On Thanksgiving weekend in 1944, 15-year-old Joseph Willhelm and his brother, the newly ordained Father Richard Willhelm Jr., decided to visit Orville Wright at his home, Hawthorne Hill. Neither Joe nor Richard knew Orville, but they had an old propeller that their father had brought home years ago. They wanted Orville to take a look at it and help identify it.

Joe and Richard�s father, the senior Richard Willhelm had been a "stock picker" at the old Dayton Wright Aeroplane Company in Dayton, Ohio. That company had been set up in 1917 to build airplanes for World War I, then went on to design and produce aircraft for several years afterwards. Orville Wright was a consultant to the company and had lent his name to the enterprise. In appreciation, the company let Orville store equipment and materials left over from his initial airplane-building business, the Wright Company. Among these were many old parts from aircraft the Wrights had built between 1909 and 1915, including at least one old "bent-end" propeller.

In the mid-20s, the Dayton Wright Aeroplane Company closed its doors and turned its facilities at the old Dayton South Airport over to other businesses. Orville was told that he would have to clear out the things he had stored in the company buildings. Richard Willhelm Sr. asked Orville if he could have a propeller that he had seen among these things and Orville was probably only too glad to give it to him - one less thing to worry about moving.

When Joe and Richard Jr. showed up on Orville�s doorstep years later with that same propeller, Orville received them cordially. They showed the prop to Orville and he inspected it. The distinctive "bent-end" shape identified it beyond a shadow of a doubt as a Wright propeller, but the aging Orville - then 75 years old - could not say for sure on which airplane it had been used. Richard Willhelm later recalled that Orville identified it as "one of his earliest," possibly a spare for a Wright airplane, then signed and dated the prop on one of its blades. After a long talk, the young men thanked Orville for his kindness, then took their propeller and left.

After Orville�s death in 1948, the signed propeller began making the rounds to various museums and displays. It was on loan for many years at the United States Air Force Museum . Howard Hughes brought it to Reno, Nevada for the 1970 Reno Air Races. (That's where we got the quote at the top of the page.) Curtiss-Wright, the Airline Pilots Association, and the National Aviation Hall of Fame have all displayed it at one time or another. When Father Richard Willhelm Jr. passed away in 1993, the propeller came into the possession of his younger brother, Joe Willhelm. Joe has lent it to the Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company during the year 2003 for our exhibits, and  asked us to help find this wonderful artifact a permanent home with an appreciative aviation collector or museum.

To accomplish this, we held an online silent auction for this propeller with a reserve amount of &75,000 set by the current owner. That auction is now closed, but if you would like to review the results, click on the link below:

Enter the Auction!

What were the bidders buying? The propeller is 8-1/2 feet long and 10 inches wide and is made from spruce. Orville signed the prop with pencil on the concave (back) side, about 15 inches from one tip. The pencil autograph has faded over the years, but it has apparently been well protected because the area around the signature is much cleaner than the rest of the prop and the pencil lines are still quite legible. It�s possible that the clean area was once covered with clear tape in the hopes of protecting the autograph, then the tape was later removed. This would account for both the cleanliness of the autograph area and the faded pencil lines. Some of the lead would have been lost when the tape was removed.

The propeller itself is in excellent shape, with no cracks, broken edges, or large chips, The edges have been slightly dinged and the hub is stained with oil where is was mounted on a prop shaft, but it is otherwise perfect -- even airworthy.

The blades are covered with a tightly-woven cloth, probably linen, to within about 10 inches of the hubs. The tips of the blades are reinforced with sheet metal cover, probably tern (mild steel with a thin coating of lead). The finish is original, probably aluminum powder mixed with spar varnish. The metal flakes in the varnish have long since oxidized, giving the propeller a gray tint. Where the finish has been dinged, it shows raw wood indicating that the propeller was never repainted. This is almost certainly the original finish that was applied at the Wright Company factory.

