The Hughes XF-11 was a prototype military reconnaissance aircraft, designed and flown by Howard Hughes for the United States Army Air Forces. Although 100 F-11s were ordered in 1943, only two prototypes and a mockup were completed. During the first XF-11 flight in 1946, Howard Hughes crashed the aircraft in Beverly Hills, California. The production aircraft had been cancelled in May 1945, but the second prototype was completed and successfully flown in 1947. The program was extremely controversial from the beginning, leading the U.S. Senate to investigate the F-11 and the Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat in 1947–1948
He was extremely lucky to survive. The crash was brutal.
ReplyDeleteIn over his head.
ReplyDeleteI thought a prop went into reverse pitch or something like that. Mechanical problem, not pilot error.
DeleteI looked it up and you're right.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_XF-11#Early_history_and_Beverly_Hills_crash
Hughes was a strange bird, indeed. I seriously doubt the FAA would issue him a license today. Strange may not be the best descriptive either.
Deletebloody contra-rotating gearboxes mounted on very powerful piston engines which put harmonic vibrations into the gear trains. what could go wrong. just ask jack northrop. he had a bad time or two on his tailless wing design with those gear boxes. eventually gave them up for a single prop and lost efficiency. he should have talked to rolls royce about it; they had good success on the avro shackleton.
ReplyDeletehughes limited his engineering input to throwing money to people who knew what they were about. he really was a fair pilot and engineer. his thoughts on engineering was if a little was good, a lot was better. on his h-1 racer, it was found that flush riveting the forward 30% of the fuselage would give him another five knots airspeed. he told the mechs to flush rivet the whole thing. criticize his designs as you will, but first look into the design constraints he was given and you will find his genius was in staying inside those constraints and getting a lot of performance out of the machines. look at the Loach as an example.