Howard Hughes, the Lockheed Fourteen Super Electra, and the Around-the-World Speed Record That Halved the Planet in Nineteen Thirty-Eight

On July 14, 1938, Howard Hughes landed a modified Lockheed 14 Super Electra at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, completing a circumnavigation of the earth in 3 days, 19 hours, and 8 minutes. The previous record - set by Wiley Post in 1933 - was 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes. Hughes didn’t improve on it. He cut it by more than half.

Who Howard Hughes Actually Was as a Pilot

Most people encounter Hughes through the wreckage of his later years: the reclusion, the obsessive behavior, the slow collapse. The pilot tends to get buried under all of that.

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was born in Houston, Texas, on Christmas Eve, 1905. His father’s patent on a rotary drill bit built the Hughes Tool Company into a fortune-generating machine, and when both his parents died before he turned twenty, Hughes inherited it entirely. He could have lived comfortably off that inheritance for the rest of his life.

Instead, he went to Hollywood and made films. Then he found aviation - and aviation became the thing that consumed him.

He earned his transport pilot certificate in the late 1920s, when that credential still required genuine proficiency. He wasn’t interested in leisure flying. He wanted to find the limit of what aircraft could do, and he was willing to fund the search himself.

The H-1 Racer and What It Proved

In the early 1930s, Hughes funded the construction of a purpose-built racing aircraft at Burbank airport. He wasn’t a distant patron - he was on the shop floor, working through details alongside his engineers. The machine they built was the Hughes H-1 Racer.

The H-1 was unlike most aircraft of its era. The fuselage was a polished monocoque shell shaped to give the air nothing to grab. The landing gear retracted completely flush into the wing surface. Every rivet was countersunk and filed smooth. The entire airframe was engineered to minimize drag with a precision that military procurement offices were only beginning to require.

On September 13, 1935, Hughes ran the H-1 through the official course at Santa Ana, California. Four passes, averaged by official observers: 352 miles per hour. A world record for land-based aircraft under piston power, and a number that military designers in multiple countries took seriously.

Hughes landed. The engine ran dry and stopped. He had calculated the fuel load exactly to the limit.

The Transcontinental Record Before the Circumnavigation

Hughes didn’t rest on the land speed record. In January 1937, he flew a modified Lockheed 14 from Los Angeles to New York in 7 hours, 28 minutes, and 25 seconds - nearly two hours faster than his own previous transcontinental record.

The pattern was consistent: he achieved something, studied what remained, and pushed further. By early 1938, his target was the global circumnavigation record held by Wiley Post, who had flown his Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae solo around the world in 1933.

How Hughes Prepared for the Circumnavigation

What separated Hughes from the improvised record attempts of his era was the seriousness of his preparation. The planning took months and was as demanding as the flying itself.

He coordinated with the State Department to secure overflight permissions across the Soviet Union - genuinely difficult in 1938, given the state of American-Soviet relations. He established a network of ground radio stations spaced along the entire planned route. Meteorologists were analyzing upper-level wind patterns over Siberia, because July winds at altitude over that region can either help or hurt depending on the synoptic pattern, and Hughes intended to know in advance.

The aircraft was a Lockheed 14 Super Electra, but not a stock one. The fuel system was rebuilt to carry substantially more than standard capacity. Navigation and radio equipment was upgraded to the best available, including high-frequency direction finding gear capable of pulling bearings from stations hundreds of miles away. A Sperry autopilot was installed - hand-flying a three-day circumnavigation is not survivable at the performance level the record required. Full de-icing equipment was fitted, because altitude flying over Siberia in July does not guarantee ice-free conditions.

The Crew

Hughes didn’t fly alone. He assembled a crew of five:

Howard Hughes - pilot
Harry Connor - co-pilot and lead navigator
Thomas Thurlow - second navigator
Eddie Lund - flight engineer
Richard Stoddart - radio operator

The Route and the Flight

On the evening of July 10, 1938, Hughes taxied to the runway at Floyd Bennett Field with a full fuel load and all five crew aboard. A maximum-weight takeoff in a heavily loaded aircraft means heavier controls, reduced climb rate, and a longer ground roll. Hughes had calculated exactly what the airplane needed.

They lifted off and headed east over the Atlantic.

New York to Paris: 16 hours, 35 minutes.

They refueled at Paris and kept moving. Moscow. Then east into the Soviet interior - Omsk, Yakutsk - across terrain that was vast and largely featureless, where the charts of 1938 were imprecise and the radio stations came and went without warning. The crew worked in rotation: one flying, one navigating, one on the radio, the others resting as best they could in a working aircraft not designed for crew comfort.

Then the Bering Sea - the leg where there are no alternates, where the water below is cold, where the fuel math has been done and the only answer is to hold the heading and trust the preparation.

Fairbanks, Alaska. The difficult geography was behind them.

South to Minneapolis, then southeast to the coast and down into Floyd Bennett Field on the afternoon of July 14, 1938: 3 days, 19 hours, 8 minutes after departure.

Why This Flight Mattered Beyond the Record

The headline was the time. The lasting significance was the method.

Hughes demonstrated that systematic preparation - ground weather networks, meticulous fuel planning, upgraded navigation systems, a competent crew with defined roles - could compress geography in ways that raw aircraft performance alone couldn’t. He was 32 years old when he landed in Brooklyn, and the template he used for that flight became a model that long-range aviation operators, both military and commercial, studied and built upon for decades.

He thanked his crew by name, specifically and publicly. He talked about the weather. He was quiet about the accomplishment in the way that genuinely prepared people often are.

New York gave him a ticker-tape parade through lower Manhattan. The President sent a telegram. The newspapers compared it to Lindbergh’s Atlantic crossing.

The Lockheed 14 Super Electra that made the flight is preserved at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington. It is smaller than most people expect. Standing next to it and thinking about Siberia tends to clarify things.

Key Takeaways

Howard Hughes completed a circumnavigation in 3 days, 19 hours, 8 minutes on July 14, 1938, cutting Wiley Post’s 1933 record of 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes by more than half
The flight used a heavily modified Lockheed 14 Super Electra with expanded fuel capacity, upgraded navigation and radio equipment, and full de-icing capability
Hughes flew with a five-man crew including a co-pilot/navigator, second navigator, flight engineer, and radio operator - the mission was resourced to be done correctly, not just quickly
The route ran New York → Paris (16 hours, 35 minutes) → Moscow → Siberia → Bering Strait → Fairbanks → Minneapolis → New York
The preparation model Hughes used - ground weather networks, real-time radio coordination, systematic weight and fuel planning - became a template for long-range aviation operations that followed