I think I may have submechanophobia. The very thought of being submerged underwater in a solid metal casket loaded with explosive torpedoes chills me to the core. And yet, for Adolf Hitler, submarines were part of his foolproof plan to dominate the British Isles.
There’s a lot of irony in naval warfare. First, in order to beat the Allies through starvation in World War II, Germany had to control the waters; but to beat the Allies through dehydration, they would have to control the land. Second, though Britain controlled the seas, they only really controlled the water’s surface, so all Hitler and the Germans had to do was sink a little deeper. Therefore, to achieve Nazi domination of the world’s oceans, Hitler poured state efforts into U-boat manufacturing.
Hitler’s deadly submersibles sunk over 2,000 ships and 14.5 million gross tons of cargo. Those statistics indicate the German submarine program was a staggering success, though thankfully not enough to turn the tides of the war for Germany. Thousands of submarines served in the German Kriegsmarine, patrolling the seas like a disturbed nest of wasps.
Now, you may be wondering: What happened this week in history? Was a ship sunk? Didn’t that happen nearly every day of the war? Well, for the latter question, yes. Given that roughly 20,000 ships were sunk during the course of the war — and the war lasted roughly 2,000 days — that’s approximately 10 ships sunk per day of the conflict.
For the former question, a lot happened this week in history, but most remarkably, two men tested their solution to the U-boat scourge.
The story begins in 1942, with tonnage loss reaching staggering heights as the U-boat disruption of Allied merchant convoys went into full effect (it would finally climax in 1943). Two Americans, Henry J. Kaiser and Howard Hughes, brainstormed a way to avoid the U-boats entirely. I’d imagine their thought process went something like this:
The sting of a submarine comes from its ability to sink to undetectable depths (at least in 1942), and strike the weak underbelly of merchant ships when they least expect it, right? They are successful because they go lower than any destroyer or battleship that the Allied fleets possess. So, what if there was a flying submarine? A flying boat that could simply fly laps around (and above) any submerged vessel?
With a design process now in mind, Kaiser and Hughes set to work on circumnavigating the U-boats. They conceived of a large — scratch that, gargantuan — wooden plane, one capable of fitting a ton of people in it. Actually, that’s a low estimate: one capable of fitting around 50 tons of people in it.
The plane, named after both designers as HK-1, went into development throughout the war, though the process was tough due to material rationing for the war effort. Kaiser dropped out of the partnership with Hughes in 1944, and that was likely a smart move. Wartime energy just couldn’t be devoted to a project as large and unlikely to be successful as what Hughes now took to calling the H-4 Hercules.
And yet, only a few years later, the H-4 Hercules underwent a name change and took to the skies, allowing the spirits of American ingenuity to soar. This week — well, actually weekend in history — in history, on Nov. 2, 1947, “The Spruce Goose” takes its first and only flight at Long Beach Harbor in California. Over the next few days, it would enter the history books as one of the greatest engineering feats in American history.
Hughes was in the cockpit, controlling his creation alongside co-pilot David Grant, who later commented on the ordeal, “If there is anything close to my heart, it is that airplane.”
Journalists — unfortunately no Daily Campus correspondents — and other passengers were on board as well, and “The Spruce Goose” took its 319-foot 11-inch wingspan to the skies, albeit only rising a comfortable 25 feet above the sea for about 30 seconds before gently dipping back to the surface.
The eccentricity of Hughes’ (and for a time, Kaiser’s) project had yielded a magnificent product: a wooden plane that could carry entire battalions over the heads of none-the-wiser U-boat commanders.
No doubt the buzz of eager media correspondents and stunned onlookers elevated the flight into something of American mythology; though, the plane is very much real and preserved today.
The long history of “The Spruce Goose” is preserved at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Ore. Hughes passed in 1976 after preserving his creation at his own expense; it’s likely that, as the museum website mentions, Hughes was “perhaps dreaming of a second flight.”
I am still stunned by the actual size of this 300,000-pound plane. Until 2019, “The Spruce Goose” was the largest plane ever made. That’s a record 72 years unchallenged. The current record holder also cheats a little. Called the Stratolaunch jet, it essentially is two planes in one whereas the good old goose still looks like one behemoth of a plane. Regardless, Hughes’ plane still holds numerous records as outlined on the Evergreen Museum website.
With the successful flight of “The Spruce Goose,” would the design philosophy really allow for transport of personnel and cargo across the Atlantic to relieve the ensnared British Isles? Well, in one word: no. As fortunate as it was that World War II ended in 1945, the fortunes of war industry businessmen, including Hughes’ aerospace company, were soon worsening. In a series of court cases, the legacy of money-draining and quite insane projects such as “The Spruce Goose” caused noble, or perhaps stingy politicians to condemn the efforts and men behind them as wasting valuable wartime assets.
In the end, Hughes would soar out of the court cases relatively unscathed. Nevertheless, I am amazed nobody attempted to sue for false advertising: “The Spruce Goose” is actually made of a special type of birch plywood. Still, I have a cure for my submechanophobia: boldly take to the skies in the world’s largest wooden airplane instead of sinking (a second time) to the depths of the ocean floor in a U-boat.