November 23 -- Spruce Goose!

I left Tacoma about 9:00 after a really lovely Thanksgiving and two peaceful, comfortable nights at Meg’s mom’s house. The family was very kind to include me – a complete stranger – and to be such warm hosts.





The drive south was initially foggy, but it brightened before I got to Portland. The buildings pictured here were my view of the city driving through on I-5.I discovered that McMinnville, the Evergreeen Aviation Museum’s location, is on Oregon wine country.


The museum is built around one amazing aircraft: the Spruce Goose. This plane was designed by Howard Hughes during WWII to transport enormous numbers of troops and massive amounts of war materiel across the Atlantic in the event that German U-Boats made sea passage impassible. Because of wartime shortages, the government specified that the plane could not be made of aluminum; nor could it require skilled craftsmen to assemble.

What a remarkable result. The Spruce Goose is the largest wooden airplane ever made. At three hundred nineteen feet, eleven inches, it has the greatest wing-span of any aircraft ever built. It is a seaplane, and is more than two hundred and eighteen feet long and almost eighty feet tall. The plane, in fact, is not made of spruce – the vast majority of the wood used to build it is poplar.
The project was incomplete at the end of WWII, and questions arose about how federal funds had been used to develop and build the aircraft. These led to a series of hearings that are well documented in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie about Hughes’s life. Also well captured in the film is the one and only flight of the Spruce Goose, in 1947, when, with Hughes at the controls, this magnificent giant flew for about one mile.

The great creature never again took too the air. But for the next 33 years, until his death, Hughes insisted that the plane be kept in flight-ready condition.

In 1992, the Evergreen Aviation Museum acquired the Spruce Goose from Walt Disney, which had displayed it alongside the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA as a tourist attraction. The plane was brought to its new home, where it is the center piece for this museum.



The airplane is too large to photograph in its hanger; the best overview is found in the model pictured above (under the bow and anchor line of the real thing), one of which was used in the film about Howard Hughes. One can go inside the plane. I did and it’s huge. The museum offered tours of the flight deck for $50, which was a little rich for my taste. Above are pictures of the interior of the Spruce goose, looking forward (toward stairs) and aft (person standing in it).

A DC-3 transport/airliner under the big plane’s left wing gives a little sense of scale:



One of the curious facts about the plane is that scores, and probably hundreds, of inflatable beach balls were found in it when it was disassembled and brought to McMinnville. It turns out that Hughes was afraid that the plane would sink in the event of a catastrophe, so he insisted that the pontoons and part of the hull be filled with these blow-up toys to lessen the chances, or perhaps just to slow the process.



You can get a tour of the Spuce Goose's flight deck for $50. That seemed a bit rich for my tastes, but I did take advantage of a $3 guided tour inside the museum’s airworthy B-24 Flying Fortress. A fascinating experience.




You go in through the rear.



Here’s the docent talking about the ball gunner’s position. – Very cramped and uncomfortable seeming. The average ball gunner on one of these planes was 5’7” and 140 lbs.



Inside it’s not much better. The docent is standing above the ball in the belly of the plane.



This is the radio room.



And here’s the hatch, through the bomb bay, up to the front of the plane. Yup, if you want to go there, you get to walk on a catwalk. All the light that you see in this photo would be ground, thousands of feet below, once the plane was aloft. Not a great place to stretch your legs just for kicks.



A huge percentage of the bomber crews that flew these planes were lost over Europe. Just staggering numbers. This tour gave a real sense of how little fun, and how cold, loud and uncomfortable, their missions were.

And there were lots of other great planes. These are just a few of them:



Apollo landing vehicle replica.



Soviet Mig-29 -- unusual.



One of my all-time favorites, the DeHavilland Vampire, one of the earliest and simplest jet planes.



Gorgeous Sopwith Camel Replica.



1946 Sikorsky helicopter.



Curtiss P-40 Warhawk in Chinese livery.



P-51 Mustang.