Spruce Goose Move Becomes A Super-Project -- Long Beach Asks: Where Is Yamhill?

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Howard Lovering has been getting letters and phone calls.

Some are scholarly and polite; some are not. But they all want to know the same thing: "Where the heck is Yamhill County?"

Yamhill County, Ore., is going to be the new home of the Spruce Goose, and Lovering, director of the Evergreen AirVenture Museum, is in Long Beach to get the great relic ready for the trip.

It's a mammoth job, and some people - the kind who call and write - don't like it. They say Howard Hughes' legendary flying boat was built in Southern California, was flown in Southern California (only once, briefly, in 1947) and should stay in Southern California.

Lovering understands their sentiment, but he doesn't have time to debate the point. He's here to take the great plane back with him to Oregon, where it will be one of the main features in a new aerospace museum to be built at the airport in McMinnville.

And the deadline is tight.

Planning for the move began before it was even decided where the Spruce Goose would go. Crane people, barge people, overland people were all contacted by the McMinnville team, and a general plan was formulated for bringing the plane north.

The moving force behind the proposal was 62-year-old Delford Smith, described in an Evergreen AirVenture Museum press release as a "hard-driving, risk-taking entrepreneur." Add to that "skilled pilot, a skilled businessman and a dedicated humanitarian" and you begin to get the picture.

Smith is owner and founder of Evergreen International Aviation, Inc., a McMinnville-based company with global ties, a "billion-dollar fleet" of 150 aircraft, from helicopters to Boeing 747 cargo jets, and links to the CIA.

He also is a collector of vintage aircraft and is on the board of directors of the Museum of Flight in Seattle and the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica.

THE PLAN

Smith's plan is to open the Evergreen AirVenture Museum in McMinnville to house his collection and make it available for public viewing.

The details on how the Spruce Goose would be moved to McMinnville were part of the proposal submitted to the AeroClub of Southern California, which owned the plane and had to decide its future.

That proposal was written to demonstrate, Lovering says, that the McMinnville team understood the scope of the project and that they regarded the Spruce Goose as a historic "artifact that deserved a museum setting."

Lovering says he never believed that a Spruce Goose exhibit had the potential for commercial success. The plane has been on display in Long Beach since 1982, housed in its own giant dome alongside the Queen Mary, the retired ocean liner. For the past four years, the two artifacts have been operated as tourist attractions - at a loss - by The Walt Disney Co.

"If Disney couldn't make this a commercial success, who in the world is going to make it a commercial success?" Lovering asked.

The McMinnville plan offers a non-commercial alternative - a subsidized, family-oriented museum.

When the phone call came that McMinnville's proposal had been chosen, the Evergreen folks were ecstatic. The celebration lasted almost half an hour.

"There was no champagne drinking or anything like that," recalls Lovering. "Just a few high-fives, some back-slapping, a few job-well-dones. Then we were on the phone, making arrangements for the move."

Within a week, the Evergreen team was in Long Beach in office space provided by Disney aboard the Queen Mary.

A dozen Evergreen team members are working on the plane's disassembly and relocation, and that number is expected to double.

As the Evergreen crew works from baskets at the end of hydraulic arms, disconnecting the Spruce Goose's engines, Donald Ankley sits watching from behind his Macintosh computer, documenting the process and making sure everything goes according to plan.

On a stage across the dome, beneath the aircraft's tail, young dancers in white pants and red satin jackets are stomping and twirling to music from "Hair" while tourists line up for Cokes and hot dogs at the snack counter.

By the nose of the plane, more than 100 paying visitors stand and watch from behind a temporary railing as Evergreen technicians in white coveralls dismantle the aircraft.

The Goose's propellers - 800 pounds each - are already off the plane, the four blades removed from each of the eight hubs and the pieces crated for shipment in huge boxes stacked to one side. The eight engines are being taken off one at a time, alternating between the starboard and port wings so the plane won't become unbalanced.

Each engine weighs 5,250 pounds and will be mounted vertically on platforms for shipping.

