Great image here for the scale of the ‘flying crane’. sourceOK,
it looked ugly and strange but it worked – kind of. Made from parts
from various WWII warbirds the Hughes XH-17 “Flying Crane” was by far
,the most impressive of all rotor-craft in the early 1950s was a strange
monster designated XH-17. This was planned and taken through the design
process by Kellett, but hardware trials were transferred to Hughes
Aircraft at Culver City. Already the aircraft firm of billionaire Howard
Hughes had a reputation for being quite undeterred by the most
formidable development problems, and certainly the XH-17 made sense on
paper. In any case, it was part-funded by the USAF. It was a flying
crane, the specialized category pioneered by the German Fa 284 and
intended to lift cargo weighing up to 27,000 lb more than ten times as
much as any other rotorcraft of its day. To do so it had a radically new
form of lift power.
