LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Howard Hughes: North America
built 199 days ago
When the CIA wanted to recover a Soviet sub that had sunk deep in the Pacific, the Agency turned to Howard Hughes, to build in secret a ship to do the job. The ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, was built in 1973. The mission of Glomar Explorer was to raise a Soviet nuclear submarine that had sunk in the Pacific, resting on the ocean floor 17,000 ft. down. The Soviet Golf-II Class ballistic missile submarine sank in 1968, approximately 750 miles northwest of Hawaii. Naval intelligence tracking the sub learned of its fate through underwater listening devices. After months of futile searching by Soviet vessels, it became apparent that only the US knew the location of the sunken submarine.
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Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Hughes never knew what it was like to be anything but rich. But, it was the degree of his wealth that would drastically change over time. From inheriting $1 million to becoming North America’s first billionaire, Hughes would prove to be one of the greatest and most-talked about entrepreneurs of the 20th century. His significant feats were a result of the following factors:
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Depending on which resource one uses, Hughes was born in 1905, either in Houston, or in Humble (silent “H”), an oil boomtown about 20 miles northeast of Houston. It was here that Howard Sr. developed an oil-drilling bit called a rock bit, or roller bit, which consisted of 166 steel-and-diamond teeth on wheels that turned as the drill stem was rotated. Under heavy pressure, the rotating teeth broke up rock into tiny fragments.
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Hughes always seemed to be involved in pulling strings and subterfuge. In 1933 he persuaded the Commerce Department to lower his pilot's license number from 4223 to 80. That same year, he took a job with American Airways as a co-pilot, applying under the pseudonym Charles W. Howard. The ruse was soon
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A rich, sex-obsessed millionaire driven to insanity by neurotic compulsions, Hughes is indeed a poster boy for the darker aspects of the American dream: a wealthy individualist run amok. With subject matter as intriguing as this, the documentary about him should be excellent, which here is not the case. Still, it's entertaining and educational enough, and like the A & E biographies it emulates, it covers the material well enough. Perhaps Hughes deserves a documentary as flashy and mythic as he was. Or perhaps he doesn't.
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