| Today, in
the small Oregon town of Cottage
Grove, this beautiful work of
"machine art" has been
recreated and is nearing
completion. In 1935,
the Hughes name was not
automatically associated with
aviation as it is today. Howard
Robard Hughes was determined to
change this, and he did with the
creation of his record breaking
H-1 Racer.
The
H-1 design is the result of
exhaustive testing in the 200-mph
wind tunnel at the California
Institute of Technology’s Guggenheim
Aeronautical Laboratory where
Hughes and his team of engineers
created the shape we see today. A
shape that looks quite able to
"cheat the wind" today
as it did on September 13, 1935,
when Hughes flew H-1 to set a
world speed record of 352.322 mph
at Santa Ana, California.
Keeping
in mind that the military
aircraft of that era were still,
largely, fabric covered biplanes,
the Hughes Racer represented a
major leap in technology, not
only in its very sleek design,
but in the systems installed by
Hughes and his team within the
airplane.
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