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Largest flying boat ever built. Largest aircraft wingspan ever. Heavy transport aircraft. The Hughes H-4 Hercules, also known as the Spruce Goose!

The Spruce Goose was a beast of an airplane that made its only flight in 1947, a singular entity preserved in the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon. Ship builder and magnate Henry Kaiser generated the operations concept for the plane and turned to Howard Hughes for the design and construction.

The idea behind the design was to transport large payloads across the Atlantic during World War II. The plane was made of birch due to a shortage of materials and metal and six times larger than any other aircraft of that time. Howard Hughes took the pilot seat for its initial test run and lifted the plane off the ground about 70 feet, travelling for a mile. That was the last flight the beauty ever took, leaving its full in-air capability unknown.