Remembering Hughes Aircraft Company: How Howard Hughes Became an Aviation Pioneer!

Howard Hughes was one of the most important aviation pioneers of the 20th century. Not only did he run two airlines (TWA and Hughes Airwest), but he also ran the Hughes Aircraft Company – known for being one of the largest aircraft manufacturers of its time!

Despite that, the death of Howard Hughes in 1976 profoundly impacted the company, with it being dismantled and sold on within 20 years of his death, with only portions of the business surviving to this day…

Pre-Hughes Aircraft Company: Howard Hughes

Known as an eccentric even back then, Howard Hughes had inherited his father’s drill bit manufacturer, Hughes Tool Company, in 1924 at the age of 18.

Not really interested in spending the rest of his life making drill bits, Howard instead lived quite lavishly at the company’s expense, buying cars, planes and houses using the company’s money.

Beyond using his family company to support a lavish lifestyle, Howard also used the company’s profits to begin his own business ventures, beginning with an aviation-themed war epic he called Hell’s Angels, combining his love of aviation and movies into one.

Initially a silent film (as was the norm in 1927), Hughes spent 18 months and a considerable amount of money producing the film before making the decision to refilm everything as a talkie in 1929.

Continuing to spend millions of dollars in today’s money producing the film, it was eventually released on May 27 1930.

Expected to be a huge flop due to its extremely high budget for the time ($2.8 million), the film was one of the highest-grossing of its time, grossing $2.5 million!

Had Howard not spent millions of dollars refilming it, Hell’s Angels would’ve netted him over a million dollars – a record for the 1930’s. Even today, Hell’s Angels is considered a masterpiece.

Foundation And Early Years

For Hell’s Angels, Howard had acquired a fleet of over 100 aircraft that all seen action during WWII, giving him what he called the “largest private air force in the world”.

Former British, French, American and German fighters were used for the flight scenes, whilst old bombers were used for filming.

During filming, Howard employed engineer Glenn Odekirk to maintain the fleet, with many of the aircraft being rebuilt from top to bottom to fit Howard’s often inane technical specs. Despite Howard’s quirks, both he and Odekirk bonded over their love of aviation.

Rebuilding some of the fastest aircraft of the time so that they went even faster, Glenn and Howard soon hatched a plan to design and build a racing aircraft that was faster than the rest.

Formally incorporating the Hughes Aircraft Company as a division of the Hughes Tool Company in 1932, the pair spent the next two years flying around the US, testing out Glenn’s ideas, before designs were finally put on paper in 1934 with the help of Glenn’s friend, Richard Palmer.

Although this aircraft went by many names, it would eventually be called the Hughes H-1 Racer.

First flying on September 13 1935, the H-1 (piloted by Hughes himself) promptly broke the world landplane speed record, clocking an averaged 352.39 mph (567.12 km/h) over four timed passes!

To break the record, the H-1 had been loaded with enough fuel to safely do two timed passes plus landing and takeoff. Hughes, against everyone’s advice, chose to do four passes before promptly running out of fuel and crashing in a beet field.

Miraculously, neither he, nor the H-1, suffered any serious damage with Hughes quipping “We can fix her; she’ll go faster”. And guess what? They fixed her, they modified her slightly and she broke the long distance speed record too!

WWII

When WWII erupted in 1939, the US chose to stay neutral, refusing to send its sons to die in yet another European war. As with most of the other US-based aircraft manufacturers, Hughes Aircraft chose to remain neutral.

Although the US had supplied Britain with weapons (including aircraft) through Lend Lease, Hughes continued to remain neutral until the US officially declared war in 1941.

Not having any designs for military aircraft of its own, Hughes Aircraft soon became a branch plant, building designs for other aircraft manufacturers. During this time, Hughes Aircraft went from a four-person team to an aviation giant with over 80,000 employees!

Prior to the war, in 1937, Howard Hughes had used his immense fortune to privately fund development of a fighter and bomber aircraft, which he called the Hughes D-2.

Hoping to redesign the D-2 for the new style of aerial combat used during the war, the D-2’s design team redesigned the aircraft on several occasion, making it more of a fighter than a bomber, before the prototype was completed in 1942.

Despite impressing Howard Hughes, the USAAF refused to accept the aircraft in 1943.

The USAAF’s reasoning for this was mostly due to the fact that the D-2 was made out of wood, and not aluminum as the USAAF wanted. Plus, there was also the belief that Hughes lacked the capacity to mass-produce the D-2.

