World’s Biggest Plane Makes First Flight – Spruce Goose (Dec, 1947)
Filed under: Aviation — @ 2:21 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1947
| Buy on Ebay
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1947
| Buy on Ebay
|
World’s Biggest Plane Makes First Flight – Spruce Goose
View forward on flight deck of 400,000-lb. flying boat shows upper level of nose. In back- ground Hughes discusses plans for taxi test with flight engineer and radio operator.
The biggest airplane in the world, Howard Hughes’ huge flying boat, has taken to the air at last. Hughes himself, shown above at the controls, unexpectedly lifted the big ship between 70 and 80 feet in the air during a taxi test in Los Angeles harbor.
Workmen dwarfed by huge center section of $25,000,000 plane give idea of vast size. Its wing span is 320 feet; length, 219 feet. Plane hit 100 m.p.h, during first test.
and ONLY flight… 70 feet (21 m) off the water at a speed of 135 mph (217 km/h or 117 knots) for around a mile (1.6 km)
ref. Wikipedia
Comment by hip2b2 — November 19, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
It’s debatable whether it hovered on ground effect flight, and was actually incapable of true flight.
Comment by spayced — November 20, 2008 @ 12:16 am
There is no debate, if you look at the films you can see that
the huge plane was capable of flight.
Comment by HonestJohn — November 27, 2008 @ 8:34 pm