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Working beside a rural airstrip, an Illinois man dug up an intriguing find: an eight-foot long wooden airplane propellor. A little research online made him believe that his propeller might be from a TDR-1 plane, a pioneering U.S. drone plane from World War II.
Various websites say the TDR-1 were the first drones used in combat, the prototype of the unmanned assault planes used today in Afghanistan and Iraq.
History Detectives investigates whether this propellor is an important piece of American military history or simply fell off a local prop plane.
More Information
National Naval Aviation Museum
1750 Radford Boulevard
Pensacola, FL 32508
(850) 452-3604
http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/
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