Is Howard Hughes a good go-to guy for getting private sector advancements made?

  • Maybe, but he had allot on his plate already, what does he NOT do?

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Forgot the title question. Read the post, and this Thread, and let me know what title I should write my future ATL's under. I'm personally considering a few, but for now will just share this one.

In the same theme as "The adventures of Sherlock Holmes", I'm thinking;
"The adventures of Howard Hughes"

Yeah/Nay?

What suggestion do you have? Have at it, and have fun!
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Hey folks, going to be making a few threads asking for links and comments on some ATL's I'm researching and developing currently. My focus at this time is on writing a series of very short and narrowly focused ATL's, where my hero, Howard Hughes Jr, is going to have a series of adventures of a non-historical nature, that will help develop technologies making the US naval aviation/armed forces better prepared and mission capable, by Dec 7th, 1941.

I'm hoping to have a lot of fun with this, and offer my apologies, in advance, for the crappy quality of my writings, but some things you only learn by doing.

To this end, I'm looking in this thread for world records that our boy can aspire to set/beat. Historically he did a number of aviation world record attempts, but in my a-historical threads, he is going to be in the shipping industry and shipbuilding industry, as well as the aviation industry.

Given that his father's company, Hughes Tool company, was turning into a global leader of drilling bits supplier, they were making money hand over fist what with all the historical resource exploration and exploitation going on at the time. So it seem like a natural tie in, to have him branching out to these two areas as well.

So, who wants to be first in offering up suggestions for HH Jr's adventures in being first/best in some feats of daring do that develop technologies and stuff I can use for my broad goal up above.
 
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No replies, and here I thought I would have a lively topic! :)

Ok, we know that when Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St Louis across the Atlantic ocean nonstop in May of 1927, that was a big time world record, and some of the things I want Jr doing are going to be setting similar records, for instance, flying along the entire eastern coast of N America, the entire east coast of S America, ditto for the west coasts, circumnavigation of the entire Caribbean, the entire N Atlantic, the entire S Atlantic, Both N and S Atlantic oceans. So, what adventures in world record setting attempts can anyone else come up with?

By the way, although I knew about CL and his flight, I did not know that there was a $25,000 prize involved. Did everyone else know that the modern "X" prize was not something totally new and novel?
 
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Hughes has the money, but he strikes me as a dilettante who liked to tinker, then lost interest, once the shiny new toy ceased to be novel.

That may be what you want, a spark of innovation for others to follow. The trouble is, there's no real way to know if anything Hughes might become interested in would, or could, become practical.

He essentially drove RKO into the ground, but, at the same time, was fascinated with the C.102. And he didn't bankrupt TWA (AFAIK). So...
 
Thanks for the input!

Hughes has the money, but he strikes me as a dilettante who liked to tinker, then lost interest, once the shiny new toy ceased to be novel.
I didn't want to say that, but that too was my feeling. I agree that historically, he spend much time and money of stuff that I have no interest in, and couldn't care less about, but I'm hoping to use and distort the historical figure into a (semi) believable ATL character, that does a great many new and different things. For instance, the guy spent a huge amount of money on his film(s), and didn't seem to care how much it cost him, he just wanted what he wanted, and was in a position to be able to pay for it. About the only interesting things I would posit along these lines, would be if he became a leader of all forms of aerial photography, and all the military applications that could arise from civilian forms of this kind of expertise. My thinking is that yes, he will get bored and move on, but in my various short stories, that is actually going to be one of the strongest positive factors, in that I can have him doing a great many things, that historically didn't get done at all, or not until much later.

That may be what you want, a spark of innovation for others to follow. The trouble is, there's no real way to know if anything Hughes might become interested in would, or could, become practical.
He did have a long term interest in aviation in OTL, and I want to have him repurposed in my stories into someone that does many things that lead to good, solid, practical and useful innovations. Initially, I know I'm going to get carried away with the initial efforts to write up some simple, bare bones efforts from his fictional adventures, and that will almost undoubtedly result in a huge wank. This is expected, and although it is in no way what I want to end up with as a finished project/product. Too answer your point, my creative license is that I will be picking ideas for him to pursue. I will of course rely on feedback to help guide me into areas that folks want to see.

He essentially drove RKO into the ground, but, at the same time, was fascinated with the C.102. And he didn't bankrupt TWA (AFAIK). So...
I agree that not everything he did was a financial success, for sure. One of my main problems is that whatever I take the time to write, I'm going to want to make him successful at it, and that is both unlikely, and not the best story.

My mind is still taking in an unfortunately (seemingly) ever expanding bits of background information. For instance, two of the areas that I have started reading up on, and ended up getting way off track on because I got carried away with, are the minor Prize competitions, and the whole Offshore drilling rigs/platforms. I knew about the recent "X Prize" competition because it happened not all that long ago, and then I found out the Lindbergh was also working on getting a prize purse, and then I discovered that there were many other prizes throughout history, and I was lost reading up on several others, and then...

I also thought that I could spend a day or two on the whole Offshore platforms category, as just how much is there to know about such things, after all, and then I could begin to put time in on writing my stories, or at the least move onto other research materials, but once again, I started to get interested in the material I was reading, and...

