Sorry Mods, I don’t know how to paste links to the original article. It was in 2002.
Just went to the Evergreen Museum yesterday in McMinnville, OR with my daughter.
Saw the Goose.
Wow.
Perhaps this is it:
Yeah, I just went to McMinnville last month and saw the H-4. It’s an amazing sight. Kind of a ripoff, though–they charge $20 admission and won’t let you into the cockpit without paying for another tour.
But I have a question. Cecil mentions that the idea was to avoid enemy torpedoes. But how would the Goose not have been a sitting duck for enemy airplanes?
Aircraft still had limited range, then. By the time the Spruce Goose got close enough to, say, Germany, it would be even closer to the fighter bases in England. I don’t say that Adolf couldn’t have shot any down, but it would have hurt him badly each time he did it.
Well, for one thing, the technology of the day allowed one to see Luftwaffe aircraft coming from very far away (with radar), and land-based fighters in Britain could have defended hypothetical H-4s. Conversely, it was still difficult to see the U-boats coming (particularly in 1942 when the project was greenlighted).
I saw it back in 1988, when it was still housed in Los Angeles. Impressive, but we didn’t get to go inside.