[aimhigh]

Another newspaper error?

[kingu]

It was called the Spruce Goose by mocking editorial writers, which Hughes took and named the plane as a method of thumbing his nose at them. It is birch; kinda miss it being in Long Beach, CA.

[hattend]

"It was birch, not spruce," Potts said, looking the plane over. "It really is birch."

Better a "Spruce Goose" than a "Birch Bitch"

[Khurkris]

I used to make little canoes out of birch bark when I was a young peckerwood roaming the woods.

Hmm...Birch Bird...kinda has a ring to it...

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

Please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[Little Ray]

The birch bustard?

[SunkenCiv]

oldie, probably a dead link:

Looking Back:
The "Flying Lumberyard"
by Greg Mone

Like the Pelican, the H-4 was built to carry troops and weapons long distances... Because aluminum was being rationed, Kaiser and Hughes built their behemoth from wood (mostly birch, not spruce). Government support for the H-4 began to wane after the war... Hughes persisted (by then he and Kaiser had gone their separate ways), investing millions of his own in the project. Not long after the Spruce Goose's 1947 debut, though, government funding dried up and it became an instant relic, never to fly again.