Bob McCaffery had an outsized role in helping to preserve a piece of Howard Hughes’ legacy.
Somewhere between directing movies and becoming an eccentric recluse hiding out in Las Vegas, Hughes built a behemoth wooden aircraft with a wingspan nearly as long as a football field.
Skeptics doubted it would ever get off the ground, but Hughes manned the cockpit as the Spruce Goose was airborne for one glorious minute, flying roughly 70 feet above the Long Beach harbor in Southern California on Nov. 2, 1947.
The short hop proved that the Spruce Goose could fly, but it never saw mass production as a military transport plane as the billionaire aviator intended.
Now living in Las Vegas, McCaffery insisted the plane’s one and only flight 70 years ago plays a significant role in aeronautical history.
“It’s an example of ingenuity,” said McCaffery, who oversaw efforts to preserve the plane in 1980 during his stint as chairman of the Committee to Save the Howard Hughes Flying Boat.
“It’s the biggest airplane of its kind built from wood due to a wartime restriction on using metal,” the 78-year-old McCaffery said. “Howard Hughes put his money and his reputation on the line for this plane.”
Dubbed by Hughes as the H-4 Hercules, the experimental plane was built under a $27 million contract with the U.S. War Department as a way to haul 750 soldiers or one Sherman tank to overseas war zones.
Even though World War II ended in 1945, Hughes put up $9 million of his own money to continue
Article source: https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/las-vegas-man-played-key-role-in-saving-howard-hughes-spruce-goose/
