{"id":7701521,"date":"2026-07-29T08:44:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T06:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/howard-hughes-xf-11-crash-1946\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T09:18:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:18:28","slug":"howard-hughes-xf-11-crash-1946","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/howard-hughes-xf-11-crash-1946\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flight That Broke Howard Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style><p>On the afternoon of 7 July 1946, the richest man in America climbed into an unproven silver aircraft and took off alone, against the advice of everyone around him. Just over an hour later, Howard Hughes was lying in the burning wreckage of a Beverly Hills living room, his chest crushed, his body scorched, his life hanging by a thread.<\/p>\r\n<p>The aircraft was the Hughes XF-11, a sleek twin-boom spy plane he had staked his reputation on. Its maiden flight would nearly kill him &mdash; and change the rest of his life.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px;border-radius:8px;margin:24px 0\"><h3 style=\"margin-top:0;padding-top:0\">Quick Facts<\/h3><ul style=\"margin:0;line-height:1.9\">\r\n<li><strong>Type:<\/strong> Prototype photo-reconnaissance aircraft<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Maker:<\/strong> Hughes Aircraft Company, for the U.S. Army Air Forces<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Engines:<\/strong> two Pratt &amp; Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radials, ~3,000 hp each, driving contra-rotating propellers<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Crew:<\/strong> 2<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Maiden flight:<\/strong> 7 July 1946, flown by Howard Hughes himself<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Built:<\/strong> 2 prototypes (an order for 100 was cancelled at war&rsquo;s end)<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The crash:<\/strong> right engine&rsquo;s rear propeller reversed pitch; the aircraft went down in Beverly Hills<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>Hughes&rsquo;s injuries:<\/strong> severe burns, crushed chest, collapsed lung, multiple broken ribs &mdash; he survived<\/li>\r\n<\/ul><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">A plane the Army didn't really want<\/h2>\r\n<p>The XF-11 was a child of the war and of Hughes's relentless lobbying. Back in 1943, with the backing of Elliott Roosevelt, the aircraft was ordered over the loud objections of the Army's own experts &mdash; a hundred of them, on the strength of Hughes's promises. When the war ended, that order collapsed to just two prototypes.<\/p>\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1117645142  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/howard-hughes-photo.jpg\" alt=\"Howard Hughes in 1938\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Howard Hughes in 1938, already a record-setting aviator and film producer before the XF-11 nearly ended his life. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;much against my better judgment and the advice of my staff&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Gen. Henry \"Hap\" Arnold<\/strong> &mdash; Commanding General, USAAF, on ordering the F-11 (via Bartlett &amp; Steele)<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>It was a big, beautiful machine: two enormous Pratt &amp; Whitney Wasp Major radials, each swinging a set of contra-rotating propellers, mounted on a graceful twin-boom fuselage. On paper it would fly higher and farther than almost anything. Hughes, a genuinely gifted pilot, insisted on being the one to prove it.<\/p><h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Seventy-five minutes to disaster<\/h2>\r\n<p>He broke the plan almost immediately. The test called for a short, careful flight with the landing gear down. Instead Hughes retracted the gear, carried far more fuel than agreed, and stayed up. Then, more than an hour in, something failed deep in the right engine's propeller system.<\/p>\r\n<p>A hydraulic leak caused the rear propeller on the right side to slip into reverse pitch. Suddenly one side of the aircraft was dragging like an anchor, hauling the nose around and dragging it down. Hughes, fighting for control, made the wrong call &mdash; he kept power on the failing side instead of the good one &mdash; and the aircraft kept sinking over the rooftops of Beverly Hills.<\/p>\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1109465902  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/hughes-xf-11.jpg\" alt=\"Models of the Hughes D-2 and XF-11\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Models of the Hughes D-2 and the XF-11 that grew from it &mdash; the twin-boom recon aircraft Hughes bet his reputation on. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;It appeared that loss of hydraulic fluid caused failure of the pitch change mechanism of right rear propeller.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>USAAF crash investigators<\/strong> &mdash; Official accident report (AFHRA F-11 project file)<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n<p>He tried to stretch his glide to the fairways of the Los Angeles Country Club and fell agonisingly short, clipping three houses. The aircraft tore through the neighbourhood and caught fire. That Hughes came out alive at all was down to a passing U.S. Marine, Sergeant William Lloyd Durkin, who dragged him from the flames.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"display:flex;justify-content:center;margin:2em 0\"><blockquote class=\"reddit-embed-bq\" data-embed-height=\"500\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/WeirdWings\/comments\/af6kov\/howard_hughes_xf11_crash_beverly_hills_2_were\/\">The XF-11 crash on r\/WeirdWings<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/embed.reddit.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The bed, the second plane, and the long shadow<\/h2>\r\n<p>Hughes should not have survived. Burns, a caved-in chest, a collapsed lung and a fistful of broken ribs kept him bedridden for months. Ever the engineer, he used the time to design himself a motorised, button-controlled hospital bed &mdash; a fussy, brilliant contraption often credited with influencing the adjustable beds hospitals use today. Less happily, the painkillers from those months would shadow him for the rest of his life.<\/p>\r\n<p>The story has a quieter coda. A second XF-11, fitted with ordinary single propellers instead of the troublesome contra-rotating ones, flew without drama in April 1947. By then the world had moved on, and the programme was cancelled. The spy plane never entered service &mdash; but the flight that nearly destroyed it, and its creator, became one of aviation's most haunting near-misses.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/il21C_pLhnk\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"display:flex;justify-content:center;margin:2em 0\"><blockquote class=\"reddit-embed-bq\" data-embed-height=\"500\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/aviation\/comments\/11cwjq6\/the_hughes_xf11\/\">The Hughes XF-11 on r\/aviation<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/embed.reddit.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;font-style:italic;margin-top:8px\">Sources: Wikipedia; Bartlett &amp; Steele, <em>Empire: The Life, Legend and Madness of Howard Hughes<\/em>; Air Force Historical Research Agency F-11 project file.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\">\r\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/vought-xf5u-flying-pancake-navy-fighter\/\">Flying Pancake: The Navy Fighter That Never Flew<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the afternoon of 7 July 1946, the richest man in America climbed into an unproven silver aircraft and took off alone, against the advice of everyone around him. Just over an hour later, Howard Hughes was lying in the burning wreckage of a Beverly Hills living room, his chest crushed, his body scorched, his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":7700785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7701521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Hughes XF-11: The Crash That Broke Howard Hughes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Hughes XF-11&#039;s 1946 maiden flight nearly killed Howard Hughes, wrecked Beverly Hills homes, and shadowed the rest of his life.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/howard-hughes-xf-11-crash-1946\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hughes XF-11: The Crash That Broke Howard Hughes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Hughes XF-11&#039;s 1946 maiden flight nearly killed Howard Hughes, wrecked Beverly Hills homes, and shadowed the rest of his life.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/howard-hughes-xf-11-crash-1946\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Afterburner - 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