Ah, the Hughes H-4 Hercules, better known as the Spruce Goose:
Where do I fucking start???
Alright, first things first, you see that pic? That’s the only fucking time the damn thing “flew”, 70 ft (21 m) off the water at a speed of 135 miles per hour (217 km/h) for about one mile (1.6 km), so for a plane that costed fucking 27.5 billion dollars in today’s money it’s fucking atrocious.
And you know why I put flew between quotation marks? Because that wasn’t flight, that’s a phenomenon known as ground effect, where basically, the air moved by the wings downwards bounces back onto them, generating a sort of pushing lift that can keep any winged aircraft afloat AS LONG AS the altitude in which is flying is lower than the total wingspan of the aircraft, otherwise proper aerodynamics take hold, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this piece of shit wasn’t actually capable of flight.
The Ekranoplan, a perfect example of a ground-effect vehicle.
Now, disregarding this blatant aerodynamic cheat, well, look at it!
Look at that stupid-ass tail
It was just a plain flying boat, just oversized, where no a single groundbreaking innovation came out from it, just a big, stupid plane that did jack shit but somehow still made into the history books because a) Big, b) American and c) Made by a crazy billionaire.
Look at that piece of crap, “hurr durr big plane!!!” fuck you, the German Me 323 Giant had far more merits and pioneered both strategic airlifting and a roll-on, roll-off cargo hold, and the damn thing was a glider with engines made of canvas, hopes and dreams!
Fuck the Spruce Goose.