Hughes for Sale: GM Or Ford may be the buyer

Ford may be the buyer

More than anything else, the late Howard Hughes loved airplanes. In 1932 he founded Hughes Aircraft, which manufactured the Winged Bullet that Hughes piloted to a U.S. transcontinental speed record of 7 hr. 28 min. at an average speed of 327 m.p.h. The company also built the famed "Spruce Goose," the eight-engine plywood plane that flew just once, with Hughes at the controls. Now a major defense contractor based in El Segundo, Calif., Hughes Aircraft is an important producer of satellites and missiles. It has high-security factories, where some of America's brightest engineers work on advanced military technology. Among its 1,500...

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