You see it from the parking lot of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, and your brain just sort of breaks. It doesn’t look like a plane. It looks like a building that accidentally grew wings. Most people know the H-4 Hercules—better known by the nickname Howard Hughes hated, the "Spruce Goose"—as a failure of sorts. A massive, wooden white elephant that flew once, for about 26 seconds, and then sat in a climate-controlled hangar for decades. But honestly, looking at it from the outside is one thing. Getting inside the Spruce Goose is a completely different experience that feels less like aviation and more like wandering through a cathedral made of birch.
The Massive Scale of the Flight Deck
Walking up the stairs and stepping into the flight deck is surreal. You expect it to feel cramped like a B-17 or a modern 747 cockpit where every inch is packed with wires. It isn't. The flight deck is cavernous. It’s wider than most living rooms. When you sit in the pilot's seat—if you're lucky enough to do the premium tour—you realize how far apart Hughes and his co-pilot, Edward Bernane, actually were. They couldn't just lean over and whisper. They were separated by a massive center console that looks like it belongs in a power plant.
The windows are huge. You’re sitting four stories above the ground. From that vantage point, the ground looks a long way off, which makes you realize just how gutsy (or crazy) Hughes was to jump this thing off the water in Long Beach Harbor back in 1947.
The controls are all manual. There’s no fly-by-wire here. To move the massive control surfaces on a plane with a 320-foot wingspan, Hughes used a complex hydraulic system. If those hydraulics failed, no human on earth was strong enough to move the yoke. It’s a terrifying thought. The instrument panel is a sea of analog gauges, dozens of them, monitoring the eight Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engines. Each engine had 28 cylinders. That’s 224 spark plugs that had to fire perfectly just to keep this monster in the air.
Why Wood? It’s Not Actually Spruce
Here is the thing everyone gets wrong. It’s not made of spruce.
The "Spruce Goose" is almost entirely made of birch. During World War II, aluminum was a rationed strategic resource. The government told Hughes and shipbuilder Henry Kaiser they couldn't have any. So, Hughes used wood. Specifically, he used a process called Duramold. This wasn't just nailing planks together. They took thin veneers of birch, impregnated them with resin, and bonded them together under heat and pressure.
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Walking through the cargo hold—the "belly of the beast"—you can see the texture of the wood grain through the silver paint. It feels incredibly smooth, almost like plastic or glass. It’s also surprisingly warm. Unlike a cold aluminum fuselage that pings and echoes, the interior of the Spruce Goose has a dampened, quiet atmosphere. It smells faintly of old wood and sealant.
The engineering required to make wood carry the weight of 400,000 pounds is staggering. Hughes was obsessed with weight. He even had the engineers weigh the internal phone system. If it was an ounce over, it was redesigned. You can see this obsession in the way the ribs of the plane are shaped. They are hollowed out where strength isn't needed, every piece of wood hand-fitted with a level of precision that would make a master cabinetmaker weep.
Exploring the Cargo Hold
The main deck is where the scale really hits you. It’s 119 feet long. It was designed to carry two M4 Sherman tanks or 750 fully equipped troops. Today, much of it is open, allowing you to see the internal bracing.
- The Spiral Staircase: There is a tiny, cramped spiral staircase that leads from the cargo deck up to the flight deck. It’s a tight squeeze.
- The Fuel Lines: Huge pipes run through the interior. This plane was designed to cross the Atlantic, so it needed an absurd amount of fuel.
- The Inspection Tunnels: My favorite part? The wings are so thick—13 feet at the hull—that engineers could actually crawl inside them during flight to inspect the engines. There are small walkways inside the wings. Imagine crawling through a wooden tunnel while eight massive radial engines are screaming just a few feet away from your head.
The Mystery of the Flight
Why did he only fly it once?
The official story is that the flight on November 2, 1947, was just a taxi test. Hughes was under immense pressure from the Senate War Investigating Committee. They thought he’d wasted millions of dollars on a plane that couldn't fly. On the third taxi run, Hughes famously told his engineers, "I'm going to go for it," or something to that effect, and pulled back on the yoke.
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It stayed in the air for about a mile. It never went higher than 70 feet.
Some historians, like those at the Smithonian or experts who have studied the flight logs at Evergreen, suggest Hughes knew the plane was underpowered. The R-4360 engines were the best available, but pushing a 200-ton wooden boat through the air is a big ask. Others think he just wanted to prove the "experts" wrong and then hide his creation away before anything went wrong.
After the flight, Hughes spent a fortune—about $1 million a year—keeping the plane in a climate-controlled state of readiness. He kept a crew of 300 people working on it in secret. They turned the engines over every month. They replaced the rubber seals. They kept the wood at the perfect humidity. It was the most expensive hobby in human history.
What You See Today in McMinnville
When you visit the museum now, you realize how much work goes into preserving a wooden airplane. Wood rots. It warps. It gets eaten by bugs. The museum staff has to monitor the tension in the wings constantly. If the humidity drops too low, the Duramold can crack. If it’s too high, mold can form.
You can walk through the main deck as part of the standard admission, but I’d honestly recommend paying for the cockpit tour. Standing where Hughes stood, looking out over the nose at the Oregon landscape, you get a sense of the man’s ego. This plane wasn't built for a war; it was built because someone told Howard Hughes he couldn't do it.
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Facts That Seem Fake But Aren't
- The wingspan is longer than a football field (320 feet).
- The tail is eight stories tall.
- The plane used more than 8,000 feet of control cables.
- It took three giant pontoons to move it from Long Beach to Oregon by water and land.
Actionable Tips for Your Visit
If you’re planning a trip to see the Spruce Goose, don't just wing it.
First, book the cockpit tour in advance. They only take a few people up at a time, and it sells out fast. It’s an extra fee, but it’s the only way to see the flight deck. Without it, you’re just looking at the floor of the cargo hold.
Second, bring a wide-angle lens. You cannot capture the scale of this thing with a standard phone camera unless you’re standing against the far wall of the hangar. Even then, the wingtips usually get cut off.
Third, give yourself at least four hours. The museum also has a Titan II missile, a SR-71 Blackbird, and a bunch of other incredible tech. But the Goose is the centerpiece. Walk all the way to the back of the hangar to see the tail assembly from behind; it’s the best spot to realize how high the "ceiling" of the plane actually is.
Finally, check the weather. McMinnville is in the heart of Oregon wine country. If you go in the fall, the drive is beautiful, but the hangar can get a little chilly. Wear layers.
Inside the Spruce Goose, you aren't just looking at an old plane. You're looking at the end of an era. It was the last great gasp of the "flying boat" age, a transition point between the romanticism of early aviation and the cold, hard efficiency of the jet age. It shouldn't exist, and yet, there it sits, 200 tons of birch and ambition, waiting for you to walk through its doors.