Original Item: One-Of-A-Kind. The Curtiss Model H was a family of classes of early long-range flying boats, the first two of which were developed directly on commission in the United States in response to the £10,000 prize challenge issued in 1913 by the London newspaper, the Daily Mail, for the first non-stop aerial crossing of the Atlantic. As the first aircraft having transatlantic range and cargo-carrying capacity, it became the grandfather development leading to early international commercial air travel, and by extension, to the modern world of commercial aviation. The last widely produced class, the Model H-12, was retrospectively designated Model 6 by Curtiss' company in the 1930s, and various classes have variants with suffixed letters indicating differences.

Until the mid-1920s, wood propellers turned the power of the aircraft engine into thrust to propel aircraft forward. They featured a permanently set blade angle, called fixed-pitch, and were made from layers of wood. They were cheap, easy to manufacture, and light, and were the dominant propeller type for high performance aircraft until the mid-1920s. After that, small general aviation aircraft relied upon them for thrust.

This propeller piece was cut from what we believe to be from an early wooden propeller, which were usually 8 feet or longer and this propeller was originally over 8 feet in length. The stamp on the side of the piece is P3918 which indicates the type of pitch the propellers were for, a fixed-pitch. Beneath the pitch is the dimensions 8’ 6” x 5’ 9” and the Navy anchor with US.

The top of the cut section shows a lovely set of yellow painted wings with a red, green and yellow bullseye roundel. The paint is slightly faded, but the colors are still easily discernible. We have searched to try and identify the roundel, but could not find a specific element that used these colors.

This is a fantastic piece of early US Naval aviation history which comes ready for display!

Dimensions
Height: 10”
Top: 8 ½” x 5”
Base: 8 ¾” x 7 ¼”