They say that war is the engine of progress. They say that ambition is the engine of progress,
as well as ingenuity, perseverance and, of course, money. Today's history is full of all this.
Hello, aviators, Sky here, and we’re gonna look at the personification of immense ambitions,
iron perseverance and plot twists - I present to you
one of the largest aircraft created by humanity. The Hughes H-4 Hercules.
So it was 1942 - the height of World War II.
The United States, which entered the war, actively supported the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition,
first of all, with large-scale deliveries of weapons and other materials.
The problem was that at that time not only the sky and the earth were burning, but also the water.
The battle for the Atlantic was at its peak and the huge Allied fleet shared the sea with the
huge German fleet - yes, the surface ships of the Kriegsmarine were not particularly effective, yes,
Bismarck was already lying at the bottom of the sea, but the submarines… oh oh. Hundreds of ships
and thousands of sailors were falling victims of wolf packs scurrying under the cold waves of the
Atlantic, and the term U-Boat became a symbol of hidden fear and a terrible curse word. Yes,
communications worked and cargo was transported, but every time sending a convoy to the sea knowing
that half of it might simply not reach its destination was not a very joyful business.
Seeing this, the US War Department, that’s how it was called then and the Pentagon did not
yet exist, was desperately looking for a way to organize logistics, so that such terrible
statistics of losses would not be seen. A logical thought arose immediately - since it is impossible
by sea, it must be done over the sea - by planes. One of the main lobbyists for this idea was Henry
J. Kaiser - a highly respected man at that time, who was, in fact, the father of the Liberty-class
transport ships - the main workhorses of those very sea convoys. Kaiser was worried about the
death of his creations no less than the military and, in search of a solution,
came to the conclusion that an aircraft capable of performing similar tasks was needed.
The Liberty were not some giant ships and had a displacement of about 10,000 tons,
but… those were ships, it was difficult to imagine what kind of aircraft could perform such
tasks. Moreover, Kaiser's company was a marine one and they were not well versed in airplanes.
The one who was well versed in airplanes was Howard Hughes - an industrial magnate, engineer,
inventor, aviator, pilot, film director (billionaire, playboy, philanthropist).
In general, an extremely colorful person, a kind of Elon Musk of the world of aviation
in the first half of the 20th century. In Hughes's and Kaiser's vision, it was to be
a seaplane capable of carrying about 68 tons (150,000 lb) of cargo, 750 equipped soldiers,
or 2 Sherman tanks. Today, 68 tons may not seem like such a huge number,
close to the cargo capacity of the C-17, but in 1942 it was quite ambitious. Meanwhile, the threat
of submarines was eliminated - torpedoes are not particularly effective against a flying target.
The Hughes and Kaiser project received the corresponding
index - HK-1. It was assumed that the military would receive 3 aircraft over the next 2 years.
However, the work was very difficult and slow. Not only did they have to create the
largest aircraft in the world, which already required huge engineering resources and imposed
serious risks at all stages, the work was also slowed down by Hughes's wild perfectionism,
who, in his race for ideal design, was constantly changing everything.
In addition, production, equipment and, most importantly, materials were a terrible problem.
An obvious and basic material in aviation, aluminum, was practically unavailable.
The industry was working at full capacity for the war and the cherished alloy, having received the
status of a strategic one, almost completely went to the production of military equipment - it was
extremely difficult for the creators of the HK-1 to get it in the necessary quantities and they
had to find, let's say, an alternative solution. The timing of creation of the aircraft was getting
shifted by months and months, again and again. The result of this chaos was Kaiser's departure
from the project and the change in the contract by the military, who were now expecting only 1 plane.
Hughes, naming now fully his brainchild H-4 Hercules, continued the work and began
assembling the first aircraft… 16 months after the initiation of the project.
The assembly was carried out at the Hughes Aircraft Company plant
at the Hughes airport, yes, the man did not suffer from modesty,
in Los Angeles. There, a huge hangar of over 29,000 m2 (315,000ft2) was erected for it.
An additional site was also deployed there for processing wood and creating
a special composite from it, necessary for construction of the aircraft hull. The wood
itself was brought all the way from Wisconsin, practically from the other end of the country.
