April 5, 1976: Howard Hughes flies off into the sunset
This day in history marks the passing of eccentric multimillionaire Howard Hughes 31 years ago. Hughes's checkered, though certainly profitable, career started at the tender age of 17, when he assumed control of his late father's oil-field tool company. The Houston company had developed and patented the rotary drill bit and revolutionized oil well drilling.
Hughes Tool Co. rotary bit
A few years later, Hughes headed to Hollywood, where he produced a string of gritty classics, including The Outlaw (featuring the human mammary glands as principal stars) and Scarface (not the one with Tony Montana) and the most expensive film up to that time, Hells Angels.
In 1948, Hughes parlayed his clout and capital into a majority stake in Radio Keith Orchestra (RKO) Pictures. Hughes soon sold his shares in RKO, only to buy it outright in 1954; ever the eccentric, Hughes waited but a year to sell the studio.
Along the way, the offbeat millionaire indulged his passion for aviation, establishing the Hughes Aircraft Company and later buying a majority stake in Trans World Airlines -- although when he acquired the company it was named Trans-Western Airlines.
Hughes' personal amphibious airplane
He also engaged his passion for wimmens. He had affairs with tons of hollywood starlets and came close to marrying the young Katherine Hepburn but she couldn't hang with him and his growing descent into madness.
During the 1930s, Hughes flew his own custom-made plane into the record books, breaking various speed and flight-time records. Despite his glittery achievements and hefty bankroll, Hughes was never one for publicity; he ultimately retreated from public life in 1950.
Hughes record-shattering aircraft
Howard Hughes in the last photo before the XF-11 maiden flight.
In 1946 with the war over, but because of the atomic bomb, the need was greater than ever to know what other countries were doing. The United States government contracted w/ Howard Hughes to build a high altitude spy plane that could go above radar with a special camera using newly developed fine grain film. Howard was a pioneer of innovative ideas such as the flat flush rivet to make aircraft more aerodynamic and was always the test pilot in a new plane.
XF-11
The twenty-eight cylinder engines in the XF-11 developed more than enough power to the counter-rotating double propellers designed to create more thrust. Thirty minutes into the initial flight with Hughes in the cockpit, the gear boxes made for the propellers failed, leaving Hughes without power and causing an out-of-control crash in Beverly Hills which destroyed two homes. The wreck that he miraculously survived left him scarred for life, addicted to morphine, and a recluse. The rest is history. This is the last authorized known image taken of Howard Hughes before the takeoff of that fateful flight.
Suffering from drug addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder and a form of paranoid schizophrenia, Hughes eventually sequestered himself away in an ever-rotating series of luxury hotels, where he would toil for days on end, surviving on a diet that leaned more heavily toward drugs than food.
Hughes's death in 1976 in a Las Vegas resort where he had reserved an entire floor and lived for years touched off a well-publicized scrap. A number of wills, all supposedly in the millionaire's name, were unearthed. The wills were all ultimately dismissed as frauds.
The modern film, "The Aviator" starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes, and a bevy of hotties, is a very good movie. I highly recommend it if you have the chance to see it on DVD.
