Ever Hear the One about the Flying Boat?

On November 2, 1947, millionaire Howard Hughes piloted his massive Hughes Flying Boat, nicknamed the "Spruce Goose," into aviation history.

Intended to transport military equipment and personnel during World War II, the project faced many engineering challenges. Detractors would have scrapped the flying boat but for the determination of its supporters, primarily Hughes.

The Spruce Goose's first and only flight traveled one mile at an altitude of seventy feet, but was nevertheless historic. The colossal plywood craft cost $25 million and weighed 200 tons. Still the largest airplane ever built, the Spruce Goose is said to have influenced modern aviation engineering.

This sculpture from the Smithsonian American Art Museum folk art collection can't fly so well either. It is a pastiche of elements from a variety of aircraft used between 1933 and 1935. It most closely resembles the military A-8 "Shrike," in general use by 1933 and reproduced in widely published accounts of the latest breakthroughs in aviation technology.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Unidentified artist, Airplane, about 1933–35, carved and painted wood, tinned iron, painted glass, and metal hardware, 22 x 43 5/8 x 43 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.