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The Spruce Goose, built by Howard Hughes, is housed in the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville Oregon
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The Spruce Goose is HUGE.
Biggest plane ever made!
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Fills the entire museum building
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Can't even start to get it all in one picture
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Maybe if I back up just a LITTLE bit more...
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DEFINITELY take the Spruce Goose cockpit tour!
All sorts of fascinating details from an enthusiastic and very
knowledgeable tour guide.
Highly recommended!
One huge cargo space inside. Goal was to transport military equipment to Europe during WWII since German subs were sinking so many ships. But wasn't ready till 1946. So, it took one test flight and was abandoned. |
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The beach balls are air bladders to put inside the wings to make them more buoyant if water leaks into the wings.
They don't leak much since they're exactly one atmosphere of air pressure.
Still contain air from 1946.
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Fuel tanks are under the floor
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Looking left into one of the wings.
11 feet high.
Worst 8 seats in the house are in the wings monitoring the 8 engines.
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Crawl-through access to space behind the 11 foot high wall down the middle of the wing.
Not for folks with broad shoulders.
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Looking left from the crawl-through.
Can continue crawling through to the space behind the 2nd vertical wall.
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2 more engines hand-cranked to start the plane
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Ash trays in seat armrests on a wooden plane!
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Howard Hughes required his own supply of coffee, and of gin
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That's a LOT of dials!
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Howard Hughes hat (replica)
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More dials
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And yet more dials
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Pilot seat and controls
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They let you wear the hat since it's a replica
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The entire thing really is built of WOOD, not metal.
Note the line left by a nail when they cut away this section of the
wall to allow a tourist door at the museum.
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Even all the thin cross braces are wood
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Other products made of Duromold (plywood) like the plane.
Paddleball anyone?
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Seat frame has extra space because pilot sits on parachute
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Only flew one flight, and even that was unplanned
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Now on to other planes...
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The wingtip folds down as a pontoon to support the wing when landing in water.
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Rockets too!
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Pilot tries to tip the wing of an unmanned German Flying Bomb to make it
crash and blow up early
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Camping area for visiting Boy Scouts
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...like Eagle Scout Peter
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