A characterization of classical Minkowski planes over a perfect field of characteristic two

We give a new set of axioms defining the concept of (B^*)-plane (i.e. Minkowski plane without the tangency property) and we show that every (B^*)-plane in which a condition similar to the “Fano condition” of Heise and Karzel (see 5, § 3]) holds, is a Minkowski plane over a perfect field of characteristic two. In particular, every finite (B^*)-plane of even order is a Minkowski plane over a field. Consequences for strictly 3-transitive groups are derived from the preceding results; in particular, every strictly 3-transitive set of permutations of odd degree containing the identity is a protective group PGL₂(GF(2 ⁿ )) over a finite field GF(2 ⁿ , for some positive integer n.