What became known as the Portlaoise Plane was documented to have been designed & built in 1908 in Maryborough, Queen's County (now Portlaoise, Co. Laois).
The King's County Chronicle reported on November 4th 1909 that it was the first plane to fly in Ireland.
Then it disappeared.
The plane, safely stored throughout the turbulent years of the 1900s, including two World Wars, the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, mysteriously disppeared, not only lost to the town but as decades passed it also became lost to peoples memories, until Joe Rogers, in tribute to his father, William, one of the original craftsmen, began a forlorn search to find what had happened to the record-breaking machine.
