page_title: Howard Hughes
section_title: Fatal crash of the Sikorsky S-43
hierarchical_section_title: Howard Hughes / Business career / Aviation and aerospace / Fatal crash of the Sikorsky S-43
caption_attribution_description: English: Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose test plane, the S-43 Sikorsky, at Brazoria County Airport, Texas.
context_page_description: Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most financially successful individuals in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an influential figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash and increasing deafness.
  As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as The Racket, Hell's Angels, and Scarface. Later he controlled the RKO film studio.
  Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers and designers. He spent the rest of the 1930s and much of the 1940s setting multiple world air speed records and building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules. He acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines and later acquired Air West, renaming it Hughes Airwest.
context_section_description: In the spring of 1943 Hughes spent nearly a month in Las Vegas, test-flying his Sikorsky S-43 amphibian aircraft, practising touch-and-go landings on Lake Mead in preparation for flying the H-4 Hercules. The weather conditions at the lake during the day were ideal and he enjoyed Las Vegas at night. On May 17, 1943, Hughes flew the Sikorsky from California, carrying two CAA aviation inspectors, two of his employees, and actress Ava Gardner. Hughes dropped Gardner off in Las Vegas and proceeded to Lake Mead to conduct qualifying tests in the S-43. The test flight did not go well. The Sikorsky crashed into Lake Mead, killing CAA inspector Ceco Cline and Hughes' employee Richard Felt. Hughes suffered a severe gash on the top of his head when he hit the upper control panel and had to be rescued by one of the others on board. Hughes paid divers $100,000 to raise the aircraft and later spent more than $500,000 restoring it. Hughes sent the plane to Houston, where it remained for many years.
caption: The S-43 Sikorsky in Brazoria County Airport in Texas
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