Howard Lovering and Peggy Nuetzel, of Logic, Inc.,
served as project managers on the job and, though it was over twenty years ago, remember it as a time of great engineering excitement—full of intricate detail and complex transport challenges. “Tis was a massive team effort done on short schedule due to circumstances often beyond our control,” Lovering remembers. “Port wanted the aircraft moved pronto. Media was initially hostile—losing an icon—then turned supportive in a big way as proof of the team effort was observed.” Lovering has more than 35 years experience in project planning and development. In his 15 years as executive director of the Museum of Flight in Seattle, he was directly responsible for planning, funding, building, and operating one of the largest flight museums in the world. Evergreen brought him in, along with Nuetzel—who specializes in marketing, tourism, museum operations, and special events—to consult and represent the interests of Evergreen.
Photos courtesy of Peggy Nuetzel
“Along with the McMinnville team, we certainly celebrated landing the project, but it was a short celebration,” explains Lovering. “We knew what a big job it was—some of the team had already taken a look at the aircraft. It was never intended to be taken apart.” Disassembly would only be the beginning of their difficult tasks. “Experts initially said taking it apart would destroy it. But truthfully, moving it was the true task—over 1,000 miles by water and then land.” Te Spruce Goose was 218 feet long, 79 feet tall, 250,000 pounds empty, and boasted eight Pratt & Whitey R-4360 Wasp Major radial engines at 3,000 horsepower and 5,250 pounds each. Each engine possessed its own four-bladed, 17-foot, 800-pound Hamilton Standard propeller spread out across two wings—themselves 159 feet and 45,000 pounds apiece. Te flaps, used to slow the aircraft and increase lift,
were 2,050 pounds each. Te pontoons beneath the plane were 1,875 pounds apiece. Even the tail was a beast at eight stories above the ground, 62 feet long, and 5,000 pounds. Te plane’s wings, each a football field long, contained fuel lines, hydraulic lines, electrical wiring, and control cables. Each line had to be disconnected, capped off, and marked for reconnection when the Goose was reassembled. Lovering used an aerospace maintenance company,
STS, to organize the workers to do the reverse engineering and disassembly—a big job on a tight schedule. Tat task also involved some of the original Hughes crew who had worked on the aircraft. “At the location at Port of Long Beach, we employed
various contractors for heavy equipment and fabrication tasks, including lifting and moving,” he says. “Tese were regional companies, including one that fabricated
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