Description given with photo: "Before Surprise Flight, Long Beach, Calif.: No longer land-locked, Howard Hughes' 200-ton flying boat, world's largest plane, rides free in Los Angeles harbor after being floated for the first time. The builder and pilot later took the controversial plane into the air for a surprise one-mile flight during taxing trials. Credit (ACME) 11-3-47."

Description printed on photograph's accompanying strip of paper: "Howard Hughes examining the damaged tail of his plane after his arrival at the Le Bourget Airfield, Paris, on his world flight. July 1938"

Transcribed from attached press release: "LITTLE BIT Only an inch and a quarter in diameter, this "microbit" enables engineers at the Hughes Tool Company, Houston, Texas, to estimate the performance of full-size bits for the oil drilling industry. The company operates the largest testing laboratory of its kind anywhere in the world and produces thousands of rock bits necessary to drill deeper and deeper as the world's shallow oil wells have become exhausted. Howard Hughes terms the Hughes Tool company the "keystone" of his industrial empire."

Transcribed from stamp on back of photo: "June 16, 1946; Hughes Aircraft Photo." Crowds and policeman watching as a section of Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" or "Flying Boat" was being moved (with a police escort) from the Hughes Aircraft plant in Culver City, California to Terminal Island in the Los Angeles Harbor where the plane was assembled June 1946. The men are raising the power lines so the fuselage can pass under.

The black and white view of a parade being held in celebration of Howard Hughes' completion of his Around the World flight in New York City, New York. Typed onto a piece of paper attached to the image: "New York welcoming Howard Hughes - General scene outside City Hall. 7/15/38."

Aerial view of the airport at Hughes' aircraft plant in Culver City, California. The airport's runway was in operation from 1941 to 1985.