This is obviously a Wright propeller and the oil stains indicate that it was used on an airplane, but we do not agree with Orville�s reported assessment that it was  "one of his earliest" propellers. This is consistent with what we know about Orville�s technical memory. When he was asked to remember something from his eventful past, he usually had the big picture well in hand but sometimes missed the details. It is also consistent with what we know of how people�s minds work when recalling events. It is quite possible that Orville simply used a word like "early" to describe the propeller and that Father Willhelm, with no deception intended, remembered that to mean "one of the earliest."

The wonderful workmanship on this propeller  indicates that this prop was made by an skilled woodworker long after its design had been established, when the woodworker had acquired considerable expertise in its manufacture. The fine details, such as the artistic manner in which the trailing edges are blended into the hub,  neither add or detract from the efficiency and operation of the prop. But these are the sorts of details that fine craftsmen often add to a piece to make the design aesthetic as well as functional.

The cloth covering and the metal tips also support our judgment that this is a later Wright propeller, not an early one. Early Wright propellers did not have metal tips, and only the first 10 to 15 inches were covered in cloth. The cloth covering was extended and the metal tips added quite probably because this propeller was expected to withstand more strain and abuse than earlier ones. This may have been because this prop was intended for a military machine or, more likely, because it was used with a more powerful motor. The Wrights developed a six-cylinder motor in 1911 and added carburetors to it in 1913, increasing both the power and the rpm�s. At this point, they might have taken additional steps to strengthen their propellers.

For these reasons, we believe the propeller dates from between 1913 and 1915 and was probably used on one of the Wright aircraft that were powered by the Wright six-cylinder engine, such as the Model G Aeroboat or the Model H. A detailed inspection of a photograph of a 1915 Wright Model HS (a Model H with shortened wings) revealed that the propellers were covered in cloth to within approximately 15 inches of the hub and the propeller tips visible in the photo seemed to be covered with another material, probably metal.

As for the signature, we believe it to be authentic. It is consistent with Orville�s style during the last part of his life. We have written testimony from the two eye-witnesses to the signing of the propeller attesting that Orville Wright autographed it. The propeller and its autograph have been examined by numerous experts over the years, including curators at both the United States Air Force Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, and its authenticity was never suspect. To make doubly sure, the WBAC requested other samples of Orville�s signature from this period from other sources, and we have published them here so you can make your own comparisons. As you can see in the composite image, the prop signature closely matches the signatures that appeared on checks written by Orville. The prop signature is slightly more scrawled than the check signatures, but this is to be expected since Orville was writing on an unfamiliar surface at an unfamiliar angle. Joe has told us that he and his brother held the prop on a table while Orville bent over it and signed it.

We have also published the eyewitness accounts of both Richard Jr. and Joe Willhelm on the Prop Auction page, should you wish to read them. We have additional documents and newspaper articles that trace the propeller�s journey as it was displayed by various museums and organizations. These will be transferred to the new owner of the propeller.

Click on a photo to enlarge it.

The autographed propeller in its entirety. The inset is Orville's signature.
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Same prop, but without the inset photo.
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Orville's signature and date.
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The concave side (back) of the prop blade bearing Orville's signature.
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The convex side (front) of the same blade.
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The very tip of the prop, showing the camber.
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The corner of the prop tip, showing the sheet metal covering over the leading edge.
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A close look at another corner, showing the trailing edge.
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A portion of the prop blade, showing where the cloth covering stops.
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The front of the prop hub, showing oil stains.
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The back of the prop hub. The unpainted circle indicates the prop was painted after it was mounted.
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The hub viewed from the side.
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A close-up of one of the reinforcing straps on the prop hub. The ends of the bolts are peened to prevent the nuts from coming loose.
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A close-up of the back of the hub, showing how the trailing edge of the blade is aesthetically blended into the hub.
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A close inspection of the photos that exist of this Wright Model HS, taken in 1915, reveal that it has cloth-clad, metal-tipped props very similar to the propeller shown in the photos above.

Above are four signatures of Orville Wright. The first three are from checks written between 1937 and 1945. The last is the signature on the prop itself.