After a recent radio show guest spot, I received an email from a person that claimed to be the daughter of a former Hughes Aircraft employee. Having grown up on Long Island where many government contactors are located, I am somewhat familiar with that part of the aircraft industry and have known many people that have worked on various U.S. Government contracts over the years. That helped me to make the decision to write this article and tell this story.

Linda is a retired teacher. She taught in public and private schools for over thirty years and has emailed me an impressive array of diplomas and certifications. She also emailed a few photos and some paperwork that verifies the fact that her father probably worked for Howard Hughes. Because she asked for anonymity, I cannot say much more about her or divulge where she currently lives at this time. I have encouraged her to come forward at some point and tell her own story in her own words.

Linda says that her father was involved with Hughes Aircraft as early as 1942, but the timeframe that concerns this story is the year 1947. It was during the summer of that year that Howard Hughes was obsessed with getting his oversized wooden seaplane nicknamed the "Spruce Goose” ready for a test flight. Officially known as the H-4 Hercules, the aircraft flew only once on November 2, 1947. The amount of time and work that went into getting the Hercules ready for that flight was unbelievable.

Her father worked closely with Hughes during the Hercules project and later became a full-time employee of Hughes Aircraft. The two men met after he was referred to Hughes by a mutual acquaintance just after the USA declared war on the Axis powers and entered World War II. Linda told me that Hughes used as her dad as a “problem solver.” He had a knack for being able to look at most any mechanical problem and quickly suggest a practical solution. He also had the kind of temperament that allowed him to work with the eccentric billionaire.

Hughes was besieged with a number of problems during the summer of 1947 including a U.S. Senate inquiry into the way he had managed funds for the Hercules and XF-11 Photoreconnaissance Aircraft projects. Linda says that shortly after he testified at the Senate hearings, Howard Hughes returned to oversee work on the Hercules and spoke to her father about his possible involvement in an important government project.

“My father and I frequently spoke on the phone during the early 1970s,” Linda told me. “We were very close and often bounced ideas off of one another. I do not recall the exact date, but I phoned to ask dad some questions about one thing or another and the subject of Howard Hughes came up. Howard’s face was constantly on the cover of most of the supermarket tabloids during that time and we began talking about the National Enquirer and how they kept hounding him (Howard Hughes).”

Linda’s father scolded her for wasting her money on the National Enquirer, but she said that her mother also purchased the tabloid. “My mother thought it was amusing that the bogus stories about Howard almost always appeared on the same page as their standing reward for proof that UFOs and Aliens existed,” Linda continued. “Dad told me that Howard Hughes could have claimed that reward if he needed the money and laughed about the fact that he didn’t. When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me the story.”

According to Linda, Howard Hughes and her father were not friends and her dad would probably not be considered a part of Hughes‘ inner circle if such a thing existed. However, he did spend a lot of time with Hughes during the Hercules project and the two had a casual working relationship as long as her father delivered the goods. She told me that her dad said he was busy brainstorming with some engineers when Hughes summoned him into an empty office. Hughes had a kind of inquisitively stern look on his face and that usually meant that he wanted some advice on how to solve a problem or was about to start a new project.

Howard stepped away from the door to the office, but didn’t close it. There was enough noise outside of the office so that no one could hear their conversation anyway. Howard sat down on a stool near the window. Linda’s father stepped over to where he was sitting and listened intently. Hughes hated repeating himself and despised people that were not good listeners. Hughes told her dad that he had been contacted by a “high ranking member of the United States Armed Forces” while he was in Washington, D.C.

The billionaire was used to receiving unusual requests from the military. He was known as someone that could keep a secret and solve complicated problems. According to Linda’s father, this one might have been the mother of all the most secret and complicated situations that the government ever faced. Hughes said that he visited a military base on the way back from the congressional hearings. He didn’t mention where it was located and provided few details about what happened there.

Linda’s father said that Hughes seemed uncomfortable talking about his visit to the base. He hated situations that he couldn’t personally control and seemed to indicate that the entire event was orchestrated and controlled by the military. With the exception of Hughes, no civilians were present. Howard said that they showed him a new type of aircraft. Most of it was in pieces and it was obvious that the thing had crashed or been shot down. Hughes assumed it might have been something that the Russians cooked up.

It wasn’t until Hughes got closer to the material that he noticed it was anything but conventional. He didn’t pick up or touch any of it, but told Linda’s father that it looked like “the damnedest stuff I’ve ever seen.” The military officers present told him that despite the fact that it was in pieces, the material was extremely resistant to heat, cold and pressure. They also said that it was almost impossible to penetrate, yet it might have been an implosion that caused the crash. Howard never said if it had any writing on it and provided no further details about the material or the aircraft.

Hughes told Linda’s father that the dead bodies of the crew members from the aircraft had also been recovered by the military and were mostly intact. He said they allowed him to view the bodies and described them as looking like “dwarves” or “deformed midgets” wearing seamless flight suits. He added no details about where or how they were being kept. Instead, he got right to the point. “They want me to figure this thing out and I want you on board,” Hughes explained. That was the end of their meeting.

A few weeks later Hughes took Linda’s father aside again and told him to forget about their previous conversation in the office. He gave her dad the impression that there were too many hassles and not enough money for him to get involved with that project. Her father felt it was more plausible to believe that Hughes wouldn’t have been able to run the show and didn’t want to get involved with something he couldn’t fully direct. Or, perhaps he knew or had learned something more about the project that turned him off to it.

It wasn’t until many years after their conversation in that office that Linda’s father came to realize that Hughes might have been talking about a crashed UFO and, specifically, one that probably crashed or was shot down during the summer of 1947. Her dad had never shown any type of interest in UFOs or Aliens. Linda believed he might have come across the information about one of the UFO crashes from the tabloids that his wife read. The timing would have been correct because I saved issues of the National Enquirer and other supermarket tabloids during the 1970s and recall articles about alien and military encounters and UFO crashes.

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