. , one of the world's most advanced air-to-air missiles. During
World War II, the company designed and built several
prototype aircraft at
Hughes Airport. These included the famous
Hughes H-4 Hercules (better known by the public's nickname for it, the
Spruce Goose), the
H-1 racer,
D-2, and the
XF-11. However, the plant's
hangars at Hughes Airport, the location of present-day
Playa Vista in the
Westside of
Los Angeles, California, were primarily used as a
branch plant for the construction of other companies' designs. At the start of the war, Hughes Aircraft had only four full-time employees; by the end of the war, the number was 80,000. During the war, the company was awarded contracts to build B-25 struts, centrifugal cannons, and machine gun feed chutes.
Post–World War II Hughes Aircraft was one of many aerospace and defense companies which flourished in
Southern California during and after
World War II, and was at one time the largest employer in the area. However, employment had dropped to 800 by 1947. By the summer of 1947, certain politicians had become concerned about Hughes' alleged mismanagement of the Spruce Goose and the
XF-11 photo reconnaissance plane project. They formed a special committee to investigate Hughes which culminated in a much-followed Senate investigation, one of the first to be televised to the public. Despite a highly critical committee report, Hughes was cleared. The company became
TRW in 1965, another aerospace company and a major competitor to Hughes Aircraft. In 1951, Hughes Aircraft built a missile plant in
Tucson, Arizona due to Howard Hughes' fear that his Culver City plant could be attacked. By the end of that year, the U.S. Air Force had purchased the property and contracted Hughes (and subsequently
Raytheon) to operate the site as
Air Force Plant 44. In 1953, Howard Hughes donated Hughes Aircraft to the newly formed
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), allegedly as a way of avoiding taxes on its huge income. The next year,
Lawrence A. "Pat" Hyland was hired as vice president and general manager of Hughes Aircraft; In 1963, Hughes Space and Communications Group and the Hughes Space Systems Division built the world's first geosynchronous
communications satellite,
Syncom, followed by the first geosynchronous weather satellite, ATS-1, in 1966. Later that year, their
Surveyor 1 made the first soft landing on the
Moon as part of the lead-up to the Moon landings in
Project Apollo. Hughes also built
Pioneer Venus in 1978, which performed the first extensive radar mapping of
Venus, and the
Galileo probe that flew to
Jupiter in the 1990s.
Hughes helicopter business In 1947, Howard Hughes redirected Hughes Aircraft's efforts from airplanes to
helicopters. The effort began in earnest in 1948, when helicopter manufacturer Kellett Aircraft Co. sold its latest design to Hughes for production. The
XH-17 "Flying Crane" first flew in October 1952, but was commercially unsuccessful. In 1955, Howard Hughes split the helicopter production unit from Hughes Aircraft Company, and reconstituted it with Hughes Tool Company, calling it Hughes Tool Company's Aircraft Division. The Aircraft Division had a focus on the production of light helicopters, mainly the
Hughes 269/
300 and the
OH-6 Cayuse/
Hughes 500.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute sells Hughes Aircraft Company Hughes left no will, and following his death in 1976, there were
numerous claims to his estate. A Hughes executive and a Hughes lawyer claimed they had the right to set up an "executive committee" to take over the running of the HHMI and its Hughes Aircraft subsidiary. The
attorney general of Delaware Richard R. Wier Jr. challenged this and filed suit in 1978.
Charles M. Oberly continued the action when he became attorney general in 1983. Oberly stated he wished to see an independent board of trustees to ensure both that the institute fulfilled its charitable mission and that it did not continue to operate as a tax shelter. In January 1984, Judge Grover C. Brown ruled that the Chancery Court should appoint the trustees because Hughes had not left a succession plan. Brown asked for both the executive committee and the attorney general's office to submit a list of recommendations that he could approve. Brown approved a list in April 1984.
Hughes Electronics Corporation (similar to the one carried on
STS-49) On June 5, 1985,
General Motors was announced as the winner of a secretive five-month sealed-bid auction. Other bidders included the
Ford Motor Company and
Boeing. The purchase was completed on December 20, 1985, for an estimated $5.2 billion, $2.7 billion in cash and the rest in 50 million shares of GM Class H stock. On December 31, 1985, General Motors merged Hughes Aircraft with its
Delco Electronics unit to form
Hughes Electronics Corporation, an independent subsidiary. In August 1992, Hughes Aircraft completed its purchase of
General Dynamics' missile businesses for $450 million. This brought the
Tomahawk Cruise Missile,
Advanced Cruise Missile,
Standard missile,
Stinger missile,
Phalanx Close-in weapon system, and
Rolling Airframe Missile into Hughes' portfolio. In 1994, Hughes Electronics introduced
DirecTV, the world's first high-powered
DBS service. In 1995, its Hughes Space and Communications division became the largest supplier of commercial satellites. That same year, the group purchased
Magnavox Electronic Systems from
the Carlyle Group. In 1996, Hughes Electronics and
PanAmSat agreed to merge their fixed satellite services into a new publicly held company, also called PanAmSat, with Hughes Electronics as majority shareholder. In 1995, Hughes Aircraft sold its Technology Products Division (automated wire and die bonder) to an investor group led by
Citicorp and incorporated the division as Palomar Technologies. In 2008, Citicorp sold the bonder division to the current management team at Palomar Technologies. In 1997, GM transferred Delco Electronics to its
Delphi Automotive Systems business. Later that year, the assets of Hughes Aircraft were sold to
Raytheon for $9.5 billion. The remaining companies remained under the Hughes Electronics name and within GM. In 2000, Boeing purchased three units within Hughes Electronics Corp.: Hughes Space and Communications Co.,
Hughes Electron Dynamics, and
Spectrolab Inc., in addition to Hughes Electronics' interest in HRL, the company's primary research laboratory. The four joined Boeing Satellite Systems, a company subsidiary, later becoming the Satellite Development Center, part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. In 2003, the remaining parts of Hughes Electronics (DirecTV, DirecTV Latin America, PanAmSat, Hughes Network Systems) were purchased by
News Corporation from GM and renamed
the DirecTV Group. ==Corporate legacy==