The H-4 Hercules was an aircraft built by Howard Hughes during world war 2, The idea behind it was to ship large amount of cargo across the Atlantic safely above German war ships. The whole project ran overtime and over budget and by the time the only prototype flew in 1947 the war was over and funding was cancelled. The media nicknamed the plane the Spruce Goose because of this and the fact that it was made of wood as there was no metal available because of the war. Howard Hughes hated the nickname and set it out on its only flight just to prove a point, amazingly for a prototype aircraft of its age and huge size it remain cared for and in hidden storage until 1980 where it spent some time next to the Queen Mary. Since 1995 its home has been the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon which is an hour southwest of Portland. The museum has a good range of other aircraft that are well worth checking out too.Website of the Evergreen Aviation Museum
The Concorde is often regarded as the pinnacle of aircraft design, its supersonic speed outstrips any passenger aircraft built today. There was also a Russian version that the media dubbed KonKordski, allegedly built from stolen plans the Russian TU-144 was very similar with a few changes like its mini wings known as canards near the front of the craft. In some respects it was better than the Concorde as it beat it to a maiden flight, was a tad faster and held a few more people. It suffered a bad reputation after crashing at the 1973 Paris airshow, a 1978 crash sealed the fate of the aircraft and permanent passenger service never resumed despite TU-144′s still being built up until 1984. Today a good example of the TU-144 can be found at the Auto & Technikmuseum at Sinsheim in Germany sitting next to a Concorde, hit the next page for a video of the plane being transported to the museum.
The first commercial flights of the Airbus 380 has commenced with Singapore Airlines taking the first delivery. Our photo shows one of the prototype Airbus 380′s decked out in Qantas paintwork visiting Melbourne Australia on one of it’s test flights. The new Airbus has revolutionized travel with luxury and comfort never before seen on an aircraft. The Singapore Airlines plane even offers suites to its first class guests, where travelers have full size beds, a cinema style television and even an area for office work. So far Airbus has 177 orders for this massive double decker plane and Qantas, Emirates and Singapore Airlines are among the lucky few expected to receive their new jets in 2008.
Transeum is more than just cars, its all things transport so we thought it was about time we featured a plane, and there is no better than the majestic Concorde. The Concorde was the first and only supersonic passenger jet, although the Russians nearly had one working, we will feature that in a few days time. There were only 16 production Concordes ever produced all being flown by either British Airways or Air France. Today most of the Concordes are on display at museums or airports around the world after their grounding a few years back. F-BVFB the 7th Concorde to be produced made her maiden flight in March 1976 and today stands proudly at the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum, South West Germany an hour or so’s drive from Stuttgart. The museum is an amazing transport center with all types of cars, boats, military machinery, planes and jets. The two biggest draw cards are the Concorde and the Russian Tupolev TU-144.
