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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: FEBRUARY 19, 2000

Lifelong aviation buff giving the Goose new life

By STARLA POINTER
Of the News-Register

An aviation buff, Paul Payne traveled to Long Beach, Calif., in the mid-1980s to see Howard Hughes' HK-1 Flying Boat.

He thrilled at seeing the huge, all-wood hull and the broadest wings ever built. But he never dreamed that one day he would know the "Spruce Goose" well enough to make gentle jokes about it.

"It's mostly birch, you know. Very little spruce," he said, climbing a spiral staircase to the cockpit. "But birch doesn't rhyme with a bird."

The flying boat now rests in pieces at Evergreen International Aviation headquarters. It will be reassembled for display in the Captain Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Educational Institute, under construction on the north side of Highway 18.

Payne is one of more than 80 volunteers who help with Evergreen's current museum, which features a collection of vintage aircraft and aviation memorabilia.

Many give tours; others work in the gift shop; some, like Payne, work on restoration projects. About 15 devote their time solely to making the Spruce Goose shipshape again.

Payne drives from Salem twice a week to spend the day with the Goose. "I'm a paint scraper," he said modestly.

His work is a little more complicated than that, though. When the Spruce Goose was put on display in Long Beach, Calif., it was covered with a thick fire retardant coating.

Over the years, the gooey coating picked up thousands of pounds of dirt. The plane, once white as a cloud, became as dingy as a stormy sky.

The dirt and coating must be removed before the flying boat can again be painted glossy white. The wings already have been stripped and primed. The tail and hull will be primed before the move, then final coats of paint will be applied in the museum.

Payne is in charge of deciding which coatings to use. It's a perfect job for him, since he spent his career in the paint industry.

"I don't want to blow my own horn, but if it wasn't for somebody like me, there would be salesmen here saying 'Use this!' and 'Use this!'" he said. "We might end up with a hodgepodge."

Drawn by Spruce Goose

Payne has been volunteering at the museum since 1991. He offered his services as soon as he heard that the Spruce Goose would be coming to McMinnville. His first volunteer jobs included helping with the restoration of a Pitts aerobatic biplane and a bright yellow Piper Cub.

After the Spruce Goose arrived, he and other volunteers spent months removing old cotton cloth from the elevators and rudders, then reapplying new fabric. The refurbished pieces are on display in the museum. Small in comparison to wings or hull, their mass gives visitors an idea of the immensity of the finished plane.

Payne has been interested in airplanes since he was a child. Some of his earliest memories involve riding his bicycle to Swan Island, where Portland's airport was in the 1930s. He watched early biplanes and tri-motors buzz over the Willamette River.

A decade later, he joined the Air Force and trained as a bombardier. The war ended before his B-24 was deployed overseas. "Fortunately, I never had to drop any bombs," he said.

After he was discharged, Payne went to college, earning a degree in chemistry. He worked as a paint and coatings chemist for more than three decades.

Showing off the ship

Between restoration tasks, Payne likes to gives tours of the HK-1. Proudly, he shows off the plane's anchor, vintage Mae West lifejackets, a megaphone ready for communicating with harbor personnel and beach balls used for extra buoyancy in the tail.

And he ticks off statistics about the historic cargo plane. The fuselage is as wide as a 747 and the straight 320-foot wingspan is greater. Fifteen 1,000-gallon fuel tanks rest below the main deck, ready to feed the largest piston engines ever used on an aircraft. Originally, the wood surface was finished with a varnish containing aluminum powder, creating a silvery luster.

The eight-engine plane was built in secrecy by furniture craftsmen and other woodworkers. Hughes rounded up wood experts because metal workers were busy with the war effort. Besides, aluminum was unavailable because it was being used for military planes.

"Sometimes an 80-year-old will come through town to look at the flying boat and tell us stories about when he worked on it," Payne said. "That's the best."

The Spruce Goose caused a stir when it slid out of its hangar for the first time in mid-1947. But the most excitement came on Nov. 2, 1947, when Hughes taxied the silvery plane across the bay and, catching everyone by surprise, lifted off for a 70-second flight.

But by the time the innovative flying boat was tested, it already was outmoded. World War II was over. Jets were flying across the ocean.

"There was no more need for flying boats," Payne said.

Repainted brilliant white, the Spruce Goose was returned to the hangar. There it sat for 30 years. Hughes made sure the plane was maintained, though, so that it could be ready to fly on 48 hours notice.

However, after Hughes died in 1976, the wooden craft was towed outside and left to the elements. "It just baked in the sun," Payne said, shaking his head.

Eventually, it was put on display in a dome in Long Beach, becoming a tourist attraction for aviation and history buffs like Payne.

Seeing the Spruce Goose, and now working on it, has only increased Payne's interest in the plane, its creator and the World War II era. Recently, he's been reading books about Hughes - every volume he can find.

"Hughes is remembered most for his eccentricities, but he really was a very smart individual. People don't give him credit for that," he said.

Payne also has been reading about the home front during World War II.

And, of course, he's taking pride in refurbishing the Spruce Goose and looking forward to its museum debut.

"We want to get it back to the perfectly smooth, seamless surface," he said. "It's already been satisfying to see that happen with the wings. Now they're beautiful and white again."

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