Spruce Goose Team Throws a Wingding

They were a unique, boisterous clan, this young team that blueprinted and glued and bolted and assembled the Spruce Goose like some monstrous homebuilt.

They even shared a little of the wildness of Howard Hughes, its dreamer-in-chief. That’s why he picked them. He knew the type. He needed men who thrived on 36-hour shifts and good bourbon and who were ready to follow him anywhere, because they were just cussed enough to finish something that the rest of the world said should never have been started.

They sacrificed weekends, early nights, hobbies, postgraduate studies, career changes, a little of their livers and most of their marriages. But they did it. They built an immortal airplane, a statue to man’s endeavor as true as the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis or Glamorous Glennis.

Of the eight dozen men who built the Hughes Flying Boat in 1947, fewer than two dozen remain.

Those are bonded, a closed club. Cards are exchanged each Christmas. Free admission to the Spruce Goose exhibit at Long Beach is a perk they exercise frequently. Each Nov. 2, the anniversary of the first and only flight, they gather for champagne in its shadow as guests of Wrather Port Properties, keepers of their airplane.

They were there Monday. In their 60s and 70s and not drinking quite as much good bourbon. But still grinning and sharing. And still finding--despite all the books, all the articles, all the films--something new to tell of those 60 seconds at 70 feet over Long Beach Harbor 40 years ago.

Van Storm, 72, now retired to Westchester after 40 years with Hughes’ organizations, was a systems mechanic on the flight. He remembers a particularly bumpy, shaking high-speed taxi before takeoff and two newspaper reporters who asked to be returned to shore on a chase launch.

“They kept claiming they were on deadline, but they were as white as sheets,” Storm remembers. “Howard grinned at me and we had the same thought. They wanted off this thing before it killed ‘em.”

Merle Coffee, 70, of San Pedro, was the radio operator on the Spruce Goose. He thinks he knows why the airplane’s first test was not developed into a full-blown maiden flight at altitude.

“I don’t think Hughes was physically, and I might add the word mentally, up to it,” Coffee said. “He was 42, he had been terribly injured in a plane crash a year or so before . . . and he just didn’t feel right about it (a full flight).”

Phil Thibodeau, 66, of Garden Grove, rode the flight crouched inside the left wing to check for gas, oil and hydraulic leaks. His only view was through a half-inch drain hole in an engine nacelle.

“All I could see while we were taxiing was a little piece of water and a little piece of hull,” he said. “When I saw a little piece of daylight, I knew we were flying.”

Mel Glaser, 66, of Hemet, was in the right wing.

“I was lurking behind engines 5 and 6,” he recalls. “I was also right behind the landing light. As we lifted off, I moved the light and had a king-size seat, as good a seat as Howard Hughes, right in the leading edge of the wing.”

Chuck Jucker, 70, of Las Vegas, flew as crew chief. He knew that as an experimental aircraft, the flying boat could not carry non-crew members aboard. Federal aviation regulations required the airplane to carry life jackets. Further, all crew members should use seat belts.

“There were no life jackets on board,” Jucker said. “We had 15 non-crew members, mostly reporters, on board. When we took off, nobody was sitting down, nobody was strapped in . . . hell, I had a guy up in the tail on a ladder.”

Stan Sodeberg, 62, was in charge of the flying boat’s fabric skin. He tended the great white during decades of seclusion and remains maintenance supervisor of the airplane on display.

That gives him 41 years of continuous service--and an untapped supply of Spruce Goose secrets.

“But I’m saving them for my book,” he said. “It’s going to be called: ‘The Last Mechanic.’ ”

The Spruce Goose is at Pier J, Long Beach. Call (213) 435-3511, Passenger Information, for admission times and prices.