Filmmaker and businessman Howard Hughes had developed his massive H-4 Hercules aircraft to help ferry men and material across the Atlantic during World War II. With a wingspan longer than a football field, the H-4 (nicknamed the “Spruce Goose” because it was built out of wood due to wartime steel rationing) was designed to hold over 700 men and might have been up to the challenge. The only problem: It took so long to build that by the time it was finished, the war was over.

Hughes’ massive “flying boat” was the subject of skepticism from many who didn’t think it was airworthy, including members of Congress irritated at the use of government funds to build what looked like a $23 million flop. On this date 67 years ago, Hughes set out to prove them wrong. He personally took the controls and taxied the Goose onto the water at the harbor in Long Beach, California, before flying the beast a mile and landing safely on November 2, 1947. Thousands of people came out to see the Goose fly on the strength of its eight massive propellers.

Hughes was vindicated by the flight, but the Goose would never take wing again. Nor would it inspire the construction of similar craft, as Hughes had hoped. As he got older, Hughes became increasingly eccentric and reclusive. He kept a crew on duty to maintain the Goose in a climate-controlled hangar at an alleged cost of $1 million a year, just in case it was ever called on again. Hughes died in 1976, and the Goose was displayed adjacent to the Queen Mary ocean liner in Long Beach during the 1980s before being moved to its current home at Oregon’s Evergreen Aviation Museum in 1993. The Goose is forever grounded now, but for one day in 1947, anyone hanging out near the Long Beach harbor could have looked up and seen a gray bird the size of a football field spreading its wings.

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