Making the world smaller

On July 14, 1938 Howard Hughes and his four-man crew returned to New York after circling the globe covering 14,672 miles in three days, nineteen hours, fourteen minutes and ten seconds. They were treated to a special Mayorial reception and ticker-tape parade in New York City. Hughes died in 1976 while a passenger of a flight from Los Angeles to Houston.
        After the flight, Hughes said in a prepared statement,
        "There is one thing about this flight that I would like everyone to know. It was in no way a stunt. It was the carrying out of a careful plan."......
        "If any credit is due anyone, it is the men who designed and perfected, to its remarkable state of efficiency, the modern American flying machine and equipment." ......
        All we did was operate this equipment and the plane according to the instruction book....."

Around the World Flight, 1938

Hughes: I did not design the first automatic pilot by a long way so that is not correct

Hughes at the door of his remodeled Lockheed Loadstar at Bennet Airport, New York, July 10, 1938.

And I wouldn't say the first integrated radio navigation system or the first inclusive instrument panel... I think you can say that the radio equipment - which I did not design personally but was designed under my supervision, while my round the world flight was the first, well, I don't think you could even say first - I should say it was the best long-range radio communication system ever designed for an airplane and the entire navigation system both radio and celestial was certainly by far the most efficient ever installed or used up to that time and the navigation carried out on the flight was by far the most accurate of that performed in any long distance flight up to that time. The navigation throughout that flight around the world was so accurate that the plane was never more than a few miles off of the desired course

Utley: It was six miles

Hughes: It was amazingly accurate, and the combination radio and celestial equipment and dead reckoning systems and the entire system and procedure of navigation was amazingly effective and efficient but I don't think it's right to say it was actually the first of anything on here...