The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania worked with the U.S. Army to improve early propeller performance. The typical service life of those propellers generally was no more than six months. Durable blade materials were sought to allow construction of thinner, efficient blades at higher speeds.

In 1918 the Army encouraged Westinghouse to design a propeller for the Air Service's workhorse Liberty V-12 engine using micarta, which consisted of the phenolic resin Bakelite, one of the earliest synthetic plastics, and canvas cloth molded into shape under high pressure. Air Service DH-4s, including General Billy Mitchell's personal aircraft, flew with one-piece, fixed-pitch micarta propellers into the mid-1920s. However, despite the early promise of the new material, both fixed-pitch and detachable-blade micarta propellers were heavier and more expensive than wood counterparts, providing only marginal improvements to erosion and weathering, and not as durable as aluminum alloy propellers. Westinghouse discontinued production in the early 1930s