Bob Wright
Hawkeye
I was waiting for Nita to get ready to go somewhere, so turned on the television set.. An old movie was on dealing with testing a new airplane. The scenes showed a real airplane, not a model, in very good detail. I didn't recognize the airplane.
Later, I checked the television guide and found the movie was "Men Against the Sky" a 1940 release. Looking up the movie details, the plane was Howard Hughes' H-1 Racer, and it had actually been used in film ing. Further research aluded that the plane was the inspiration of the Vought P-66 Vanguard. I looked on another web site and there were some whimsical artist conceptions of a fighter looking much like a straight winged F4U Corsair.
Even Howard Hughes testified befor a committee after the War that the Focke-Wulf FW-190 and the Japanese Zero were inspired from his design.
The H-1 was built as a speed record challenger, and had two pairs of wings, one pair for closed circuit speed, the other for cross-country speed record.
Bob Wright
Later, I checked the television guide and found the movie was "Men Against the Sky" a 1940 release. Looking up the movie details, the plane was Howard Hughes' H-1 Racer, and it had actually been used in film ing. Further research aluded that the plane was the inspiration of the Vought P-66 Vanguard. I looked on another web site and there were some whimsical artist conceptions of a fighter looking much like a straight winged F4U Corsair.
Even Howard Hughes testified befor a committee after the War that the Focke-Wulf FW-190 and the Japanese Zero were inspired from his design.
The H-1 was built as a speed record challenger, and had two pairs of wings, one pair for closed circuit speed, the other for cross-country speed record.
Bob Wright
