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."
Date stamped on back of photo: Nov 2, 1947. Transcribed from attached press release: "IN THE AIR Hughes Flying boat, with Howard Hughes at the controls, takes to the air at Los Angeles Harbor November 2, 1947. LONG BEACH, Calif., Nov. 2 - - Howard Hughes' 400,000-pound flying boat, world's largest plane, in the air on its first flight. The mammoth aircraft today flew one mile at a height of 70 feet over Los Angeles Harbor with Hughes at the controls. Hughes had scheduled taxi tests only for the 219-foot long ship but it 'felt so good' on the second taxi test run at 95 miles per hour that he took it off the water, as shown here, on the third and final run. The super plane's air speed was 100 miles per hour. Take-off speed was 95 miles per hour. Hughes termed the tests exceptionally successful. The eight-engine behemoth, launched yesterday off Terminal Island, passed its tests today in view of thousands on the shore and in small craft near the test area."
Howard Hughes is sitting on the ground examining an architectural drawing of the Hughes Culver City plant. There is a section on "Intake Duct Body Plan."
Sergeant Stanley R. Erickson puts together an aerial photographic map while Lieutenant Marvin R. Williams of Sligo, Pennsylvania looks on. Sergeant Erickson is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Gustav Erickson of 1922 Bernice Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Erickson is a member of a mapping group in the Army Air Forces that was working with the Howard Hughes Company. The photo has the identification 19828 A. C. in the bottom right corner.
Transcribed from photo sleeve: "Two unidentified men in the Army Air Forces at the Mosaic Department, 8th Photo Section, in Mitchell Field New York." The photo has the identification 19829 A. C. in the bottom right corner.
The interior of a plane that was being used by the Army Air Forces to take aerial photographs. The photo has the identification F-23471 A. C. in the bottom right corner.
An Army Air Force Compilation Technician at work transferring the pertinent terrain information from the Recto-Blique to the chart. The photograph is labeled C-23471 A. C.
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.