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Finding a new home
 By
DAVID BATES
Of the News-Register
Every time the HK-1 Flying Boat moves, aviation buffs show
up in droves.
The first — and most famous — was when its builder,
U.S. industrialist Howard Hughes, decided to take the world’s
largest airplane for an impromptu flight one Sunday morning in
November 1947.
Initially scheduled only for engine tests on the water, the
affectionately nicknamed "Spruce Goose" flew about
70 feet above Long Beach Harbor for about a minute before Hughes
and his crew eased it back into the water. Thousands of onlookers
reportedly saw the HK-1’s only flight, and it was captured
on film.
Aviation enthusiast and pilot John R. Johnson, recounting
his boyhood experience of seeing the HK-1 fly, recalls it this
way in a recollection posted on the museum’s official web
site:
“It lifted up out of the water so gradually and gracefully
that it just seemed to levitate. It lifted up about 50 feet or
so, and just kind of stayed there, all the way across the bay.
Then it settled gently back down onto the water. It was all so
quick, and so smooth and graceful, it
was almost unbelievable.”
That was the only time the HK-1 ever flew, but its record-breaking
qualities, coupled with Hughes’ famed eccentricity, etched
it in the history books as a cultural artifact.
In the late 1980s, the Walt Disney company bought the firm
that was housing the plane. Two years later, Disney decided to
turn those digs into a sea park, forcing the craft out.
Evergreen International Aviation, based in McMinnville, outbid
five competitors for the right to acquire the plane for display.
It was eventually dismantled and barged up to Oregon. In the
winter of 1993, thousands lined Highway 18 as the fuselage, the
tail and the two wings were hauled to the Evergreen campus.
That scene is likely to be repeated again Saturday, when those
same four pieces are rolled across Highway 18 to the plane’s
final destination — a sprawling, multi-million dollar glass
and steel structure that Evergreen officials expect to open early
next year. It is the last time
the Spruce Goose will move.
"It will be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience,"
said James Nelson, communications director for the Evergreen
Aviation Educational Institute.
When the 121,000-square foot museum is completed in early
2001, the Goose will be visible through about 40,000 square feet
of glass on the south side. At its peak, the museum rises 130
feet, or about 10 stories tall.
City officials and business leaders hope the museum, which
will feature many other historic airplanes as well, will boost
the local tourist economy. They hope the HK-1 will be for McMinnville
what Keiko was for Newport.
“The challenge will be to get people to come to town,”
said former McMinnville Downtown Association president Jerry
Hart. He noted that Oregon’s biggest tourist attraction
— the Spirit Mountain Casino — already draws thousands
of motorists down the same highway that
fronts the museum. But he said that doesn’t get them to
stop in town.
“We need to think of creative ways to do that,”
Hart said. Though the museum isn’t scheduled to fling its
doors open until next year, the Goose is already a big draw.
Even with its pieces propped up in old sheds behind the much
smaller existing museum on the south side of Three Mile Lane,
the HK-1 is popular with crowds at the annual St. James Wine
& Food Classic.
Evergreen officials concede there’s no way to know how
many people will show up Saturday morning when the Goose is rolled
across the road around 10 a.m. But based on the crowds that showed
up when it was hauled from a Willamette River barge in 1993,
they’re guessing 10,000 or more.
“It’s anybody’s guess, depending on the weather
and everything else, for an event like this,” said Rick
Smithrud, the museum’s chief fund-raiser.
Part of the attraction, of course, is the plane’s sheer
size. It was built for the military, which was looking for a
way to transport troops and equipment to World War II theaters
without risking attack from submarines.
But Hughes had to use wood, because metal was in critically
short supply. And by the time he was ready, the crucial war need
had passed. That made the HK-1 something less than a smashing
success. One congressional critic dubbed it a “flying lumberyard.”
But what the HK-1 lacked in practical use, it made up for
in the record-setting department.
According to Mike Wright, project manager for the Goose’s
re-assembly, there are four measures by which the HK-1 is the
“biggest” or “most.”
- At 320 feet, its wingspan is the largest of any airplane
ever flown.
- It is also the largest seaplane ever built and flown, and
the largest wooden aircraft ever built.
- And with eight engines, it boasted 24,000 horsepower. That’s
the most reciprocating horsepower ever installed on an airplane.
Asked by a reporter after the historic flight if he was surprised
that the “lumberyard” actually flew, Hughes reportedly
responded, “I like to make surprises.”
But Evergreen officials are hoping there will be none Saturday.
The event has been meticulously planned, with officials considering
everything from the number of parking spaces reserved for the
public to the number of feet the airplane has to be lifted off
the ground with hydraulic jacks. And all this effort is for an
event that’s likely last no more than a few minutes.
“It’s going to be very efficient,” Nelson said. |