Having learned that the H-4 is made mainly from a wood-based composite, the journalists, of course,
said that it was just wooden, it’s easier, and then they sketched a lot of nicknames
for the plane, the most famous of which were Flying Lumberyard and, of course, Spruce Goose.
These nicknames annoyed Hughes very much, as the father of the project - they sounded humiliating,
and as an engineer - the Goose is not made of spruce, what’s wrong with these people?
Since the Hughes airport was not located by the sea, and the aircraft was a seaplane,
it was decided to carry out its final assembly on the Pacific coast at the port of Long Beach. The
fuselage, wing consoles and the tail were carried separately right through the streets of the city
- something similar to how sections of the A380 were transported on public roads in better times.
Despite the fact that the plane was almost ready, more and more questions for Hughes arose,
primarily from the military and Congress. The plane for transporting cargo to the
fields of World War II turned out to be very interesting… but now it was 1947 – the War,
it seems, has ended. It was difficult to answer the question: why is this plane being made at all,
and it was necessary to refute the theory that the Goose is generally a big fiction, and Hughes
simply puts taxpayers' money into his pocket. The father of the project, of course, fought
for it with all his might and, he had arguments - yes, the plane is unlikely to become incredibly
popular and mass produced, but we are talking at least about the largest aircraft in the world
and a company ready for anything to lift it into the air. Up to statements that if it doesn’t fly,
Hughes will abandon aviation and leave the country altogether. At that time, about $23 million was
spent on the project - a little more than $250 million in today's money. Well, he did his
job - the H-4 Hercules was assembled and took off. Let's look at the Goose Hercules.
The H-4 is, for the most part, a classic seaplane with a boat-like underbody, high-mounted straight
wing and conventional single-tail empennage. The H-4 has a length of 66.6 meters,
a wingspan of 97.8 meters and a height of 24.2 meters. A massive bird. For comparison, it is
slightly shorter than the Boeing 747-400 and its height is close to the tail of the Airbus A380.
The wing of the aircraft is huge in all possible parameters. It is so thick that a person can move
inside: in case of an emergency, the engineers had the opportunity to repair, for example, parts of
the auxiliary engine systems, right in flight. And the wingspan here is top-notch, even the An-225
Mriya – the King among the heavy transports was, had a wingspan of 88.4 m - almost 10
meters less. The only competitor here is maybe the Stratolaunch with a span of 117 meters. And this
is a plane from the 1940s, no turboprops, no jet engines, none of all your newfangled… 1950s stuff.
But the gigantic size doesn't automatically make the rest of the stats gigantic.
The maximum takeoff weight of the H-4 was 180 tons. For that time, it was a lot, and that
is why the Hercules was made a hydroplane: it would be very difficult to operate such a heavy
aircraft at a conventional airfield. In terms of mass at that time, it could be compared only
with the monstrous strategic bomber Convair B-36 Peacemaker, which was very complicated.
By modern standards, of course, this is quite modest: a little more than the Airbus A400M
and a lot less than the C-17 and Il-76. Not even talking about the C-5 and An-124.
The dimensions and goal-setting of the aircraft also made certain adjustments to the design.
The H-4 has two decks. From our time, it is curious to look at, suspicions arise from where,
decades later, the creators of modern heavy vehicles took their inspiration.
In front of the center wing box is the upper deck - here is the cabin for the crew and passengers,
as well as most of the control equipment. Below it is the rather large cargo deck,
formally stretched from nose to tail. Meanwhile, access to the lower deck for oversized cargo was
supposed to be opened through the halves of the nose section that were moving apart to the sides.
It's hard to say what the payload was. On the one hand,
the calculations indicate that the target figure was about 60 tons,
on the other hand, no one has ever verified this, so this figure remained on paper.
One of the features of the aircraft and the reason for its names, as already mentioned,
were the materials used, of which, given the size, a lot was needed.
The main material here was a special composite - Duramold, which is, in fact, several layers
of birch superimposed on each other, saturated with resin and laminated at high temperature.
