A recent visit to the Evergreen Air & Space Museum gave me the opportunity to tour the 1940's era Spruce Goose, the largest wooden airplane ever built and flown. In some aspects it is still the largest or tied with some of the existing aircraft.

Designed to ferry troops accross the North Atlantic, the aircraft was seen as an answer to the U-Boat wolfpack problems in early years of WW II. However by the time the aircraft was ready to fly, the war was over and before it was even out of the design stage, the U-Boat problem was solved due to radar, improved convoy tactics and the capture of the enigma codes.

Imagine flying over the north atlantic at 20,000 feet in an unpresurized, unheated aircraft at a ground speed of 150-200 MPH with 8 massive propeller driven engines.

Still the fact that the aircraft existed at all is a testiment to the ingenuity of a generation of Americans who thought big and built bigger.