Description given with photo: "The Senator's Lady Is Sympathetic, Washington, D.C. - Mrs. Claude Pepper, wife of the Senator from Florida, is shown shaking hands with Howard Hughes, millionaire plane-builder, as he emerged from the Senate War Investigating Committee hearing room after yesterday's session on the witness stand. Mrs. Pepper has been a constant spectator at the hearings. Standing beside Hughes is tome Slack, his counsel. Photo by G.B. Kress. 8/9/47.
The official portrait painting of Howard Hughes. In 1998, Russ Stevenson presented the painting, along with many of his other Hughes Airwest files and memoirs, to the Special Collections Library of the University of Texas at Dallas.
Howard Hughes sits at the controls of his 400,000 pound Flying Boat just a day prior to its first tests in the Los Angeles Harbor in California. The aircraft was 219 feet long with a wing span of 320 feet.