Undeterred, Hughes used the D-2’s design as the basis for his XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft. Not long after starting the project, Colonel Elliott Roosevelt (FDR’s son) convinced General Henry “Hap” Arnold to place an order for 100 F-11s.

Sadly, a number of technical issues (including a crash of the type’s prototype in 1946 which nearly killed the test pilot Howard Hughes) saw production be delayed until it the project was cancelled after the war.

In 1942, with help from American shipbuilding and steel magnate, Henry J. Kaiser, Hughes began developing what he called the Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat – the largest cargo aircraft ever built up until that point!

Originally designed to be made of aluminum, wartime shortages resulted in it being made out of wood instead (hence the nickname “Spruce Goose” which infuriated Howard Hughes and the Hughes Aircraft design team no end).

Post-WWII Investigations

Despite being given millions of dollars by the US government to develop both the XF-11 and H-4 Hercules, Hughes Aircraft didn’t produce a single XF-11 or H-4 Hercules for the US military, during or after the war.

Although other aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing, Lockheed and Douglas Aircraft had similarly received money to produce aircraft that never flew, these other companies were given far less than Hughes was, and produced their own aircraft during the war too.

Sensing corporate mismanagement or blatant war profiteering on Hughes’ part, the Senate formed a special committee, which began investigating Hughes.

Led by Republican senator Owen Brewster of Maine (a long-time ally of Juan Trippe’s Pan Am who competed against Hughes’ TWA), the committee investigated every aspect of Hughes Aircraft.

The committee argued that Hughes had mismanaged not only development of the H-4 Hercules and XF-11, but also his business as a whole, to intentionally defraud the US government when they could least afford it (eg. when they were at war).

Among the first televised Senate investigations, the Hughes investigation garnered the public’s attention more so than any other investigation before or since it.

Dragging out for months, both Howard Hughes and Hughes Aircraft were crucified in the media and court of public opinion.

Even in spite of this, Hughes was eventually cleared of all wrongdoing after the H-4’s first flight on November 2 1947 (as Brewster argued that the H-4 was never designed to fly) and Brewster’s overly chummy (some would say corrupt) relationship with Juan Trippe was revealed.

Entrance Into The Helicopter Business

Beyond the Senate investigation, the postwar years had been brutal for the aircraft manufacturing industry as a whole, but had been especially harsh on Hughes Aircraft, partly due to all the negative publicity generated by the Senate investigation.

Going from a workforce of 80,000 to a workforce of 800 due to postwar contract cancellations, Howard Hughes made the decision to refocus Hughes Aircraft’s attention away from fixed-wing aircraft and to helicopters, in 1947.

The year, Hughes entered talks with Kellett Autogiro Corporation to acquire their latest helicopter designs. Completing the deal in 1948, Hughes Aircraft set to work trying to put these helicopters into mass-production.

A patchwork of different aircraft (wheels from both a C-54 and B-25, a fuel tank from a B-29, a cockpit from a Waco CG-15 glider and a tail rotor from a H-19 Chickasaw), Hughes’ first helicopter design, the XH-17 was actually a great helicopter from a technical standpoint.

Designed to be a heavy lift cargo helicopter, the XH-17 fell short of its dream after flight testing revealed it only had a range of 30 mi (48 km; 26 nmi). Not surprisingly, the XH-17 was a commercial failure with only the prototype having been built.

Not wanting to produce another helicopter flop, Hughes performed in-depth research into the 1950’s helicopter market, determining that there was large demand for a small, two-seat helicopter that had a longer range than the Bell 47.

Answering that demand in 1956 with the first flight of its Hughes Model 269, better known by its military designation of TH-55 Osage, the Model 269 was produced between 1961 and 1983, with over 2,300 examples being produced.

Two years later, in 1963, Hughes first flew the Model 369, otherwise known as the OH-6 Cayuse.

Similarly proving to be quite successful, the Model 369 is still in production today, both as the military OH-6 Cayuse and MD 500 Explorer and the civilian MD 500 (originally known as the Hughes 500) with over 4,700 having been produced to date!

Having separated Hughes Aircraft Company and the Hughes Tool Company into two distinct entities in 1953 (previously, Hughes Aircraft was a subsidiary of Hughes Tool Company), Howard Hughes later separated Hughes Helicopters from Hughes Aircraft in 1955.

Here, Hughes Helicopters became the Hughes Tool Company’s Aircraft Division, where it remained until its sale to McDonnell Douglas in 1987, becoming MD Helicopters.

Entrance Into The Missile Business

Beyond shifting the company’s focus towards helicopters, the postwar years also saw Hughes become interested in the potential for missiles to be launched from aircraft with the intention of hitting another aircraft during flight.

