Hughes H-1 Racer

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The Hughes H-1 was a racing aircraft built by Hughes Aircraft in 1935. It set a world airspeed record and a transcontinental speed record across the United States.
The H-1 Racer was the last aircraft built by a private individual to set the world speed record; every aircraft to hold the honor since was a military design.

Design and development

During his work on his movie Hell's Angels, Howard Hughes employed Glenn Odekirk to maintain the fleet of over 100 aircraft used in the production.
The two men shared a common interest in aviation and hatched a plan to build a record-beating aircraft.
The aircraft was given many names, but is commonly known as the H-1. It was the first aircraft model produced by the Hughes Aircraft company.

Design studies began in 1934 with an exacting, large scale model (approximately two-three ft in length) that was tested in Caltech's wind tunnel, revealing a speed potential of 365 mph.

Technical details

Streamlining was a paramount design criterion resulting in "one of the cleanest and most elegant aircraft designs ever built."
Many groundbreaking technologies were developed during the construction process, including individually machined flush rivets that left the aluminium skin of the aircraft completely smooth.
The H-1 also had retractable landing gear to further increase the speed of the aircraft including a fully-retractable hydraulically actuated tail skid.

It was fitted with a Pratt & Whitney R-1535 twin-row 14-cylinder radial engine of 25.2 liters, which although originally rated at 700 hp (522 kW), was tuned to put out over 1,000 horsepower (750 kW).

Due to two different roles envisioned for the racing aircraft, a set of short-span wings for air racing and speed records and a set of "long" wings for cross-country racing were prepared.

Operational history

The H-1 first flew in 1935 and promptly broke the world landplane speed record with Hughes at the controls, clocking 352 mph (566 km/h) averaged over four timed passes. Hughes apparently ran the aircraft out of fuel and managed to crash-land without serious damage to either himself or H-1.
As soon as Hughes exited the H-1 when he crashed it in a beet field, his only comment was: "We can fix her, she'll go faster". At the time, the world seaplane speed record was 440 mph (709 km/h), set by a Macchi M.C.72 in October 1934.

Hughes later implemented minor changes to the H-1 Racer to make it more suitable for a trans-continental speed record attempt.
The most significant change was the fitting of a new, longer set of wings that gave the aircraft a lighter wing loading.
On January 19, 1937, a year and a half after his previous landplane speed record in the H-1, Hughes set a new trans-continental speed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. He smashed his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes by two hours. His average speed over the flight was 322 mph (518 km/h).

Considering the contemporary service aircraft were biplanes, Hughes fully expected the United States Army Air Forces to embrace his aircraft's new design and make the H-1 the basis for a new generation of U.S. fighter aircraft. His efforts to "sell" the design were unsuccessful. In postwar testimony before the Senate, Hughes indicated that resistance to the innovative design was the basis for the USAAF rejection of the H-1: "I tried to sell that airplane to the Army but they turned it down because at that time the Army did not think a cantilever monoplane was proper for a pursuit ship..."

Aviation historians have posited that the H-1 Racer may have inspired later radial engine fighters such as the P-47 Thunderbolt and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.

After the war, Hughes further claimed that "it was quite apparent to everyone that the Japanese Zero fighter had been copied from the Hughes H-1 Racer." He noted both the wing planform, the tail empennage design and the general similarity of the Zero and his racer..
Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi Zero strongly refuted the allegation of the Hughes H-1 influencing the design of the Japanese fighter aircraft.

The Hughes H-1 Racer is featured in the 1940 RKO Radio Pictures movie: Men Against the Sky.

Markings

The second set of wings were painted blue, but the original (short-span) wings were painted red. Various documents (including an article from TIME magazine, September 23, 1935) confirm this, but it is still a little-known fact since there are no color photographs of the aircraft from the 1930s and the wings have always been depicted as blue in modern media (such as in the film The Aviator).

Over time, the H-1's wings have been marked with the registration numbers "NR258Y", "NX258Y", and finally, simply "R258Y".
Several photos exist of a transitional period in which the "X" was painted directly on top of the "R".
The color of the registration letters at the time of the record setting flights is said to have been white. Hughes later repainted the letters to the current yellow color to match the color of his company's logo.

Replica

Jim Wright of Cottage Grove, Oregon built a full scale replica of the H-1 that first flew in 2002.
So exact was the replica to the original that the FAA granted it serial number 2 of the model.
The achievement in recreating the craft was heralded in virtually every well know aviation magazine of the time.
On August 4, 2003, after a successful unveiling of the replica at the 2003 AirVenture at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Wright fatally crashed.
On his way home to Oregon, he had landed briefly in Gillette, Wyoming, to refuel.
While on the ground, Wright met briefly with local reporters and indicated that the aircraft had been having propeller "gear problems."
He then departed, crashing just north of the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park about an hour later.
The replica, originally slated for use in the film The Aviator, was completely destroyed.
The official accident report points to a failure of a counterweight on the constant speed propeller.
On December 17, 2003, Cottage Grove State Airport was dedicated as Jim Wright Field.