Despite such a seemingly simple base, this material is not bad in terms of strength
and weight performance. So, when you hear that the parts of some aircraft are wooden,
you shouldn’t take it too literally, as if someone just bought beams at the construction
market and nailed them to the frame. That is why Hughes was so furious when the H-4
was called a Lumberyard and a Spruce Goose - critics who were not well versed in aviation
often laughed that the Hercules was some kind of medieval boat with a wing and engines. By the way,
this material, like its analogues, was quite actively used after the war, and even now it
can be found - you can’t weld an airliner out of it, of course, but it will always find its place.
In addition to Duramold, fabrics were also used in some of the hull
elements - mainly on the fin and rudders - again, quite a common practice for that time.
The power plant of the H-4 Hercules is quite robust. Represented by eight Pratt & Whitney
R-4360 Wasp Major piston engines. The Wasp Major is a 71-litre,
28-cylinder radial piston engine - the pinnacle of the era of piston aircraft engines and one
of the largest and most powerful of its kind. In various modifications, it had power from 2650
to 3500 hp. and they were put… on everything from various prototypes to large aircraft,
like the B-36. The H-4 received a 3,000 hp variant from this family - not the most high-end,
but quite sufficient in terms of power, price and resource ratio. Each engine was equipped with
a classic 4-bladed Hamilton Standard propeller with a diameter of about 5.2 meters (17 ft). ---
These parameters were enough to lift this colossus into the air, accelerate to 220 knots,
400 km/h, and provide a flight distance of about 2600 miles - 4800 km. The practical ceiling of
the Hercules, meanwhile, was rather modest, only 6400 meters (20900 ft) - the aircraft is heavy,
piston engines don’t particularly allow it, and there was no need to fly high anyway. Most of the
performances, of course, are also theoretical - they have not been tested in practice.
The history of operation of the mighty Hughes brainchild turned
out to be much more modest than its dimensions. By November 1947, the aircraft was launched in
Long Beach and, under the personal supervision of its creator, began a series of runs with a
test crew of 20 people, plus a dozen journalists and industry representatives. The epic finale of
the day was the first flight, an event that many considered, given the technical risks and all the
chaos surrounding the H-4, almost impossible. The Hercules accelerated to 135 knots, about 250 km/h,
climbed to an altitude of 21 meters (70 ft) and, in 26 seconds, flew about a mile.
Meanwhile, at low altitude, it was still carried by the ground effect, which, like a pillow,
supported the plane, so the aviator-inventor cheated a little. Nevertheless, the public
saw a very real and flying giant aircraft, and Hughes could be pleased with himself.
Ironically, the loud and pompous first flight for the Hercules was the last.
Further tests of the aircraft were first postponed to a later date, and then it became clear that
they would not be carried out at all. This was the part of the criticism that the giant did not
overcome - there are no more German submarines, the needs of the military have changed, new,
more efficient equipment has appeared and a huge hydroplane was no longer needed - by and large,
even before the first flight it was clear that the project was doomed and Hughes
is creating an epic museum piece. Despite this, the H-4 was not written off
immediately. The giant was moved to the hangar and kept there until the death of its creator in 1976.
After that, disputes arose about whom the plane belongs to. On the one hand,
the Hercules was created with the money of the Department of Defense, on the other hand,
it was never transferred to them and remained company property. As a result, they agreed to pull
the plane into the light and find a use for it. In 1980, the H-4 was handed over to the Aero Club
of Southern California, which moved the giant to a nearby site and built a huge dome around it,
which became known as the Spruce Goose Dome. Later, the site on which the plane was located was
purchased by Disney and the plane had to be taken away. As a result, the giant went to the Evergreen
Aviation & Space Museum in Oregon, where it stands to this day. The Spruce Goose Dome, by the way,
was preserved, just next to the museum ocean liner Queen Mary and the Soviet submarine B-427.
The giant hangar at Hughes Airport, where Hercules was assembled, was turned over to commercial use
and, given the size and infrastructure, was very much liked by filmmakers.
Many major movies were filmed on its territory, including Titanic - a tale
of another miracle of engineering, which became the eternal historic domain due to its failure.
This is where our story ends. Like and subscribe to the channel so as not to miss
the continuation - Skyships is still flying. Fast flights on large planes and soft landings to you.