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"