Databases of WW1 propellers

[Bob Gardner]

A note to my fellow forumites to let you know that in the next twelve months I shall publish in spread-sheet format on CD;

1. My database on German WW1 aircraft propellers, about 1000 lines of data describing maker, diameter and pitch, engine and aircraft type where known.

2. And my database of British WW1 aircraft props, which runs to about 2000 lines of data.

If you have a British or German WW1 prop that you have not told me about (many of you have for which I am most grateful) or if you have any documents from the time which list propellers, please let me know.

With kind regards,

Bob

Dave; could you make this a sticky please.

[JZMRZ]

WW1 Propeller from training plane?

This propeller my father had for many years.
The numbers on it are:
D2971, P3170
G571NG4 (I think, not sure on the 5 which might be B, and the G might be 6)
140 HP RAF
Can you identify this one please?
Jeff & Maz

[Bob Gardner]

Jeff & Maz,

Thank you for your information.

Your prop is very probably from a WW1 reconnaissance aircraft from late 1917 or early 1918, the RE8. It is four bladed.

The data translates as;
D2971 The diameter of the prop in mm
P3170 The pitch of the propeller in mm
140hp RAF The 140hp engine designed and made by the Royal Aircraft Factory (hence RAF)

The key information is the drawing number, which you haven't mentioned, which is almost certainly T6296, where the designator letter T indicates the Royal Aircraft Factory.

With kind regards,

Bob

[Mike L]

Jeff & Maz,

Thank you for your information.

Your prop is very probably from a WW1 reconnaissance aircraft from late 1917 or early 1918, the RE8. It is four bladed.

The data translates as;
D2971 The diameter of the prop in mm
P3170 The pitch of the propeller in mm
140hp RAF The 140hp engine designed and made by the Royal Aircraft Factory (hence RAF)

The key information is the drawing number, which you haven't mentioned, which is almost certainly T6296, where the designator letter T indicates the Royal Aircraft Factory.

With kind regards,

Bob

Hi Bob,
Please let me know how I can sign up for a copy of your British propeller database on CD, and the cost.
I have a DH4 4-blade prop DRG2442, for a RAF 3A engine, batch G299 (or 289),
N.1
Could you tell me a little more about it?
Many thanks
Mike L, Urchfont.

[Bob Gardner]

'Morning Mike,

I am about six months away from publishing my databases on CD. I first have to finish and publish the last in my series of books on WW1 German props. I'll put a note here and on my website as both things come to market.

I have recorded your prop before, presumably from the man you bought it from.

The drawing number is AM2442, where AM indicates AIRCO who built all the WW1 aircraft designed by Geoffrey de Havilland, and this prop was fitted to both the DH4 and DH9 with various engines. The DH4 is recorded with the RAF3A engine of 200hp but I have not found any reference to the DH9 using the RAF 3A engine. It was often fitted with the BHP 230hp engine.

The specified diameter and pitch for the prop were 3050mm and 3670mm respectively but makers were allowed small variations due to production tolerances; hence yours at 3048 vice 3050 and 3640 against 3670mm.

I have recorded only one maker of this prop, other than AIRCO, which was WT Lord. The Ministry of Munitions paid £35-10s-6d for a similar size of four-bladed prop.

I believe the contract for batch number 289 was issued in Autumn 1917, but a batch of 500 props made by Bristol for the Bristol Scout, with batch numbers from 302 to 306 was delivered in January and February 1918. It is likely that a three month gap between the issue of the contract and delivery was normal.

As ever, there is a degree of supposition in my interpretation of the data that I have gathered, so my views should not be thought of as immutable fact.

With kind regards,

Bob

Bob Gardner

[JZMRZ]

Thanks Bob,

What does the G57IN64 indicate?
I've checked again and it is a 6 not a G.
Thanks for your information.
Marian

[Bob Gardner]

Marian,

From Autumn 1917 propeller production was centralised under the Air Board, which later was renamed as the Air Ministry. From this time all propellers were made in batches of 100, indicated by the letter G and each of the 100 props was numbered with a prefix of N. Hence G571 N64 is the sixty-fourth propeller made in batch 571.

These batch numbers can occasionally be dated from known contracts. But it seems that there was often a three month gap between the contract date and the date of delivery.

Your prop batch number 571 dates (probably) from late 1917 and might have been delivered in the Spring of 1918.

