Hughes

The story so far

Howard Hughes built aircraft the way he did everything else — enormously, secretively, and on his own terms. His H-4 Hercules was the largest aircraft in the world, built from laminated birch because wartime rules reserved aluminium for other programmes.

It flew once, for about 26 seconds, in November 1947, with Hughes himself at the controls. Its 97.54-metre wingspan stood as the widest of any aircraft ever flown for seventy-two years — a record broken only in 2019.

Hughes aircraft

Silhouettes are sized by real wingspan — bigger aircraft draw bigger.

Every type, ranked by length