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PUBLISHED: Sept. 19, 2000

Spruce Goose rolls to its new home

By DAVID BATES
Of the News-Register

Perhaps no one was more impressed with the size of the Spruce Goose than Harvey Minnihan.

Minnihan was hauling the second wing across Three Mile Lane Saturday when he paused just after his truck reached the far side of the road.

His 95-ton load had yet to clear the gentle crest of Highway 18, and crews were concerned the weight would push him from behind.

"It's like trying to hold back an elephant with a toothpick," he said.

Cables were rigged to the dolly from behind to provide braking power - something Minnihan's rig wasn't capable of with that kind of load in tow.

About 15 minutes later, the rest of the enormous airplane lumbered across the road to its final destination, the Captain Michael Smith Evergreen Aviation Educational Institute, followed by hundreds of children wearing yellow T-shirts that read "Gosling Crew." They chanted, "The Goose is loose!"

Saturday's event went off pretty much as planned, with the crossing taking only 10 minutes longer than officials had expected. As trucks moved the pieces into position on Armory Way, workers with saws cleared a few obstacles - road signs.

As the huge silvery pieces of airplane crawled along Armory Way, onlookers who had moved in close for a better view found out why officials were trying to keep them 30 feet back from the road. Parts of the plane, particularly the tail fin, extended over the lawn like giant fingers.

"It's huge," said Caroline Smith, 77, who lives in Cascade Range community of Detroit. "I just was thinking I wish I'd seen it fly."

Nestled in steel-girder cradles, the huge pieces were taken across Highway 18 on flatbed trucks. First the vertical tail fin, lying on its side, then the wings and fuselage, and finally the tail cone, tiny in comparison.

The wings each stretched 160 feet. They and the 219-foot fuselage towered over the approximately 5,000 spectators.

The cockpit rises nearly three stories from the keel of the giant plane, which was designed to take off and land in water.

Although one wing was rolled into the museum through the rear of the building, the rest of the pieces are now staged outside the towering glass and steel structure.

Saturday's trip down Armory Way and across Three Mile Lane was the final leg of the Spruce Goose's journey from Long Beach Harbor, where it was stored after billionaire Howard Hughes flew it once, on Nov. 2, 1947.

The historic flight was recorded by newsreels. It lasted just 70 seconds and covered about a mile.

Although the wooden plane, built as part of the war effort, was never flown again, Hughes spent $1 million a year keeping it in flight-ready condition before his death in 1976.

In 1982, the Spruce Goose was moved to a custom-built dome near Long Beach Harbor. It was disassembled in 1992 and barged to the Evergreen International Aviation campus, to be restored and put on display.

Reassembly of the plane is expected to take six to seven months.

Bill Fuller, 72, of Amity took a break from preparing hot dogs at a Kiwanis booth to talk about seeing the famous flight during his days as a young man in the U.S. Air Force.

"A friend and I heard they were going to fly the plane, so we rode our bikes down to the ocean and watched it take off," Fuller recalled. "It just skimmed maybe 10 feet above the water, but it was impressive. It was so large."

Fuller was one of many flying buffs treated to a smorgasbord of aviation thrills Saturday.

The sight of the Goose's fuselage lumbering across Highway 18 in the late-morning sun was spectacular enough, but at one point most of the crowd gathered on the highway turned around and looked in the other direction, squinting.

A vintage B-17 that had been circling at 1,300 feet all morning had dropped to about 700 feet, bearing down on the crowd for show.

In addition to TV station helicopters circling high overhead, gliders were hauled up every 15 minutes or so from McMinnville Municipal Airport. Meanwhile, a pair of small planes zoomed by occasionally to decorate the scene with smoke trails.

The Spruce Goose will be the main attraction at the museum, which is named for Evergreen Aviation founder Del Smith's son, an Air National Guard pilot and avid auto racer killed in an auto accident in 1995.

When the museum opens next spring, it will tell the story of Hughes' wartime project to build the flying boat for troop transport. One senator dubbed it the "flying lumberyard."

Shipbuilder Henry Kaiser suggested building a giant seaplane to replace transport ships being sunk at a high rate by German U-boats. Kaiser brought Hughes on board for his aircraft expertise, and it was Hughes and his staff who designed, engineered and built the Spruce Goose.

They doggedly continued on to complete it, even after Kaiser dropped out and the war ended.

Dean Zinter, a member of Oregon Warbirds Squadron 13 and pilot of one of the smoke planes, said the Goose was way ahead of its time when it was built.

"When you think of the technology they were using in the 1940s compared with what we have today, he was way ahead of his time," he said of Hughes.

The fact that the plane was airborne for less than two minutes didn't detract from its mystique, he said. In fact, he said, "It added to it.

"As large as it was, everyone thought it was a boondoggle and wouldn't fly. He went out there and flew it and said, 'OK, leave me alone.' It's easier to be a follower. It's hard to be a leader."

- With additional reporting by The Associated Press.