Spruce Goose

I was invited to give a talk in October 2005 at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, McMinville, Oregon on the occasion of what would have been Howard Hughes' 100th birthday describing the flying we did together. I was intrigued when I went on the flight deck; I wonder whether anyone else is intrigued by the pictures of the flight deck below.

It was obvious but I hadn't thought about it until I actually sat on the flight deck. After the first fight of the Spruce Goose it was clearly intended to carry on developing the aircraft and so the flight deck compartment had clearly received a lot of modifications before the program was abandoned. I'm not sure what all the changes were but one surprising change was to the right of the first pilot where a console had been introduced with instrumentation which only the pilot could see.