Help required – Spitfire prop blade?

F Hills and Sons/Jablo Propellers

General question…My father worked at F Hills and Sons during the war calculating the twist on the propeller blades and then drawing this up for the machinists. Any pictures and information anyone has or can point me to about this company would be greatly received. His name was Donald Sinclair (Born in 1923)

Anne, I recieved the Rotol history book today. I have searched the web high and low for decent archive photos of propellers, but as usual when you look for something specific you can never find what you want!

However, there are two 1937 photographs and one from 1943 in the book – one from a Vickers Wellesley long distance flight crew posing in front of their kite, one of a worker leaning on a single blade, one of a training workshop with a propeller in the background – and the blades in all the photographs have exactly the same Rotol stencil on them as my prop?

Does that mean mine could have been a late wartime prop? Scanned pages aren’t great but you can see the Rotol wing logo very clearly if you look carefully.

Thanks Anne.

Now must decide what to do with it.
Andrew

Awolspitfire,
I’m sorry to say that the chances of tracing your blade to an aircraft is very slim. All I can add is that the blade was manufactured by Rotol Ltd of Cheltenham (as you will see below not all blades were made by them). The red circle tells us that it’s a Jablo blade which is made from laminated compressed birch boards while RTS indicates that is has been given a Rotoloid (cellulose nitrate) skin with a brass sheath on the leading edge. The five numbers in the circle are the serials of all the blades used your blades prop. One of the serials should be slightly bolder or bigger than the rest and that will be your blades serial. I can’t tell you a date for your prop but the Rotol transfer suggests a post war/1950s date.

Daneby2/Andrew,
That’s what I was after. From your info I can tell you that the blade was manufactured by Hordern-Richmond Ltd of Haddenham Bucks and the most likely candidate is a RA10167 blade for a Rotol R22/4F5/8 propeller used on Seafire Mks. XV or XVII.

Back to my cave for a snooze.

Anne

Hi Anne,
At first I could not see any numbers on the base. However I have just had a closer look in the dark with some subtle side lighting and some numbers appeared like magic – very faint and delicate. In this order:
HR54893
RA 104 ? 7 RTS
R NO ? 678

PS: The blade is almost 5 feet long (59″ or 149cm) and 14kg on the bathroom scale.
Hope you can help.
Thanks
Andrew

Anne, thank you so much!

He will be bowled over. I paid £166 on ebay for it last week not knowing if it was from a Spit or not, and to be honest the money doesn’t come close to what it will be worth to him. I havent a clue whether that is about right, too cheap, or too expensive (anyone any ideas?) but it just doesnt matter. To have a piece of history like that will make his day.

Is there any further history I can trace on it? What year it was made etc? He would love it if there was information out there somewhere on what specific plane it came from……….air cover on D-Day, bomber fighter escort, who knows what it has been through!

Thanks again!!

It’s the thread which will not die!

Awolspitfire, good news for you. The blade is for a R19/5F5/1 prop used on Griffon Spits Mks XIV to XIX.

Daneby2/Andrew. Sorry, somehow I missed your second post. You may need to do a bit more digging as the numbers I’m looking for are actually in the wood and not the metal.

The bit you want to look at is the section in red below.

Anne

Whilst we are on the subject, which I can see is one that it often crops up – can anyone help me before Thursday 2nd Oct!!

I have bought a prop for my dad for his 75th Birthday on Thurs and I wondered if anyone could confirm what it is from? It is a grey Rotol prop with yellow tip, stencilled (yellow) number is

RA 10379/RTS

then there is a red circle whichcontains:

RTS
060703
060678
061308
059629
060670

then it has Q SET 0’11” COARSE painted just above the connection point. Rumour has it that it is from a 5 blade Mk X1V griffon engined Spitfire, and I have ordered the book ‘Rotol; the history of an airscrew company 1937 – 1960’ but it may not arrive in time and I want to be able to tell my dad what it is!

Can anyone help??

Pic below

Hi Anne,
You were quite right. After much rubbing, scraping and burnishing with a wire brush, on the rust, I detected some very faint numbers stamped into the steel. Two groups had been “X”d over and another two groups (upside down) were not:

“4” above “83252” with another “4” beneath it.
And what looks like “SA 924 1” with “04” below it.

I hope these clues are helpful.
Andrew

In my garage I have a single propellor blade, believed to be from a Spitfire MK-IV.

Cor…that would be hen’s teeth as there were only 2 built. More likely to be from a Mk.XIV or later mark. It’s appears to be a left handed blade which is spot on for a Griffon engine.

