A day in history: Nov 02, 1947

asicer said:
Anyone know how to hotwire the R-4360? Eight of them?
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Cut the p-leads, wrap a rope around the spinner and tie the end to a car bumper, and PULL.

Oh…wait…delete “car” and insert “speedboat.”
 
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I once rode jump seat in a cargo flight from Kotzebue to Anchorage in a DC-6 that was previously owned and flown by Howard as his personal plane.
 
Dave Theisen said:
Paid the extra money to sit in Howard’s seat. Worth every penny. :)
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Incredible view out of that cockpit.

Did he fly it without a flight engineer? That would be an amazing feat by itself, managing 8 R-4360's without one. Maybe he had an epiphany after about 3/8 of a mile. "How could this possibly go wrong?"

Edit to add: I looked it up. He had a co-pilot, engineers, and several journalists aboard for the flight. I thought I'd read that he ran everyone other than one wayward journalist off the airplane, THEN flew it...
 
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kyleb said:
Incredible view out of that cockpit.

Did he fly it without a flight engineer? That would be an amazing feat by itself, managing 8 R-4360's without a one. Maybe he had an epiphany after about 3/8 of a mile. "How could this possibly go wrong?"

Edit to add: I looked it up. He had a co-pilot, engineers, and several journalists aboard for the flight. I thought I'd read that he ran everyone other than one wayward journalist off the airplane, THEN flew it...
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Engineer had his hands full.

IMG_6004.jpeg
 
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You absolutely have to give the guy some credit.. he had enough faith in his process and decisions to put his life (litterly) on the line to prove it (kinda).
 
Flatiowa said:
You absolutely have to give the guy some credit.. he had enough faith in his process and decisions to put his life (litterly) on the line to prove it (kinda).
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Let's see... He survived a fatal crash of S-43 in 1943. He nearly killed himself in the first XF-11 on July 7, 1946 and was flying the second one 9 months later. The H-4 flight was another 7 months after that.
 
What I did not know until I saw it in the museum is that he spent about a million dollars a year to keep it airworthy until his death because believed he would fly it again, but did not want anyone else to fly it.
 
asicer said:
Let's see... He survived a fatal crash of S-43 in 1943. He nearly killed himself in the first XF-11 on July 7, 1946 and was flying the second one 9 months later. The H-4 flight was another 7 months after that.
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He was also putting his own rear end on the line each time instead of assigning it to a hired test pilot while watching safely from the sidelines…

Edit: from a buisness perspective that was absolutely stupid, but his accomplishments are still known and talked about decades after his death (and survived his bat crap craziness in his latter years not being what he is most remembered for).
 
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Flatiowa said:
He was also putting his own rear end on the line each time instead of assigning it to a hired test pilot while watching safely from the sidelines…
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According to Wikipedia, he had to put up a bit of a fight with the USAAF to fly the second XF-11. I guess the guy really loved aviation.
 
Howard Hughes was the Elon Musk of his day, or is it the other way around? Both have/had more money than God, both don't care what anybody else thinks, both pushing the limits of technology, both bats__t crazy. I don't think Musk has HH's physical courage, but that may just be a generational thing.
 
Dana said:
Howard Hughes was the Elon Musk of his day, or is it the other way around? Both have/had more money than God, both don't care what anybody else thinks, both pushing the limits of technology, both bats__t crazy. I don't think Musk has HH's physical courage, but that may just be a generational thing.
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And they both sparred with politicians.
 
Calling out any historian aficionados, I had always heard growing up that Howard’s main source of wealth was from his father that bought the rights to an oil well drilling bit head design from a destitute guy in a bar that turned into being the defacto bit used up until atleast when I heard it (probably 35 years ago) and that part of his sales contracts for the bits after he bought the rights was that a very small percentage of the value of every barrel pumped from a well drilled by it went to the “company” he founded in perpetuity. (No, I can’t just google it, I don’t trust AI or google answers on this one).
 
Flatiowa said:
Calling out any historian aficionados, I had always heard growing up that Howard’s main source of wealth was from his father that bought the rights to an oil well drilling bit head design from a destitute guy in a bar that turned into being the defacto bit used up until atleast when I heard it (probably 35 years ago) and that part of his sales contracts for the bits after he bought the rights was that a very small percentage of the value of every barrel pumped from a well drilled by it went to the “company” he founded in perpetuity. (No, I can’t just google it, I don’t trust AI or google answers on this one).
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I don't think Elon started out working in his father's feed store, either.....

Ron Wanttaja
 
texasclouds said:
That thing is yuge!
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Yeah, there's really no good pictures of the entire thing 'cuz you'd need a fisheye lens to get it all in the pic. They brought it up to McMinnville and then built a building around it.

My favorite thing to do to show the sheer size of that beast is to show a picture I have from the back corner of the museum. There's a B-25 parked under the tail of the H-4 - I zoom in on the B-25, and say "You know how big a B-25 is, right?" And then I zoom out. The rudder trim tab on the H-4 is the size of the wing on the B-25:

 
flyingcheesehead said:
Yeah, there's really no good pictures of the entire thing 'cuz you'd need a fisheye lens to get it all in the pic. They brought it up to McMinnville and then built a building around it.
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I put this together a while back when we were discussing the resurrection of the Martin Mars. No comparison....
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The H-4 is about 20 feet shorter than a Boeing 747... but has a 100-foot-longer wingspan.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Yes, the Spruce Goose was big, but it flew once. Not far. Not high. Not well.
What is the largest plane to actually enter service, military or commercial?
 
Domenick said:
Yes, the Spruce Goose was big, but it flew once. Not far. Not high. Not well.
What is the largest plane to actually enter service, military or commercial?
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Antonov AN-225, I believe, depending on one's criteria.

The largest airCRAFT to enter service? The Hindenburg.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Antonov AN-225, I believe, depending on one's criteria.
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It wins on wingspan, length, and weight. A380 wins on height.
If the Spruce Goose is included, it beats the A380 on height and the AN-225 on wingspan. If you count the Stratolaunch, it wins on wingspan:

1920px-Giant_planes_comparison.svg.png

(By Clem Tillier (clem AT tillier.net) - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1098131)

wanttaja said:
The largest airCRAFT to enter service? The Hindenburg.
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By a staggering margin.

FWIW, the current Goodyear "blimps" that many of us have seen at Oshkosh are 75m in length, the Hindenburg was over three times that long!

2880px-Giant_Aircraft_Comparison.svg.png

By Giant_planes_comparison.svg: Clem Tillier (clem AT tillier.net)derivative work: Timmymiller (talk) - Giant_planes_comparison.svg, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13920306
 
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