Spruce Goose

The Spruce Goose is a nickname commonly given to the Hughes H-4 Hercules, an aircraft designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft company, Howard Hughes' plane company. The nickname arose as a way of making light of the Hercules project due to Hughes' alleged misuse of government funding to build the aircraft. The Hercules is the largest flying boat, and has the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever built. Only one was built.

Related Topics:
Hughes Aircraft - Howard Hughes - Flying boat

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Due to wartime restrictions on the availability of metals, the H-4 was built almost entirely of laminated birch, not spruce as its nickname suggests. The aircraft was a marvel in its time. It married a soon-to-be outdated technology — flying boats — to a massive airframe that required some truly ingenious engineering innovations. Hughes himself detested the nickname "Spruce Goose".

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