The toughest part of the whole move is the disassembly, says Lovering.

Plans call for the Spruce Goose to be broken down into 38 elements. Thirty-four of those elements will be driven to McMinnville by truck. Four - the fuselage, the wings and the vertical stabilizer - will go by barge.

"If we didn't care about preservation, we'd probably just cut it up and go over the highway," Lovering says. "Just knocking it apart would be a piece of cake."

The hard part is trying to disassemble the plane in a way where you "worry about every wood screw" as it comes out, he says.

"This is not a hardy thing that you can bounce around," he says. "It's an old, wood-laminated artifact that requires careful handling."

The plane will be methodically broken down into its basic parts under the supervision of George Kruska of Evergreen, who helped build the flying boat 47 years ago. Lesser parts that might move around and be damaged during transit are themselves disassembled and packed for the trip.

First come the propellers, then in order: the engines, the ailerons, the wing tips, the pontoons, the elevators, elevator tabs, horizontal stabilizers, vertical stabilizers, tail cone, wing fairings, and the wings.

There are very few glued joints that have to be broken, says Kruska. Most of the elements, including the wings, are simply bolted together. The control surfaces are on hinges that are bolted to the main structure.

THE CHALLENGE

Many parts of the huge flying boat are big and heavy.

The ailerons, the control surfaces near the tips of the wings that allow the pilot to bank the aircraft, are each 6 feet long and weigh 400 pounds.

The flaps, which slow the aircraft and increase lift during takeoffs and landings, are also on the wing but closer to the body of the plane, or fuselage. They are larger than the ailerons and weigh 2,050 pounds each.

The pontoons are each 1,875 pounds; the elevators, 1,175; the horizontal stabilizers, 2,600. The rudder is 48 feet long and weighs 1,400 pounds, and the vertical stabilizer - the large tail fin that tops out eight stories above the ground - is 62 feet long and weighs 5,000 pounds.

The greatest challenge for the Evergreen crew, however, will be the wings. Each is 159 feet long (half a football field, counting the end zones) and weighs 45,000 pounds. Each contains fuel lines, hydraulic lines, electrical wiring and control cables. Each line has to be disconnected, capped off and marked for reconnection when the Spruce Goose is reassembled.

The props, engines, ailerons, elevators, and other parts that are traveling by truck will leave for McMinnville as they are taken off and packed. The wings, the fuselage and the vertical stabilizer will be shrink-wrapped in plastic and rolled out of the dome on wheeled cradles. Once outside, they will be lifted by a floating barge crane and placed cradle and all on the barge that will take them to Oregon, says Kruska. The cradles holding the fuselage, stabilizer and wings will be welded to the deck of the barges.

Lovering says they expect a two-week window of good weather in early October in which to take the Spruce Goose north. After that, winter storms begin to gather.

Travel time up the coast is expected to be about a week (Oct. 6 through 12), but things will slow down once the Goose gets to the Columbia River and is reloaded onto river barges.

Because the river barges are smaller, the load will be split up. The barges will have to be taken through locks, connecting various waterways, before moving up the Willamette River to the final unloading area.

The movers hope to get within 15 miles of the final destination before unloading, but shallow water may make that unrealistic, Evergreen planners say.

To help keep costs down, the museum staff has promoted donations and discounts from vendors of goods and services.

Firstline Corp., of Valdosta, Ga., for instance, has joined with DuPont Corp. to donate the materials and equipment to shrink wrap parts for shipment.

The Evergreen crew has set up a time-lapse motion picture camera to record the dismantling at one frame every three minutes. Eastman Kodak is donating the film, Foto-Kem of Hollywood is processing the film, and Birns ' Sawyer of Hollywood is discounting the camera rental.

THE PRICE

How much is it all costing? Published estimates have ranged from $1.5 million to $10 million.

Lovering just shakes his head. He's not sure what the total will be, he says, but he's sure of one thing: It's going to be considerably less than the lowest published estimate.

"Every penny I don't have to spend down here, I don't spend," he says. "I don't want to pay the highest price for anything."