Transcribed from attached press release: "Howard Hughes, right, noted aircraft designer and industrialist is shown for the first time on the flight deck of the famed Hughes flying boat, which he designed and built. It is the largest airplane in the world. The plane is now nearing completion on Terminal Island, in Los Angeles-Long Bay Harbor, May 12, 1947." Los Angeles Harbor is now known as Long Beach Harbor, California.

The black and white view Mayor Laguardia and Grover Whelen watched Howard Hughes land in his Lockheed 14 aircraft at Floyd Bennett Field, New York. Typed onto a piece of paper attached to the image: "Mayor Laguardia (left) and Grover Whelen looking skyward as they see the approaching Howard Hughes and his globe girdlers complete A Round The World flight, 7-24-38. (Press Association)."

An overhead view of the near-fatal crash of Howard Hughes' XF-11 in Culver City, California.

Transcribed from attached press release: "HUGHES TEST-PILOTS SECOND XF-11. CULVER CITY, Calif., April 5. Preparatory to making its first flight test today, Howard Hughes, famed flier-industrialist, is shown in the cockpit of the second XF-11 sister ship to the plane in which he almost lost his life in an accident last July 7. Hughes designed and built the ship, one of the world's fastest long-range reconnaissance planes for the Army Air forces in conjunction with the Air Materiel Command engineers."