WWI Lang Propeller Company of America Breese Penguin Wooden Airplane Propeller

Lawrance A-3 Engine | Circa 1917–1918 | Signal Corps | Undrilled Hub

Few surviving artifacts tell the story of early American aviation as completely as this remarkable World War I wooden propeller.

Manufactured by the Lang Propeller Company of America, this nearly 79-inch laminated wood propeller was designed for the Breese Penguin, the unusual U.S. Army ground trainer powered by Charles Lanier Lowrance's two-cylinder A-3 piston aircraft engine.

Its identity remains stamped directly into the original wooden hub more than a century later:

DIA. 2000 (78.74 inches)
PITCH 1000 (39.37 inches)
DR. NO. 241A (Lang of American Propeller Design)
24 H.P. LAWRENCE A3 MOTOR (Lawrence should have been Lawrance)
LANG PROPELLER NO. 888 (Propeller Serial Number)
S.C. 59134 (U.S. Army Signal Corps Contract Number)

A small boxed inspection or acceptance stamp is also impressed into the wood.

One fascinating period detail is the factory spelling “LAWRENCE.” The engineer’s name was actually Charles Lanier Lawrance, spelled with an “a,” leaving the misspelling on the hub as part of the propeller’s original wartime manufacture.

Perhaps even more remarkable, the propeller was never drilled for its engine mounting-bolt pattern. The center bore was completed, but the surrounding mounting holes needed to attach it to the Lawrance A-3 were never made.

Original 100 year old patina and bluish gray paint on the tips and around the center bore.

From Gilded Age Society to the Machine Age

The story behind the Breese Penguin began years before World War I and in a world far removed from the primitive flying fields of 1917.

Both Sydney Breese and Charles Lanier Lawrance were born into prominent, wealthy families at the upper levels of Gilded Age New York society.

Breese was the son of James Lawrence Breese, a successful New York stockbroker, noted amateur photographer and prominent figure in New York and Southampton society. His father moved in the same social and artistic circles as architect Stanford White, and the Breese family maintained the great Southampton estate known as The Orchard.

Lawrance came from an equally distinguished background. Through his mother, he was a grandson of Charles D. Lanier, one of New York’s important private bankers and a close associate of J. P. Morgan. The larger Lawrance and Lanier families moved among some of the most prominent families in American and European society, including the Astor and Harriman circles.

The Lawrance family maintained extensive property and a summer home at Bay Shore, Long Island, while the Breese's spent their summers farther east in Southampton.

These were young men who grew up surrounded by country estates, elite schools, influential families and considerable privilege.

At the Groton School in Massachusetts, Lawrance, Breese and their friend Buell Hollister designed and built their own gasoline-powered automobile.

When the friends went off to college, Breese attended Harvard while Lawrance and Hollister attended Yale. Their homemade automobile continued traveling between them, sometimes literally being shipped between Cambridge and New Haven in a railroad boxcar so they could continue driving and experimenting with it.

A 1927 profile of Lawrance in The New Yorker preserved this wonderful story and described a young man far more interested in engines, mathematics and machinery than in a conventional college education.  He was a member of Yale's secret Wolf's Head Society.

Their privileged backgrounds gave them access to something extremely unusual at the turn of the century: the education, workshops, money and freedom necessary to experiment seriously with entirely new technologies. That fascination soon became a business.

B.L.M. Motor Car Company — Brooklyn, New York

After Lawrance graduated from Yale in 1905, he reunited with Breese and Arthur Moulton to form the B.L.M. Motor Car Company (Breese, Lawrance & Moulton) in 1906. Their factory operated at 31–35 Delevan Street in Brooklyn, New York. 

The young company produced an advanced, low-slung automobile and even developed a racing car during the Vanderbilt Cup era, but the venture was short-lived.

Lawrance had ordered high-quality Krupp steel from Germany just as the Panic of 1907 struck the American financial system. When the shipment arrived in New York, the company was unable to raise the money necessary to release it and B.L.M. collapsed. The steel was sold for scrap but the friendship and mechanical partnership between Breese and Lawrance survived.

Lawrance Goes to France

After the collapse of B.L.M., Lawrance went to France. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, initially pursuing architecture but continuing his interest in mathematics, dynamics and engineering.

Aviation was developing at extraordinary speed in France, and Lawrance became increasingly interested in aerodynamics. He developed an airplane-wing design that was tested at the Eiffel Laboratory in Paris. When World War I began, Lawrance returned to the United States. One of the people he sought out was his old friend Sydney Breese. The two men had already built automobiles together and now they would try airplanes.

