This short silent film shows activities in 1982, as the “Spruce Goose” was moved out of its hangar in Long Beach and into a protective dome located near the Queen Mary. This followed a three-month national effort to save the aircraft from destruction, with the Spruce Goose donated to the Aero Club of Southern California.

The aircraft’s move across Long Beach Harbor was reported in a Los Angeles Times Feb. 12, 1982, story by staff writers Anne LaRiviere and Jerry Belcher:

The ancient Spruce Goose–first last and largest bird of its kind–went to its final roosting place Thursday in Long Beach.

Like Long Beach’s other great dinosaur of transportation history, the Queen Mary, it will become a tourist attraction.

Designed by billionaire Howard Hughes during World War II as a troop carrier that would cruise at 200 mph, the world’s largest airplane made its final journey with three men aboard at a speed of approximately .346 mph.

The gigantic flying boat, with a wingspan of 320 feet, a fuselage 219 feet long and a rudder eight stories high, was lifted from dockside at Terminal Island by an enormous floating crane late Wednesday night and deposited on the deck of a 240-foot barge early Thursday….then towed by tugboats 4 1/2 miles to its new and final roost, a huge, specially constructed aluminum dome adjacent to eh Queen Mary’s permanent moorage…

The flying boat was constructed mainly of laminated birch wood. However, a small amount of spruce was used in the plane’s construction, and therefore, someone dubbed it “The Spruce Goose” because is sounded right.

Hughes hated the name.

N.B. The Goose ended up leaving Long Beach and is now at the Evergreen Air Museum in Washington State.