WSRE Press Room
National PBS Program HISTORY DETECTIVES Features Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum Mystery Propeller on July 19 Episode
The July 19 episode of the popular PBS series HISTORY DETECTIVES features a mysterious propeller currently displayed at the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum. HISTORY DETECTIVES host Elyse Luray followed clues to Pensacola to investigate a 1940s propeller found along a rural airstrip in Illinois. While visiting Pensacola in March, Elyse interviewed Hill Goodspeed, curator of the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum, and Bob Bothfield who served as an engineer in World War II, searching for answers to place this propeller in its proper historical context.
HISTORY DETECTIVES airs Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on WSRE, PBS for the Gulf Coast.
Here are more details about the investigation:
DRONE PROPELLER
Working beside a rural airstrip, an Illinois man dug up an intriguing find: an eight-foot long wooden airplane propeller. A little research online made him believe that his propeller might be from a TDR-1 plane, a pioneering U.S. assault drone plane from World War II. Various websites say the TDR-1 planes were the first drones, the prototype of the unmanned assault planes used today in Afghanistan and Iraq. The propeller is currently on display at the Pensacola National Naval Aviation Museum. HISTORY DETECTIVES host Elyse Luray investigates whether this propeller is an important piece of American military history or whether it simply fell off a local prop plane.
Credit: Nivale Lightfoot