You see, during the war, Hughes had noted that whilst effective, the use of multiple gunners spread throughout the aircraft was both inefficient and an easy target for bombers.

Hughes believed that a few missiles could replace gunner crews and save thousands of lives if another war ever broke out.

Although the idea seemed like it came out of a science-fiction novel at the time, the team at Hughes Aircraft were confident they could pull it off, with development of the world’s first air-to-air missile beginning in 1946.

Hughes’ first missile, known as the AIM-4 Falcon, was first tested in 1949 and proved to be a success. Eventually redesigned for use on fighter jets, the AIM-4 served with distinction during Vietnam where it was deployed on the F-4 Phantom.

Over the course of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Hughes developed the AIM-4 into the AIM-26 (a larger and more powerful variant used on the Mirage III and Saab Draken) and the AIM-47 (a longer-range variant used on the experimental YF-12 project).

Following that, the late 1960’s saw Hughes begin development of the AIM-54 Phoenix, a long-range, air-to-air, beyond visual range missile deployed on the famed F-14 Tomcat.

As time progressed, the AIM-54 was replaced by the shorter-range, yet far more powerful AIM-120 AMRAAM, which is currently the Western World’s most popular air-to-air missile, used onboard the likes of the F-15, F-16, F/A-18, F-22 and F-35 among many others.

Interestingly, despite having been designed by Hughes (which no longer exists) in the 1960’s and 1970’s, both the AIM-54 and AIM-120 are still quite common, with the AIM-120 being the clear favorite!

Once Hughes Helicopters had been split from Hughes Aircraft, Hughes’ missile division became its largest division.

Spacecraft

The late 1960’s proved to be a great decade for space travel. Alongside most other major aircraft manufacturers of its time, Hughes Aircraft soon got involved in the space business.

Beginning in 1967, Hughes Aircraft (via its Hughes Space and Communications division) won the contracts to build the Surveyor series of space probes.

Over the course of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Hughes Aircraft built all seven Surveyor probes that collectively took over 90,000 photos of the moon’s surface and propelled our knowledge of the moon’s surface by decades!

Despite the failure of some of the Surveyor probes, the high-profile nature of the Surveyor series thrust Hughes Aircraft into the limelight.

Prior to the Surveyor series, Hughes Aircraft’s Hughes Space and Communications division had built the Intelsat I – the world’s first commercial communications satellite placed into orbit in June 1965.

By 1970, Hughes Space and Communications had developed a new commercial communications satellite, the HS-333. As the world’s first standardized satellite design, a total of eight HS-333s were built and launched into space.

In space, they helped increase cell coverage for Western Union in the United States, Telesat Canada in well… Canada, and Perumtel (now PT Telekom) in Indonesia.

Building on this, Hughes built the two satellites for the Morelos Satellite System in the 1980’s and 1990’s, as well as the Paksat-1 of the mid-1990s.

Joining with NASA, Hughes built the Magellan probe that mapped the surface of Venus, as well as partnering with them for the Pioneer Venus program to help NASA better understand what Venus was like (in competition with the Soviet’s Venera program).

Death of Howard Hughes

Having suffered with declining health for years, Howard Hughes’ lifestyle had left him barely recognizable.

Once a slender, handsome and well-groomed man, Hughes weighed barely 90 lbs (41 kg), his face had wrinkled with age and covered with an ill-kept beard and long hair.

Whilst flying onboard a Learjet 24 owned by his friend, Robert Graf, between the Acapulco Princess Hotel in Mexico and the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, Howard Hughes suffered from renal failure and died during the flight.

Not having any surviving immediate family, nor a legitimate will, there was great debate on what should happen to Hughes’ $1.5 billion estate ($7.1 billion adjusted for inflation).

A number of forged and inauthentic wills emerged in the aftermath of Hughes’ death resulting in years of prolonged legal battles.

In regards to Hughes Aircraft, the company’s lawyer and executive claimed that Hughes had given them permission to set up an “executive committee” to run Hughes Aircraft and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) that had owned Hughes’ Hughes Aircraft stock since the early 1950’s.

After a suit was filed in late 1978, which resulted in five years of litigation, Judge Grover C. Brown ruled that an executive committee/board of trustees should be establish to manage the HHMI and Hughes Aircraft.

However, he also ruled that it shouldn’t be run by the lawyer or the executive that had suggested it in 1976.

Instead, the judge ruled that the people on the executive committee/board of trustees should be chosen by the court and approved by him, which he did in April 1984.

