"Spruce Goose" of Howard Hughes (messi 88)

©polytropos, on June 6, 2007, said:

On november 2 1947, Howard Hughes - a legend in his own time, a dreamer who made his dream come true - revved up the 8 massive engines of the Hughes Flying Boat, the legendary Spruce Goose, and lifted the giant aircraft into the air for a one minute flight.

The largest plane ever built flew no higher than 20 m and covered less than 1 mile.

(33.7512, -118.1886)

alan_vm, on September 4, 2007, said:

muy buena ! aguante korn

TrexImages, on October 17, 2007, said:

I have always marvelled at the shear size of this aircraft. It may seem crazy to build a plane of this size, but genius often dwells within the realm of insanity. This is not only a big & beautiful aircraft - it is a work of art! And the use of Spruce wood in the construction only further boggles the mind and compells us to ask "why?"

PS: bartowian... you lost me after the first sentence. After that... shruggs shoulders

©Würmer, on October 18, 2007, said:

@Trex 's okey. was a semi-private comment to Mr.p anyways (which I'll erase to avoid further such confusions ;-)...

©polytropos, on November 21, 2007, said:

21.11.2007: From a unknown user I got the message:

"This airplane was moved to Evergreen Aviation in McMinnville Oregon at least 10 years ago."

Thanks for the information.

©Würmer, on November 21, 2007, said:

thanks for the update, p, I hadn't heard (last time I was myself near The Goose was in 1974), but, _YES, what a beautiful museum! -- even has an IMAX (the only reason to bother to go out to see a movie these days)

©Würmer, on November 24, 2007, said:

Larry Workman is showing us a more recent photo of Spruce Goose in Oregon...

©polytropos, on November 25, 2007, said:

Thanks bartowian for your researches. - As time goes bye ...

©polytropos, on November 26, 2007, said:

And here you have a view to the inside.

TonyCagle, on November 30, 2007, said:

I BET YAWL DIDNT KNOW THE SPRUCE GOOSE WAS KEPT AFLOAT BY USING INFLATED BEACH BALLS ....I KNOW THIS BECAUSE MY DAD WAS A TUG BOAT CAPT. AND WHEN THE GOOSE WAS PUT IN THE DOME HE PUT IT THERE HIS NAME IS CLARENCE E. CAGLE................THANK YOU TONY

TonyCagle, on November 30, 2007, said:

TONYCAGLE@YAHOO.COM

chollet-ricard, on June 4, 2008, said:

Hi, ©polytropos you have been there! Me not. But as I like plane (and I can pilot small ones) I've a photo of Howard Hugnues giant seaplane in my other collection nicknames "Bernard Fontaines".

Cheers. Bernard

©polytropos, on June 4, 2008, said:

Yes, Bernard, I was there and I even was --> inside the plane.

But as you can read above, the plane was moved to McMinnville, Oregon on July 1990 in the --> "Home of the Spruce Goose".

chollet-ricard, on June 4, 2008, said:

Hello, ©polytropos. It's a very interesting history of which I did'nt know all the détails. I don't have the specifications of the aircraft but I think that it is at least as big as an Aibus A 380. Maybe does it has the dimension of the Antonov 224 Mirya (90m spanwidth vs 80 for the A 380) or more: 10 feet more than a foot-ball court...

But at this time the engines to propell such a huge mass were not available. When it flew till 70 feet hign it free was of merchant load...

Even today the aeronautical engineers think it wil not be possible (wether techically or econmically) to make bigger planes than A 380 and An 224. The next step will be the flying wing for the mid 2000 years...

Howard Hughes was a megalomaniac.

Cheers. Bernard

©polytropos, on June 4, 2008, said:

Thanks Bernard for your reply.

You're right.

According the specifications of this plane you may find some in the above link. When I went there I got a flyer with all the technical datas. Maybe I can find somewhere in my old photo albums. :)

©Würmer, on June 6, 2008, said:

Bruce Goose specs: * Length: 218 ft 8 in (66.65 m) * Wingspan: 319 ft 11 in (97.54 m) * Height: 79 ft 4 in (24.18 m) * Fuselage height: 30 ft (9.1 m)

chollet-ricard, on June 6, 2008, said:

Thank you ©bartowian,. Thanks to you and othetrs Panoramian friends I gatherd some documentation about the Spruce Goose.

With more powerfull engines (turboprop) it could have succeeded but the time had not come for mass air transport. Anyway, we will never know beacause no program of certification has been sustained.

Cheers. Bernard

©Würmer, on June 8, 2008, said:

Bernard, I watched parts of a (pseudo?) documentary on TV recently, on one of those all-news-plus-documentaries channels, about exotic aviation items (the Nazis seem to have had quite a few in differing stages of development, which "the Allies" carted off quickly, keeping things secret from each other) which ended with a (supposedly) actual clip of "the largest flying plane ever," a secret Sowjet design discovered in the late '70s by a US spy satellite during fleet exercises in the Black Sea: a jet-powered transport aircraft flying just above the water surface (as if in ground effect) armed with nuclear-capable rocket launchers, it was huge, described as capable of carrying nearly a thousand troops.

(I haven't tried to google to find out more about this yet, but to my thinking this ranked with UFO sighting reports. During the '60s and '70 the USSR was mostly copying/stealing their aviation innovations from Western designs --and I haven't read of any such designs yet-- there is no chance this side of hell that they could have had what the movie clip was showing: it must have been a modern-day digital fakery, someone's idea of a legitimate docu-drama tool...)

PierrefromBayRidge, on January 24, 2009, said:

It's strange how some pictures get so many more views than others. This is a goo d picture, but you have many that are better with only a few hundred views. I have some like that, in fact I have one picture of First Avenue in NY with almost 600 views, while all the shots around it of NY have around 50, and I can't figure out why this one shot draws so many views. At least this picture of an historic plane makes more sense.

©polytropos, on January 26, 2009, said:

• Thanks for your thoughts, PierrefromBayRidge.
• Yes, it's a very strange phenomenon. In this case, I think it's because one of the only pics in that area; an area which is often visited, I think. After getting some views the pic will be more prominent and then you'll see it from more distance in GE. Which again produces more hits.