Remember the successful Caudron C.460 racer begat the badly timed and slow to develop C.714 light fighter. Wooden construction, small engine and minimal firepower put them at a disadvantage by 1940, and the French and Finns hardly used them, while the desperate Poles pretty much held their own, matching kills and losses against greatly superior Luftwaffe invaders.
There are indications that Hughes considered the H-1 as a basis for the military, but flew Lockheed and Seversky prototypes (note his friendship with Kelly Johnson whom I'd suspect he'd discuss things, plus his around the world record in a Lockheed 14 Super Electra) and there are no indications that the lightweight aluminum/wood design was considered by him.
Most of all, he was always eager to sell his dreams to the nation and look at the energy he doggedly put into his complex D-2/XF-11 and HK-1/H-4 projects. If he suspected there was any potential in the H-1, I for one believe he would have pursued it relentlessly, and not given up so quickly when he got the first USAAC rebuff. Consider by then he was obsessed with setting the "hat trick" of aviation records with the absolute speed, transcontinental, and global speed records. He initially bought his Sikorsky S-43 seaplane for the latter, but had bureaucratic delays, and decided the Super Electra would be faster.
Consider the energy put into the Glomar Explorer. He had all the passion in the world for exotic and "impossible" projects, but also weighed all the possibilities, and didn't make many engineering mistakes.