Warning: Before you read any further, be advised that the next paragraph includes a sentence that violates an unwritten law of journalism: It mentions the name “Howard Hughes” without the prefix “eccentric billionaire.” So read on at your own peril.

Aviation-wise, Howard Hughes may be best remembered for the “Spruce Goose.” The project was conceived in 1942. German U-Boats in the North Atlantic were massacring the merchant ships carrying desperately needed wartime supplies to Great Britain. One potential solution: Deliver the supplies by air. The problem, of course, was to build a plane capable of doing the job. The plane would have to be heavy enough to haul massive amounts of troops, materiel and equipment and still possess the range to make the Atlantic crossing.

Howard Hughes and shipbuilder Henry Kaiser teamed up to meet the challenge. Originally named the HK-1, the Hughes Kaiser flying boat was a monstrosity weighing 400,000 pounds (when loaded) and possessing a wingspan of almost 320 feet. When Kaiser pulled out, Hughes stripped the “K” from its name. But skeptics had another name for the H-4 Hercules: “Hughes’s Folly.”

Among other things, the critics complained that the plane would eat up too much precious aluminum needed for other wartime projects. To get around the metal shortage, Hughes designed the plane almost entirely of wood. Although it was nicknamed the “Spruce Goose,” it was actually made of birch.

On this date 62 years ago, pilot Hughes taxied the Spruce Goose along the waters of Long Beach bay near Los Angeles. It was supposed to be just a low-speed run over water. But to the surprise of onlookers, Hughes lifted the plane into the air 70 feet above the waves and rode her for about a mile at a speed of 135 MPH. The Spruce Goose could actually fly!

Hughes had defied the critics. But it was a hollow victory. The war had been over for two years and the need for a plane like the Hercules had passed. The Spruce Goose would remain in mothballs until Hughes’s death in 1976. The Walt Disney Company acquired the plane in 1988 and tried to turn it into an attraction. But the venture proved a disappointment. The plane was finally acquired by an Oregon aviation museum in 1995 and that’s where it remains today.

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