Interesting anectdote on the one flight of the Spruce Goose. I took a
second tour through the inside of it recently at the Evergreen
Aviation Museum in McMinnville (first time was in Long Beach around
'81) and the old timer who was giving the talk said that when the HK-1
(H-4) Spruce Goose was airborne, the fuselage flexed more than it was
designed to and that there were a lot of cracking wood sounds...

Here are a couple of photos I took fore and aft of the innards of the
Goose, since I haven't seen any others around:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1946559

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=1946571



- Cecil


"Steve Beaver" wrote in message ...
We have all seen the film of the Spruce Goose lifting off the water for a
few seconds only to be retired to its hangar never to fly again but I
wonder, what would its performance have been? Did Hughes determine in that
brief hop that the aircraft was no good or did ecconomic concerns ground it?

There are all kinds of aircraft performance analysis programs available now.
Has anyone ever plugged in the Goose specifications and determined how it
would fly?