Howard Hughes and His Flying Boat - Hardcover

Barton, Charles

4.05

19 ratings by Goodreads

9780816864577: Howard Hughes and His Flying Boat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0816864578 ISBN 13: 9780816864577

Publisher: Aero Publishers, Inc., 1982

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SIGNED BY AUTHOR AND CREW MEMBER RUCKER, No damage to book. DJ has slight edge ware plus Aviation Book of the Year Seal.

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From the Publisher:

Howard Hughes And His Flying Boat, as originally published by Aero Publishers under ISBN 8168-0-6456-X, won the Aviation/Space Writers Association award as the best nonfiction aviation book of the year and went through six printings.

In 1993, the Hughes Flying Boat (better known as the "Spruce Goose") was moved from its display site alongside the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California to a new nest at Evergreen Aviation headquarters in McMinneville, Oregon. As a result, the Long Beach Museum book outlet closed and the then publisher of Howard Hughes And His Flying Boat, TAB/McGraw Hill, decided not to go for a seventh printing even though the book had sold out worldwide.

Now, in 1998, Evergreen Aviation is building the world-class AirVenture Museum featuring the Hughes Flying Boat and a host of war birds. Jack Real, a former close associate of Howard Hughes, now president of the Evergreen AirVenture Museum, has written a new forward for the book, and the author has written an additional final chapter concerning Evergreen Aviation's role. This new and revised 1998 edition of HOWARD HUGHES AND HIS FLYING BOAT is now available.

From the Author:

When Popular Mechanics editor John Linkletter first wrote to me that he had long wanted to publish an article on the Hughes flying boat (published as "Spruce Goose: Pterodactyl of World War II" in November, 1977) the U.S. Navy was actively considering a full flight test program for the 35-year-old airplane. At the start of my research, the Office of the Chief of Naval Information set up an interview with Rear Admiral Carl Seiberlich, then heading the effort to explore possible uses for the flying boat. Through Seiberlich I contacted Hughes's Chief Engineer, Rea E. Hopper, and obtained the crew list for that one-and-only flight of the giant boat.

The crew list was a major breakthrough. The men named on the list had worked for Hughes for many years and had friends who had played various roles in developments at Hughes Aircraft. Some of these friends had flown as flight engineer/mechanics with Hughes. Contacts snowballed.

Because I was a former naval aviator with flying boat experience, the Hughesmen talked more readily than they would have to a journalist without an aviation background. In this way previous walls of secrecy were breached and a treasure trove of information became available.

Other breakthroughs were the discovery of a Hughes Flying Boat file in the records of the War Production Board in the National Archives; a list provided by NASA of former National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics employees who had participated in the design and testing of the flying boat at the Langley Research Center; transcripts of taped interviews with Sherman Fairchild concerning his association with Howard Hughes made available by Theron Rinehart of Fairchild Industries; the assistance of Hughes's Chief of Aerodynamics Carl Babberger who in turn put me in touch with other key engineers; and the cooperation and assistance of Hughes's long-time friend and associate, Glen Odekirk, of Hughes's Flight Test Engineer Gene Blandford, and of all the others who so generously gave of their time in support of this project.

Thus, as a result of fortunate timing, favorable circumstances, and much foot-slogging research, this book is based on first hand accounts of many who knew and worked for Hughes and on previously unpublished documentary material.

The manuscript for Howard Hughes And His Flying Boat has been reviewed for accuracy by Nadine Henley Marshall, the personal secretary to Howard Hughes who rose to become a high-level Summa executive; by Carl Babberger, Hughes's Chief of Aerodynamics; by David Van Storm, long-time Hughes flight engineer/mechanic; by Perry Lieber, Consultant for the Summa Corporation; and by Edward West, Jr., former Hughes F-11 Project Engineer. The responsibility for the book's contents remains that of the author.

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