Howard Hughes flew the giant Spruce Goose on its one and only flight

Critics called it the Spruce Goose, a jab Howard Hughes hated; the plane was mostly birch, not spruce, built from laminated wood because wartime rules rationed aluminum. Officially it was the Hughes H-4 Hercules, an enormous flying boat with a wingspan near 320 feet, the widest of any aircraft flown for decades afterward.

On November 2, 1947, Hughes took it onto Long Beach Harbor for what was billed as a taxi test. With reporters aboard, he opened the throttle and, to most everyone’s surprise, lifted the behemoth off the water, flying about a mile at a height of perhaps 25 to 70 feet before settling back down.

The whole flight lasted under a minute, and the Hercules never left the water again. Yet that brief hop answered the only question that mattered to Hughes: the largest wooden aircraft ever built could, in fact, fly. It then spent the rest of its life as a very large exhibit.