The Southampton Aircraft Shop

Breese and Lawrance opened a small aircraft workshop in Southampton, Long Island, New York not far from the summer communities in which both families had spent much of their youth. According to Lowrance's later recollections, Breese had become particularly interested in the small French training machines known as “Penguins.”

These aircraft were intended to allow inexperienced pilots to learn the controls and behavior of an airplane while remaining on the ground. For approximately a year, Breese and Lawrance again worked side by side and then their careers began to separate.

Lawrance increasingly wanted to concentrate on the development of lightweight air-cooled aircraft engines and established his own engineering operation while Breese continued toward aircraft manufacturing. Their careers separated, but they would intersect once again with the Breese Penguin.

Breese Aircraft and the Penguin

Breese continued developing the training aircraft concept and established the Breese Aircraft Company in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York.

By 1917, the United States had entered World War I and urgently needed thousands of trained military aviators. Placing completely inexperienced students directly into flying aircraft was dangerous and expensive.

The Army wanted a machine that would give new pilots the feel of controlling an aircraft at near-flying speeds while keeping them safely on the ground.

The Breese Penguin was the answer.

The aircraft was intentionally incapable of conventional flight. Its wings were too short and its engine too small to carry it normally into the air. It had no brakes and no steerable wheels, forcing student pilots to learn throttle, rudder and directional control while moving rapidly across the field.

In 1917 the U.S. Army contracted for approximately 300 Breese Penguin trainers.

The aircraft was capable of ground speeds around 35 mph, giving students a very real introduction to aircraft handling without sending them into the sky.

Today the Cradle of Aviation Museum preserves what it identifies as the sole surviving original Breese Penguin, although they have the incorrect propeller.

The Lawrance A-3

Powering the Penguin was the engine developed by Breese’s old friend and former business partner Charles Lanier Lawrance. The Lawrance A-3 was a lightweight, two-cylinder, horizontally opposed, air-cooled aircraft engine. The intended engine application of this propeller remains clearly stamped into its own hub:

24 H.P. LAWRENCE MOTOR

The connection between the men had therefore come full circle.

Breese built the airplane.
Lawrance supplied the engine.

The Original August 1918 Photograph

Adding extraordinary historical context is the original 1918 wartime photograph of a Breese Penguin (see photo attached) photographed head-on. Mounted directly in front of the Lawrance engine is the same distinctive compact, two-bladed wooden propeller configuration represented by this surviving Lang propeller.

The photograph provides something exceptionally valuable historically:

an original World War I photograph showing this exact type of propeller in its intended position on a Breese Penguin.

Lang Propeller Company of America

The third major name represented by this artifact is Lang. British propeller designer Arthur Alexander Dashwood Lang had already established himself as an important aircraft-propeller specialist before and during World War I. With America’s entrance into the conflict, the Lang Propeller Company of America, Inc. was established in New York in 1917, with manufacturing operations developing on Long Island at Whitestone.

This placed Lang within the same rapidly expanding Long Island aviation industry occupied by Breese and Lawrance. Within a relatively small geographic area were companies producing the three essential elements represented by this artifact:

Breese ( the aircraft ) | Lawrance (the engine) | Lang (the propeller)

From the Penguin to the Spirit of St. Louis

The small A-3 was only the beginning of Charles Lawrance's impact on aviation. Lawrance became one of America’s leading advocates for air-cooled aircraft engines and continued developing increasingly powerful designs.

His work eventually produced the nine-cylinder Lawrance J-1 radial engine.

Wright Aeronautical acquired the Lawrance company in 1923, and that engineering lineage developed into the celebrated Wright Whirlwind family of radial engines. Four years later, in 1927, a Wright Whirlwind powered Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis nonstop from New York to Paris. It creates one of the most remarkable historical connections in the story: 

The engineer whose small A-3 powered an airplane deliberately designed not to fly helped create the engine lineage that would power one of the most famous flights in history.

An Extraordinary Undrilled Survivor.

More than a century later it remains an exceptional survivor from a remarkably small world of young inventors and engineers who moved from Gilded Age society to automobiles, from automobiles to airplanes, and ultimately into the birth of the American aviation industry.

Specifications

Manufacturer: Lang Propeller Company of America
Aircraft: Breese Penguin U.S. Army Ground Trainer
Engine: Lawrance A-3
Drawing No.: 241A
Lang Serial No.: 888
Signal Corps No.: S.C. 59134
Diameter / Overall Length: 2000 mm / 78.74 inches
Pitch: 1000 mm / 39.37 inches
Maximum Blade Width: 7-3/4 inches
Hub: 7-1/4 inches wide × 4 inches thick
Hub: Original center bore, never drilled for mounting bolts