Hughes, Howard

Date of birth: December 24, 1905.

Place of birth: Houston, Texas.

Died: April 5, 1976.

Major contributions: Set speed records for flying across the United States and around the world; founded Hughes Aircraft Company, a major producer of airplanes and satellites; built the world’s largest fly­ing boat; expanded TransWorld Airlines (TWA) into a major airline.

Awards: Harmon Trophy (twice); Collier Trophy; Octave Chanute Award; Congressional Gold Medal; member of Aviation Hall of Fame.

oward Hughes had a remarkable career that including setting world speed records as a pilot, creating one of the giant companies of the aerospace industry, and building a major airline. In the later decades of his
life, he lived almost completely isolated from other people.

Making Movies

Hughes was the son of a Texas oilman. The family became wealthy when Hughes’s father invented a drill bit that could dig deep through rock for oil. The company that made the drill bit—the Hughes Tool Company—generated huge profits that funded other business ven­tures. In 1924, at age eighteen, Howard Hughes gained control of his family for­tune when his father died.

Two years later, Hughes moved to Hollywood in Los Angeles, California, to follow his passion for movies. He began producing movies and took over direct­ing his favorite, Hell’s Angels. The movie portrayed air combat during World War I. Hughes bought nearly ninety vintage planes (forming the largest private air fleet in the world as a result) and filmed hours of aerial com­bat scenes. Released in 1930, the movie was a box-office success, but it came nowhere near earning back its stunning cost, $3.8 million (which would be ten times that amount today). From the late 1940s to the late 1950s, he owned a major motion pic­ture studio called RKO Pictures.

О After making the movie Hell’s Angels, Howard Hughes went on to make Sky Devils, a comedy about World War I aviation. Hughes reused many of the airplanes from his large fleet. He is shown here on the Sky Devils set in 1931.