Last month my son and I made a visit to McMinnville Oregon specifically to visit Howard Hughes’ ‘Spruce Goose’ in a museum constructed specifically to house and display that magnificent aviation folly. My interest in vintage aviation continues to grow. I’ve been collecting old New Yorker Magazines for years but
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhhZqKlO6wEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1aKNy7hBV4 Airplane pilots are always quick to tell you that 99 percent of all aviation accidents are due to pilot error. This is almost a religious incantation with them–they believe firmly in ‘trusting the machine’, which I imagine is the only way to get over the insane fact that they’re
This past weekend my son and I journeyed to the little town of McMinnville, Oregon, to see what is arguably the ninth wonder of the world; the biggest plane ever built and never flown. Howard Hughes ‘Spruce Goose’ is a flying boat that was intended to be used during the
Above I’ve posted actual footage of the premiere of Howard Hughe’s 1930 World War 1 aviation epic ‘Hells Angels’. And below I’ve posted a recreation of the event in Martin Scorsese’s brilliant Hughes biopic ‘The Aviator’ (2004–ish). The real event is shockingly huge in scope—just the lit-up sign advertising the
Here’s an astonishing four minute reel of outtakes from ‘Hells Angels’, saved apparently by accident and carefully preserved and lovingly restored. I can’t begin to tell you how rare it is to see outtakes from a film this early–movie outtakes began to be saved in the mid-thirties as a result
The saga of Howard Hughes epic World War 1 film ‘Hells Angels’ (1930) has been well documented–if you don’t know it then this Wikipedia entry does a good enough job of giving you the basics. Essentially, the young Texas millionaire/aviator was infatuated with the movies from a young age and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fURATK5Yt30 Lets kick off the week with a…I’m almost said ‘bang’ but halted myself just in time, preventing a rare lapse in taste on my part. The Hindenburg disaster of 1937 was documented by a number of newsreel companies, with the above British Pathe footage probably being the…I almost said