Aircraft need hangar buildings designed for their shape and size in order to be stored effectively and ensure they are operating optimally. This is why kit-built hangars are important for ensuring aeroplanes can fly as many flights safely as they are capable of.
However, one truly unusual plane has the rather dubious distinction of having more aircraft hangars designed to hold it than completed flights, which is potentially a record for any plane that did not crash.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules is far better known under its nickname The Spruce Goose, and was the largest flying plane ever constructed, had the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever flown until 2019 and is the largest wooden aircraft in history.
The “Spruce Goose” name is somewhat of a misnomer since the plane was made out of birch due to restrictions during the war on the use of aluminium, but the gigantic plane was intended to be used as a flying personnel carrier during the Second World War, capable of carrying 750 troops or two M4 Sherman tanks.
Unfortunately, its development took so long that it was only completed two years after the war ended, and rather unusually, its first hangar was created after the plane had been fully assembled in Long Beach, California.
Howard Hughes, aerospace engineer, film magnate and philanthropist, was summoned in front of the United States Senate to testify as to why the plane took so long to make given its $23m cost, especially after he had staked his reputation on its success.
It had exactly one flight on 2nd November 1947, flying for just a mile at an altitude of just 70 feet, proving the point that it was capable of flight.
After this, it stayed in its hangar for the next 29 years until Mr Hughes died in 1976. Afterwards, it was moved to a geodesic dome at the Aero Club of Southern California in 1980, before finally being donated to Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in 1993.
This means that the plane had three times the number of dedicated aircraft hangars as flights.
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