On Monday, October 4, 2021 I visited the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum over in McMinnville, Oregon. Its centerpiece is the one and only wooden Hughes Flying Boat, popularly known as the Spruce Goose. That eight-engine monster (shown above in a vintage photo and on display) has a wingspan of 320 feet, a length of 219 feet, and a height of 79 feet.
When you walk inside the fuselage and look towards the rear, you can see some beach balls. Why are they there?
A display on the balcony provides the following explanation (which could be the basis for a Toastmasters speech):
“This beach ball is a genuine historic artifact from the one-and-only flight of the Hughes Fyling Boat Spruce Goose.
In preparing for taxi tests, Hughes was concerned about the floatability of the aircraft if the hull was breached. His solution was to pack the hull with a readily available flotation device…beach balls.
The story goes that prior to and shortly after the Nov. 2, 1947 taxi test and single flight of the Hughes Flying Boat, a beach ball could not be found in the Los Angeles area and possibly, all of Southern California. Hughes had instructed his people to purchase every beach ball they could find.
For the test, Hughes had the balls stuffed in the hull but it has yet to be determined exactly where they were placed. In 1992, a portion of those balls arrived in McMinnville still in the hull of the Flying Boat. This ball is one of about 25 of the original LA Beach Balls.”
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