The mystery of the propeller’s origins that sits in the corner of her Laramie living room has been nagging at Donna Bershinsky for 35 years.
She contacted Cowboy State Daily after reading a recent story that referenced an air mail pilot, Hal Collison, who lost his propeller in 1923 near Elk Mountain, west of Cheyenne.
Collison’s propeller had eight bolt holes, and the one sitting in her living room has eight as well.
“I might well have the propeller that fell off the plane of Hal Collison,” she wrote in an email.
After Cowboy State Daily reached out for more information, Bershinsky, a pilot herself, said that about 35 years ago she and her late husband, George, went hunting with a group of dentists from Cheyenne in the Sierra Madre Range west of Encampment.
One of the dentists, James Jagusch, got his Jeep stuck in snow and over a log.
“The next weekend my husband went over there and rebuilt his front end in the middle of the Sierra mountains for him and he was able to get home,” Bershinsky said. “He was very thankful that he didn’t have to leave his Jeep there over the winter or call a tow truck.”
The Gift
Jagusch then showed up a short time later and presented the couple with the wooden propeller. It had age to it, and showed some signs of damage.
Bershinsky recalls that he said he found it either in the Black Hills or the Casper region while he was hunting a couple of years earlier.
She said it “still had dirt on it and there were gouges in it. He said he found it in the middle of the woods.”
As a pilot, Bershinsky said she knows one just does not leave a nearly 8-foot wooden propeller in the middle of nowhere.
The propeller also features metal at its tips and driving edges.
Any additional information about the exact location where Jagusch found the propeller proved unavailable. He died in 2008.
In a new effort to identify the propeller’s origins, Bershinsky went back over it to try and identify its maker and any serial number. After looking closely at it under light, she found it was made by the Sensenich Propeller Co. in Plant City, Florida.
She also found a designation on the prop. It read: “43 K 13605.”
Calls to Sensenich by both Bershinsky and Cowboy State Daily with the information did not produce immediate results. But the website for Plane Pieces Inc. did, where the company has posted an old Sensenich propeller catalog.
While none of the commercial numbers matched the format Bershinsky found, at the very last page under the column “Military Designation” there was the number listed ninth on the list.
The catalog stated that the “recommended Sensenich replacement number is 90 JA 81,” meaning that it is a 90-inch propeller, fits a Jacobs L 4 MB/225-245 horsepower radial engine and has an 81-inch pitch.
The 90-inch propeller in the corner of Donna Bershinsky’s living room has been a remained a mystery for many years. The holes on the hub, right, show damage that could indicate it fell off an aircraft. 
The civilian part number that corresponded to the military designation on the propeller linked it to twin-engine Cessna aircraft used in World War II. (Courtesy Aviation.com) 
An old catalog of Sensenich propeller information online provided a clue to the propeller’s military orgins. (Courtesy Aviation.com) 
The Airplane
Those numbers also correspond to a Cessna UC-78, T-50, or AT-17 airplane — all designations for the same plane used for different military purposes.
The plane first made in 1939, had retractable landing gear and went through a series of changes to adapt to military needs. By the end of World War II, thousands were produced.
Another website, woodenpropeller.com, states that during the mid-1940s several wooden-propeller manufacturers built propellers for the military using the same contract number as Sensenich. The first two numbers represent the year the propeller was built.
Bershinky’s propeller was manufactured in 1943.
Dean McClain, a longtime Wyoming pilot and board member of the Wyoming Aviation Heritage League knows something about the planes associated with the propeller.
“It was a twin-engine wooden airplane used for training,” he said. “It was nicknamed the Bamboo Bomber because it was all wood.”
McClain said the planes, during World War II, would have been around any military base, including the Casper Army Air Base used to train heavy bomber crews for combat overseas. He believes the Casper base would have had a “collection of those around for odd purposes and just for liaison aircraft.”
He said any military base with airfields at the time probably had a few and some of them hundreds. McClain said knowing that the propeller came from a twin-engine plane also means that losing the propeller would not necessarily mean a crash and makes it more logical for Jagusch to find it in the middle of nowhere.
As a pilot, McClain said he has never lost a propeller, but had a late friend who did near Pinedale, Wyoming. The propeller was a different type than the one that belongs to Sensenich, but his friend who was flying a single-engine plane was able to safely land the plane.
Evidence
“If it came off an airplane in flight, it should have some kind of blemishes on it where it fell on the ground,” he said. “It wouldn’t necessarily break in two or anything, but it should have some dents or scratches in it.”
Bershinsky said that is exactly what she had. The propeller has a series of gouges on it, there are dents on the leading edge that is covered with metal and it had dirt on it that the dentist never cleaned off.
“He must have been in his garage or somewhere like that,” she said. “He was a dentist, and pilot and kind of aircraft aficionado and thought the propeller was neat and never dug into it anymore.”
Bershinsky said she does not see enough damage on the propeller that would have led the need to remove it from an airplane. And when inspecting it more closely she found signs of small pieces of torn wood around the bolt holes and pointed out that the gouges were just on one side of the propeller.
The other side was essentially clean.
The treasured gift for her husband, a former U.S. Marine A-6 Intruder pilot in Vietnam, for his kindness from the dentist has new value now that it may have come from a military training flight.
“It was a very nice thank you to him,” she said.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
