It looks like a ghost.
Sitting in a massive climate-controlled hangar in McMinnville, Oregon, the Hughes H-4 Hercules—better known by its prickly nickname, the Spruce Goose—defies common sense. When you walk up to it at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, your brain tries to scale it against things you know. A house? No, too small. A 747? Getting closer, but still not quite right.
The Spruce Goose size comparison is a weird exercise in perspective because the plane was built for a world that didn't have the materials to support it. Howard Hughes didn't just build a big plane; he built a wooden cathedral that could fly. Sorta. It flew once, for about 26 seconds, back in 1947. But size isn't just about length or height; it’s about the sheer audacity of the displacement.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
Let’s get the dry stuff out of the way so we can talk about how it actually feels to stand under this thing. The wingspan is the star of the show. We’re talking 320 feet and 11 inches.
To put that in a Spruce Goose size comparison that actually makes sense, imagine a football field. Not just the playing area, but the whole thing including the end zones. Now, imagine a plane whose wings stretch from one goalpost to the other, with enough left over to poke into the stands. It held the record for the largest wingspan of any aircraft in history for 71 years. It wasn't until the Stratolaunch—a twin-fuselage monster designed to carry rockets—took flight in 2019 that Hughes finally lost his crown.
The height is another story. It stands about 80 feet tall. If you took an average five-story apartment building and parked it on the tarmac, the tail of the Spruce Goose would still be looking down on the roof. Honestly, when you’re standing underneath the tail feathers, you feel less like you’re looking at an airplane and more like you’re looking at a ship hull that someone accidentally stuck in a building.
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Wood vs. Metal: Why Scale is Different Here
Most modern "giant" planes like the Airbus A380 or the Antonov An-225 (RIP to a legend) are made of high-grade aluminum, titanium, and composites. They look sleek. They look like they belong in the air.
The H-4 Hercules is made of birch.
Because of wartime restrictions on aluminum, Hughes and his team had to use a Duramold process. They took thin veneers of wood, impregnated them with resin, and shaped them. It’s basically the world's most expensive piece of plywood. Because wood isn't as strong as metal per square inch of thickness, everything had to be thicker. The ribs are massive. The skin is dense.
When you do a Spruce Goose size comparison against an Antonov An-225, the Antonov is actually longer. It’s about 275 feet long compared to the Spruce Goose's 218 feet. However, the Spruce Goose feels more "swollen." The fuselage is incredibly wide because it was designed to carry 750 fully equipped troops or two 30-ton M4 Sherman tanks. It was meant to be a flying ferry to bypass the Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic.
Standing Against the Modern Titans
If you park a Boeing 747-8 next to the Spruce Goose, the 747 actually looks a bit skinny. The 747-8 has a wingspan of about 224 feet. That means the Spruce Goose has nearly 100 feet of extra wing. Think about that. You could take a mid-sized private jet, stand it on its nose, and it still wouldn't bridge the gap between a 747's wingtip and the Goose's wingtip.
Then there’s the Airbus A380.
The A380 is the king of the modern skies. It’s a double-decker beast. Its wingspan is 261 feet. Even the A380, the largest passenger airliner ever built, is dwarfed by the wooden wings of the H-4. It’s the difference between "large" and "monumental."
- Spruce Goose Wingspan: 320 ft 11 in
- Stratolaunch Wingspan: 385 ft
- Airbus A380 Wingspan: 261 ft
- Boeing 747-8 Wingspan: 224 ft
The only thing that really beats it in terms of "presence" is the Stratolaunch, but that’s a specialized beast with two separate fuselages. For a single-hull aircraft, the Goose is still an absolute freak of nature.
The Cockpit and the Interior Volume
Inside is where the Spruce Goose size comparison gets really haunting. Most planes feel cramped. Even a first-class cabin has a ceiling. Inside the H-4, the cargo hold is a cavern. You can look up and see the intricate wooden lattice work that holds the whole thing together. It feels like being inside the ribcage of a whale.
The flight deck is also surprisingly high up. Pilots had to climb a series of ladders to get to their stations. Once there, they were looking out of windows situated about three stories above the waterline. It’s a perspective that even modern jumbo jet pilots find disorienting. There’s no fly-by-wire here. Everything was connected by cables and pulleys, though Hughes had to incorporate a complex hydraulic system just so a human being would have the physical strength to move the control surfaces against the wind resistance.
Imagine trying to steer a house through a hurricane using only your biceps. That was the engineering challenge.
Why It Only Flew Once
Critics at the time called it a "flying lumberyard." Senator Homer Ferguson once famously grilled Hughes about why the government was pouring millions into a wooden plane that wouldn't fly. Hughes, being Hughes, put his entire reputation on the line.
On November 2, 1947, during taxi tests in Long Beach Harbor, Hughes made a split-second decision. He kicked the throttles forward. The eight Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engines—each producing 3,000 horsepower—screamed. The plane lifted off the water.
It only flew for about a mile. It never went higher than 70 feet.
Some aerodynamicists argue it only flew because of the "ground effect." This is a cushion of air that builds up between a large wing and the surface (water or land) when the plane is very low. Basically, the air gets trapped and provides extra lift. Whether it could have actually climbed to cruising altitude and crossed the Atlantic is a debate that still rages in aviation circles. Most experts today think it was underpowered for its weight, especially if it had been fully loaded with tanks and troops.
The Logistics of Moving a Giant
If you want to understand the Spruce Goose size comparison in practical terms, look at how they moved it from California to Oregon in the early 90s. They couldn't just fly it. They had to take it apart.
They put it on a barge. It traveled up the Pacific coast, into the Columbia River, and then they had to move it overland. They had to take down power lines. They had to trim trees. Bridges had to be analyzed to make sure they wouldn't collapse under the weight of just a piece of the wing. It took months.
Today, it sits in a building that was specifically designed around it. The museum has other planes—jets, fighters, even a Titan II missile—and they all look like toys scattered around the feet of a giant.
What People Get Wrong About the Scale
There's a common misconception that the Spruce Goose is the "biggest plane ever." That's not technically true anymore. It's the biggest wooden plane. It has the second-largest wingspan. It isn't the longest.
But "biggest" is a feeling.
When you see a modern C-5 Galaxy, you see a machine built by a corporation. When you see the H-4, you see the obsession of one man. Howard Hughes spent his own money to keep this plane in a flight-ready condition in a climate-controlled hangar until he died in 1976. He had a crew of 300 people maintaining a plane that never flew again.
The scale of the plane is matched only by the scale of the ego required to build it.
Actionable Insights for Your Visit
If you’re planning to see the Spruce Goose and want to really grasp the Spruce Goose size comparison in person, do these three things:
- Stand directly under the wingtip first. Look across to the fuselage. It is an exhausting distance for the eyes to travel.
- Take the cockpit tour. It costs extra, but you get to see the scale of the interior "spiral staircase" and the sheer height of the flight deck. You can't understand the volume of this aircraft from the ground.
- Compare the engines. Each of the eight engines is a masterpiece of engineering. A modern regional jet might only have two engines. This has eight, and each one is the size of a small car.
The Spruce Goose is a reminder of a time when we didn't know where the limits were. We were just guessing. And sometimes, those guesses resulted in a 320-foot wooden bird that still makes us feel small eighty years later.
Check the local weather and museum hours before heading to McMinnville; the Oregon coast range can be tricky in the winter, and you’ll want at least four hours to really see the H-4 without rushing. Look for the "Blackbird" SR-71 nearby for a total contrast in design philosophy—one built for raw size, the other for raw speed. Both represent the absolute bleeding edge of what we thought was possible.