With kind regards,

Bob

[Bart]

Heine prop

Hello,

I would be glad to know more about my propellor with the following registration details:

N LIO N
D 315
H 260
HEINE
40796

It has had a clock inside the hole but it is easily removed.

Thanks in advance!

[Bob Gardner]

Greetings Bart,

Heine were a German firm, almost the only one to survive the desolate economic period of German aviation from 1919 to 1926.

Your prop was made around 1927-28 for an aircraft using the British Napier Lion 450hp aero engine. (Heine made its 50,000th prop in 1930). Several German airlines and aircraft used this engine, particularly in the Dutch Fokker XIII, but this prop is not from that aircraft which had a prop of a different pitch. I have recorded about five or six Heine Napier Lion props and they seem, as far as one can judge from such a small sample, to have been used on three types of aircraft with the Napier engine.

With kind regards (und freundliche Grüssen, Wenn Sie Deutsch sind! )

Bob

[Bart]

Greetings Bob,

Thank you very much. I'm from Holland but no stranger to the German language, so 'herzlichen dank'!

Do you have any information how much it is worth? I know this depends on some criteria but I would be glad if you can give a broad range.

You have been of great help already, best regards!

Bart

PS: Is there any way I can see if the propellor has actually been used? Maybe some markings on the wood?

[Bob Gardner]

Bart,

If you can, post a photograph of the prop, of both the entire prop and a close up of the hub top surface. If a flown example, the top and bottom surfaces will have marks left by the hub plates used to bolt the prop to the engine. And also, if flown for some length of time, the bolt holes will become slightly oval with wear in the thrust plane from the crank shaft.

With kind regards and met vriendelijke groet,

Bob

[Bob Gardner]

Bart,

Postscript; I see I didn't answer your question about the value of your prop. Your question is simple but the answer is complex. It has three different values, all of which I must emphasise are much less than the values of a WW1 propeller.

If you sold the prop at a conventional auction house (not eBay) in a sale of aeronautical items, it might make up to €900 (which is also $900 as the Euro and USD are at parity). With the auctioneer's charges deducted this would give you about €700. Conversely, if bought at auction, after the auctioneer's commission, it would cost €1130.

If you bought it from a dealer, such as I used to be, he too would pay €1130 at auction. Transport, conservation and repairs would typically cost €500, raising the dealer's costs to €1650. I usually sold at 30% mark up, giving a sale price of around €2200. But a dealer with premises in London or Amsterdam, with much greater running costs, would sell for double or triple this cost, say €5000. However, knowing that a civilian propeller from the 1920's would be difficult to sell, it is not likely that he would buy it in the first place.

Thus:
If you sold it at auction you might receive €700.
If you bought it at the same auction, €1130.
If your prop was stolen or destroyed, the insurance value would be the cost of buying something similar in good condition from a dealer, between €2200 and €5000.

(If you kept it for twelve years and sold it in 2027 when it was 100 years old, it might well make considerably more.)

With kind regards,

Bob

[Bob Gardner]

Bart,

I don't seem to have had a reply from you about my last post of 1 June?

Bob

[Dbahnson]

Bart,

I don't seem to have had a reply from you about my last post of 1 June?

Bob

Bob, I feel your frustration with this. A few people here (and you in particular) spend a lot of time and effort to help others with propeller identification, and there is probably no other venue in the world that makes it this easy to ask. Sometimes that effort seems to go unnoticed.

The only consolation is that unlike emails where the same information may be exchanged, at least here it is archived for future searches, and I for one am always grateful for your participation.

[Bob Gardner]

Thanks Dave for your support. I'm old fashioned. I expect people to recognise my work for them.

One of my replies can typically take two hours to research and cross reference, partially because I'm seventy years old and I do everything slowly. I often have the sensation that our much younger correspondents regards us as an inanimate computer service, not as a conversation between humans. I do sometimes wonder why I bother. On a beautiful June day I'd often prefer to be out bird watching.

Tongue in cheek, perhaps we should have a standard five dollar fee for each question. It would contribute to the enormous personal expense you have made funding this forum and it might reduce our workload. Probably few of our fellow forumites are aware that it has cost you some thousands of dollars.

A friend who sells antique clocks was so annoyed by the number of unsolicited requests for research and for valuations to his website that he introduced a £20 GBP charge, about $30 USD, and to his astonishment the number of queries grew! People were willing to pay and found his advice good value for money.

With kind regards, as ever,

Bob