R6781 is the serial number of the blade and, I think, is a Rotol serial.

What you need to do is have a closer look at the wooden root end as shown in your first photo. Through the black gunk I think I can see what looks like something carved into it which should be the serial (which we know) and the drawing number which is the thing we want to know. For a Spit XIV it should start with RA10130.

Anne

In my garage I have a single propellor blade, believed to be from a Spitfire MK-IV. I acquired it at an airshow in ’93 with every intention to ‘do something with it’ but never had the time. It had obviously been used as a fence-post, resulting in some rust at the base. The covering has also come away from the wood near the base but generally the Rotoloid and leading edge brass is still in good condition over most of the blade.
The only reference number is near the tip. “R6781”
My guess from reading this thread is that it is probably an early Jablo with a Rotoloid covering. I would be interested to get an idea of its age and any other information relating to what its history might have been and also a probable value.
Many thanks
Andrew

Hi Andrew , one thing is sure , the number R6781 is not the serial number of a spitfire it may have come from, they only went up to R6780, then started again at R6799. These being MK1 ‘s .

Steve.

Spitfire prop blade

In my garage I have a single propellor blade, believed to be from a Spitfire MK-IV. I acquired it at an airshow in ’93 with every intention to ‘do something with it’ but never had the time. It had obviously been used as a fence-post, resulting in some rust at the base. The covering has also come away from the wood near the base but generally the Rotoloid and leading edge brass is still in good condition over most of the blade.
The only reference number is near the tip. “R6781”
My guess from reading this thread is that it is probably an early Jablo with a Rotoloid covering. I would be interested to get an idea of its age and any other information relating to what its history might have been and also a probable value.
Many thanks
Andrew

Thanks Anne.Now I know I,ve come to the right place!!….”Nurse,nurse?…….Those voices are telling me to build a spitfire again…

Ooh a post from the past

Qldspitty, it’s insanity old chap!

A bit of additional info to Flying High’s rather useful post.

This blade was used on a number of props including Rotol R5/4F5/4, R12/4F5/4 and R18/4F5/4 which, as already stated, were used on Spitfire Mks VII, VIII & IX, Seafire Mks IA, IIA & III and also found on the two Hurricane Mk Vs.

The blade is what’s known as a Jablo blade made from compressed laminated birch boards glued together with Casein cement. If this blade was made of Hydulignum the circle would be green. The R in RS only refers to the Rotoloid covering and not the blade itself.

Last point, we can’t tell who made this blade yet as we don’t have the complete serial but as Flying High states we should find it at the root end.

Back into cave…

Anne

Wow you learn something new every day.Geez it,s bad enough trying to decypher airframe part numbers,you guys are either deeply passionate or deeply insane :p

Hi Tony, better late than never in seeing your photo. My records show that the blade is made by Rotol Airscrews, based at Staverton Airport, Cheltenham. Glos. The drawing number RA (Rotol airscrews) 10046 was made for several Supermarine Spitfires including Mk V11,V111,1X. The red identity disc looks as if it shows 4 blade numbers, ie. 4 blade prop with either the Merlin 61,63,64 engines.My guess would be that this particular blade would be off the Mk 1X. The ‘RS’ according to Bruce Stait’s book (see no 12 in this thread) shows it’s made of Rotol wood – ‘Hydulignum’ probably, with Rotoloid covering, and a simple sheath.
There should be three sets of numbers stamped on the wooden blade root base which usually reads from top to bottom as follows –
Block number, drawing number, serial number.
Hope this helps, if I can be of more assistance, feel free to get in touch.

Thanks Anne for that and for your help to us struggling types out there.
Would this be metal or wood. see attached (I hope)
Tony K

Thanks Anne,

But I wasn’t going to sell the prop blade. It’s ex-Dutch so has some historical value here. It is however available for swaps with a Halifax throttle box :rolleyes: or other interesting Hally bits.

Cheers

Cees

Sorry Stuart but the numbers you quote don’t match any drawing numbers I know of.

Anne

I’ve also got a prop hub that I need help to I.D ,its from a merlin (I know that because the shaft was still in it !) its 15 3/4” across the “shoulders” and each prop”quadrant” is 8 3/4” dia and the center boss is 11 1/2” long; stamped into the base of the blades are the following numbers,301899, 70662, 57413, 1724, (thats one set of numbers per blade) there are a few other numbers in the base of the blade but are illegible. Any help would be greatfully received . (this hub is not for sale not even if its Spitfire!)