A side view of the HK-1, Hughes Flying Boat, the world's largest plane, which successfully completed its first flight. The eight 3,000 horsepower engines lifted the craft from the waters of Los Angeles Harbor with Hughes at the controls. The plane is 219 ft long.

The Hughes Laboratory machine shop is devoted to the building of full-scale test models of rock bits, tool and joints and other drilling tools for laboratory and field testing. In connection with the latter, the shop is equipped to manufacture these tools in sufficient quantities to make possible extensive and simultaneous field trials. The machine shop handles a large amount of work for the Research, Product and Metallurgical Engineering departments. This includes building new designs, new mechanisms and new devices for preliminary testing.

Howard Hughes (left), Cary Grant (right), and Miguel Alem?n Vald?s, President of Mexico (standing) in 1947.

Howard Hughes with his flight engineer and Dave Evans, radio operator, preparing for the Flying Boat's taxi test the next day. The group is shown on the flight deck of the 24,000 horsepower craft. The Flying Boat was assembled on Terminal Island in the Los Angeles Harbor.

The black and white view of mechanics working on the Lockheed 14 aircraft. Typed onto a piece of paper attached to the image: "Filling up the take with gasoline on Howard Hughes' plane in preparation for a take-off for Paris. At Floyd Bennett Field. July 1938."

Description printed on photograph's accompanying strip of paper: Howard Hughes being carried ashore after arrival in amphibian airplane at U.S. Coast Guard Station, Jamaica Bay, B.W.I.