"Richard Isakson" wrote in message
...
"Steve Beaver" wrote ...
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?

I believe he discovered the airplane didn't have enough power to fly out
of
ground effect even at empty weight. Others say that he had to fly one
time
to collect the money from the contract. In either case, it's been shown
that it wouldn't have flown with a full load.

Rich

The prototype Hercules used 8 Pratt and Whitney R-4360 of 3500 HP each - the
wrong engines. The 5000 - 7000 HP Lycoming XR7755, then under development,
was the intended engine. The Convair B-36 and the Northrop B-35 were also
supposed to use the R7755. See:
http://www.aviation-history.com/engines/xr-7755.html

With a total of 56,000 HP instead of "just" 28,000 the "Spruce Goose" would
have been a outstanding success - don't blame the failure on the airframe.

It's interesting to speculate how these huge aircraft would have performed
with the enormous Liquid cooled Lycoming.

Bill Daniels