fully equipped soldiers, or one Sherman tank. The aircraft was to be delivered, along with it's siblings, in two years, but it had to be made out of wood, since steel was in short supply for rifles, ships, bombs, monocles for bad impressions of German officers, etc.
Construction of the first Hughes-Kaiser collaboration (HK-1) started 16 months after the contract was given by the US government, at which point Kaiser left, since Hughes was an obsessive perfectionist, and the plane probably wasn't going to be built in time for it to be of any actual use for the war.
Hughes rebranded the plane the H-4, and signed a new contract that now left his company with permission to build one example.
The aircraft was finished in 1947, which was a pity since the war ended two years beforehand. The US government was so pleased at how quickly the thing had been built that it called him before the Senate War Investigating Committee to ask what the hell taxpayer money had been put into this thing for.
Why should I be afraid of it? And what was it for?
“The Hercules was a monumental undertaking. It is the largest aircraft ever built. It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That's more than a city block.” - Hughes, before the Senate War Investigating Committee, 6th of August, 1947.
Alright, so it wasn't armed with a giant death cannon that played 'The Star Spangled Banner' at 180 decibels, but it could transport 750 armed troops, and that would be a bad thing to come face to face with, or it could deliver a tank, which may or may not be as bad to face. That, and the thing was massive. And unwieldly.
During a break from being questioned by politicians, Hughes went to California to perform tests on his toy, which had more wood in it then most forests. November 2, the aircraft began to undergo tests, consisting of three taxi runs. The crew and press, for 32 in total, were on the aircraft at the time. The first two were mostly the plane showing how well it went as a giant boat, but on the third test run...
The aircraft took to the skies, reaching a staggering 21 metres above sea level at a speed of 217 kph, for over 1.5 kilometres.
And that was it. It demonstrated it's amazing lifting capacity, carrying 32 men, including the crew, 21 metres above sea level, before never being used again, thus ensuring that no other aircraft in the world, except for damn near all of them, could match that amazing, nay, staggering record.
A crew of three hundred full-time workers were ordered to keep the H-4 (I refuse to call it by it's name. It's name is, in my opinion, for a much better aircraft.) airworthy in a climate-controlled hanger, but the workforce was reduced to fifty in 1962, and axed entirely after Hughes died in 1976.
After a bit of fun, involving Disney, the aircraft was given to Evergreen Aviation Museum, being moved by trucks and barges to Oregon, a distance of 1700 km.
It did lead itself to many, more successful, large transport aircraft, like the Galaxy and the An-124, and that's really all it did.
Also, yes, this is the Spruce Goose, which was a nickname for it by critics, which is rather offensive to trees and geese, in my view.
Sources used:
Wikipedia: Hughes H-4 Hercules
Hughes HK-1 (H-4) 'Spruce Goose' – The Aviation Zone
Boeing: History – Hughes H-4 Hercules Flying Boat
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