We actually watched a video of this plane in lecture today. It was brought up by the us military in 1942 as a defense against the German U boats. The engineer who designed it (although incredibly famous at the time) was super nitpicky and kept changing up the design. He ended up not even beginning to assemble the plane until 1944, once the US had already come up with other methods for dealing with the U Boats. The government tried to stop construction, but he managed to lobby to have one built, and was powerful enough to do so. Finally years later (1949 I believe, but I'm not positive) he completed the monstrous aircraft. The plane was designed to be able to perform water landings. He wasnt sure it was capable of flight, so he planned on just piloting it around the water as a demonstration. But he decided to take a risk and pulled it up ten or twenty feet, and stayed airborne for a few seconds before landing safely back in the water. The plane was not flown again and now resides in the Smithsonian, as the largest plane ever built.

Also it was made almost entirely of wood. Pretty cool stuff