r/AviationHistory

UH-1D Iroquois

Bell UH-1D Demo Team at RIAT 2025

First flown: 1956

Top Speed: 127mph

Max Range: 318 miles

Power: 1,400 shaft hp

English: Huey
German: Teppichklopfer

My friend, Peter van Kaathoven, and co-author of our Substack story about Zerlegebetrieben (German aircraft wreck salvage yards in Vught and in Auschwitz), is an active local historian in Vught.

He and his friends unveiled two WWII glider memorials on September 26th near Vught. These American gliders were part of the Market-Garden operation, and had to do emergency landing after their towing planes were shot down, one on September 18th and the other one on September 19th. All allied soldiers were helped by local Dutch resistance, and avoided capture.

In the photos, Peter is doing the speech, and one of the photos is with children of local Dutch resistance fighters who helped the American soldiers.

René Fonck ended WWI as the top Allied ace with 75 confirmed victories, second only to the Red Baron. I got curious about the machines behind that number, so here they are in order.

1. Caudron (1915-1917). He spent almost two years flying recon, first in the G.III, then in the twin-engine G.4. He had a Lewis gun fitted over the top wing. In July 1916 flak knocked out one engine and he made it home on the other. His first confirmed victory came in a Caudron: in August 1916 he herded a German Rumpler down until it landed behind French lines and the crew surrendered.
2. SPAD VII (1917). His first real fighter after joining Escadrille 103 of the "Storks" group. 150 hp Hispano-Suiza, one Vickers gun.
3. SPAD XII. The odd one. A 37 mm cannon sat between the cylinder banks and fired through the hollow propeller shaft. Single shot, reloaded by hand in flight. Very few pilots could use it well, and Fonck is credited with around 11 victories on it.
4. SPAD XIII (1918). His main machine: 235 hp, two Vickers guns, about 222 km/h, 8,472 built. With it he twice shot down six aircraft in one day, on 9 May and 26 September 1918. On the second day, three of the six were Fokker D.VIIs.

His method was simple: stalk a two-seater, get close, one short burst. By his own account, only one enemy bullet ever hit his plane.

Fun fact: after the war his personal plane was registered F-ONCK.

SPAD XIII or Fokker D.VII, which one would you rather fly in late 1918?

Sources: Wikipedia (EN/FR), The Aerodrome, Western Front Association.

On May 6, 1968, Armstrong narrowly avoided a fatal crash during a training flight with the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) at Ellington Air Force Base, Texas. When a sudden loss of helium pressure caused the vehicle to lose control at an altitude of 200 feet, Armstrong was forced to use his ejection seat just seconds before impact. He landed safely by parachute, suffering only a minor cut to his tongue, while the prototype crashed and exploded in flames. Armstrong later credited his training on the LLRV as crucial to the successful manual landing of Apollo 11's Eagle module on the Moon a year later.

This is probably a shot in the dark... This propeller is an older example that is made entirely of a phenolic based composite. From what I could find by researching, there appears to have been two primary manufacturers of a phenolic based propeller in the early 1900's:

• Westinghouse Corporation. They produced propellers out of "micarta," which evidently was the material of choice for the first successful non-stop trans-Pacific flight from California to Hawaii in 1929.
• Hartzell produced propellers out of "hartzite," essentially their version of a phenolic based propeller. Their development in this arena was largely in the late 1940s. Examples of Hartzite propellers usually show interchanging layers of light and dark tan colors of fabric (due to the way the impregnated fabric/canvas was laid/oriented before it was "cured"). The orientation of the substrate affected its durability/performance and is described in their patent.

I was informed that this piece was part of a large lot that was auctioned off from a now-closed USA aviation museum. Some visual specs/observations:

• Total length is ~61.375"
• Shank has a ~3.35" diameter
• Black canvas phenolic based (compared to all Westinghouse or Hartzell phenolic propellers I've come across that is brown/tan based).
• No signs of any identification numbers. Perhaps it was on the very base of the shank and was worn off?

Perhaps its black color and lack of identification was because it was used in R&D as a prototype propeller?