Then IRL issues kicked in, with the result that I haven't gotten a single post-able story written to date.:mad:

Should I just focus on ONE single thing, and at least get a crappy little story out there, so folks can see my works and start giving much needed feedback? Just in the last two days, I have been going over recent threads and trying to picture ways that WWII would have changed, had the SA been able to see some civilians doing things that might just help them in military operations, and be in time for pre-war development (and maybe, just possibly, deployment/training), so that the USA doesn't get caught as badly in the beginning. As an example, what if I can make airmail to ships a common feature by 1929, with at least some scores of pilots, in dozens of locations, routinely flying out to multiple ships and dropping off mail after they have left dock? If there is a market/workforce in the civil economy, that already has the skills needed to form the basics of some military specific applications, how hard would it be to simply grab up those ideas, and get a military use set up and running, in time for WWII?
 
IMO, you can probably get Hughes interested in just about anything, or claim he is & get away with it. My real question was (is), where does it go from there? Is he just "stunting", or does anybody follow him? Is what he's doing practical, or just great PR?

That ship-mail delivery idea is just the kind of thing. Is that just a stunt that looks good on newsreels, or might it have applications to bombing?

If Hughes gets really interested in seaplanes (more than he apparently was), does he see the value of a blue water rendezvous ship, & does USN (or somebody) go from that to a depot ship that can be docked at? (An OTL proposal for the P6M, IIRC, that never went anywhere.) And does that have knock-ons for strategic bombing?

Sorry, I know I'm only making your research headaches bigger.:eek::oops::oops: I also know how easy it is to get distracted by the interesting stuff...:eek::rolleyes:

Best wishes, then, at trying to stay on the rails.:)
 
I think you are going to have to have some substantial changes in his life before this can work.

Hughes was already showing signs of OCD in the thirties (and other things, as when he destroyed all his clothing after catching a "social disease"). This became significant in the early forties, when in spite of pressing wartime needs, he delayed the development of the H-4 Hercules transport and the XF-11 reconnaissance airplane with constant changes to plans, and an inability to settle on any decision.

His later problems aren't really relevant to this, except to show how his personality issues developed as he became less accountable for his actions.
 
IMO, you can probably get Hughes interested in just about anything, or claim he is & get away with it. My real question was (is), where does it go from there? Is he just "stunting", or does anybody follow him? Is what he's doing practical, or just great PR?

That ship-mail delivery idea is just the kind of thing. Is that just a stunt that looks good on newsreels, or might it have applications to bombing?

If Hughes gets really interested in seaplanes (more than he apparently was), does he see the value of a blue water rendezvous ship, & does USN (or somebody) go from that to a depot ship that can be docked at? (An OTL proposal for the P6M, IIRC, that never went anywhere.) And does that have knock-ons for strategic bombing?

Sorry, I know I'm only making your research headaches bigger.:eek::oops::oops: I also know how easy it is to get distracted by the interesting stuff...:eek::rolleyes:

Best wishes, then, at trying to stay on the rails.:)
For best story results, it would probably be more interesting to have him failing, perhaps more often that succeeding, so that it isn't a total wank. My current thinking is to have HH come in and start things rolling, return in time to grab the glory, and then tell his minions, now make this pay for itself/turn a profit, and away we go.

It is by this convention, I hope to get around his proclivity to overly meddle with things, by instead having him involved in so many thing he is forced to hire the top people in their fields, and then be too busy with everything he has going on to ride herd on them, and messing things up and slowing things down. The mail deliveries are indeed to provide possible naval aircraft bomber pilots years later on. Additionally, I'll be wanting merchantmen with catapult planes, seaplanes, aircraft elevators/cranes, small craft elevators and cranes etc.

I want to have some competitions where folks go to a position offshore of a deserted beach/coast, and do a survey (aerial photo recon) of the coastal waters, determine where the best site for installing/constructing an offshore platform/seaplane tender/seaplane ramp to be, build/install the thing, and be up and running ASAP. Said beaches/coastlines must not have existing infrastructure/power/facilities of any kind to be eligible for the prize payout.

Too this end, HH needs a small, ongoing production line of personal yachts, that will use the best merchantman available as the base, and will be better and better, year after year, with all sorts of engineering capabilities added on, so that the ship can be profitably used for commerce when not on one expedition or another. I also plan to have his start an additional aircraft company, but one dedicated to engines and their constant, ongoing improvements, without the need for some government official to decide that maybe something better might be useful, and this is of course to get around the political and military constraints of the day. If HH decides that he will become a leader in aircraft engine design, construction, and supply to any and all buyers (within reason), and if this is done as a standing challenge, what might be developed earlier than OTL, with a guy that can afford pretty much anything he wants footing the bill, just because he can.

If I can justify the early creation of an aircraft engine company, whose civilian owner lays a mandate to always make any and every engine better than the last ones, and provides air-frames for their testing, would he eventually want his own wind tunnel? Of course he is going to have to have his own schools, to train up air and ground crews alike, to say nothing about the aircraft designers/engineering schools as well.

Basically, I'll try to walk folks up to the point where his antics lead to the early development of some needed technology/techniques, brought about by his own interests, that can explain away the USA getting better prepared for WWII prewar.

I think you are going to have to have some substantial changes in his life before this can work.

Hughes was already showing signs of OCD in the thirties (and other things, as when he destroyed all his clothing after catching a "social disease"). This became significant in the early forties, when in spite of pressing wartime needs, he delayed the development of the H-4 Hercules transport and the XF-11 reconnaissance airplane with constant changes to plans, and an inability to settle on any decision.

His later problems aren't really relevant to this, except to show how his personality issues developed as he became less accountable for his actions.
I'm thinking that I really need to have him make most all of the new things into working, functional ships and aircraft between 1920-1940, and that really, 1935-1935 is the last year that a civilian ship design can be looked at for militarization, and still be ready in time/before the war.
 
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