Sale

In January 1985, HHMI’s newly appointed board of trustees voted to sell Hughes Aircraft either by floating it on the stock market (via an IPO) or via a private sale.

After five months of sealed-auction bidding, with bidders including the likes of Ford and Boeing, HHMI’s board of trustees announced that General Motors (GM) had won the auction, with a bid estimated at $5.2 billion ($13 billion adjusted for inflation).

Payment was rendered in a mixture of cash and stock, with GM paying the HHMI $2.7 billion ($6.75 billion) in cash and 50 million shares of GM Class H stock, making the HHMI one of GM’s largest singular shareholders.

Under GM’s ownership, Hughes Aircraft was merged with GM’s pre-existing Delco Electronics subsidiary on December 31 1985, where it formed Hughes Electronics. Here, Delco Electronics and Hughes Aircraft remained as separate subsidiaries of Hughes Electronics.

In May 1992, Hughes Aircraft acquired General Dynamics’ missile division (formerly the Convair missile division) for $450 million ($863 million adjusted for inflation) which added some of the US military’s most used missile systems to Hughes’ portfolio.

Combined with Hughes’ existing portfolio, this deal paved the way for Hughes Aircraft to become one of the world’s largest missile contractors!

Three years later, in 1995, the Hughes Spacecraft division of Hughes Aircraft became the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial satellites after the Lockheed-Martin Marietta merger caused the newly formed Lockheed Martin to downsize its commercial spacecraft division.

Today

Between 1995 and 1997, various minor subsidiaries of Hughes Electronics (some of whom were also subsidiaries of Hughes Aircraft) were sold by Hughes to focus on its electronics and spacecraft divisions.

In early 1997, GM made the decision to split Hughes Electronics in two. Hughes Aircraft and its related subsidiaries remained directly under GM control, whilst Delco Electronics was merged into Delphi Automotive Systems (now Aptiv plc), also owned by GM.

On January 16 that same year, Raytheon entered negotiation with Hughes Electronics to acquire Hughes Aircraft for $9.5 billion ($16 billion adjusted for inflation), with the deal being completed in January 1998.

Having acquired Hughes Aircraft, Raytheon broke apart the company and transfer its assets to Raytheon’s various divisions (such as Raytheon Missile Systems and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems).

Disposing of its other assets, Hughes Electronics sold the Hughes Space and Communications Co. (formerly the space and satellite division of Hughes Aircraft) to Boeing in 2000.

Here, it formed Boeing Satellite Systems (a subsidiary of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems) alongside other satellite producers Boeing acquired, where it remains up until this day!

Legacy

Although Hughes Aircraft hasn’t existed for two and a half decades, it has left a legacy arguably far larger than any other aircraft manufacturer in history has. Best of all? We can see this legacy today!

Howard Hughes

It’s safe to say that without Howard Hughes, Hughes Aircraft would’ve never taken off (no pun intended). Yet without Hughes Aircraft, we may not necessarily have remembered Howard Hughes…

You see, whilst he had other businesses, such as his tool business (Hughes Tool Company), media empire (RKO Studios) and airlines (TWA and Hughes Airwest), his aircraft manufacturing business was by far the most important.

Forming the centerpiece of his multibillion dollar business empire, it’s highly likely that without Hughes Aircraft, Howard Hughes would’ve never had a net worth of $1.5 billion at the time of his death in 1976 ($7.1 billion adjusted for inflation).

Without Hughes Aircraft, Howard Hughes would certainly not have been poor by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just that without it, he wouldn’t have been worth nearly as much, and thus would’ve likely never garnered the media attention he did.

Aviation Industry

Despite producing very few aircraft on the whole, the aircraft Hughes did produce were arguably more important than any other aircraft of their time!

Take the H-1 Racer for example. Whilst only one was produced, Hughes pioneered the use of flush rivets, which kept the aluminum skin of the H-1 smooth, and thus made it more aerodynamic than any racer aircraft before it.

This is what allowed it to beat the previous world record by a comfortable margin.

Noticing this, aircraft manufacturers like Grumman, Mitsubishi and Focke-Wulf implemented flush rivets and other aspects of the H-1 on their F8F Bearcat, A6M Zero and Fw190 fighters, which all served with distinction during WWII!

Even to this day, as commercial and cargo aircraft alike are getting bigger and bigger to accommodate growing demand, the H-4 is still one of the largest aircraft ever built, with it looking likely that it will keep this title for many years to come…

Do you remember the Hughes Aircraft Company? Which was their greatest aircraft? Tell me in the comments!