Finally unpacking some of my collection of non-dug aviation items, which have been in storage for some time and found these two:
Firstly a Bakelite cased Magneto switch, which appears to be from the 1920s or earlier and I recall came with a job lot of aircraft items many years ago – however it appears to be a single switch, whereas I always thought aircraft engines usually had twin magnetos? and is reversing !
[ATTACH=CONFIG]241782[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]241783[/ATTACH]
Has anyone seen anything like this? I cannot find anything similar online for either aircraft or car use
Secondly a small solid perspex periscope – I was told this was picked up at a crash site of a German He III which was shot down over Manchester – the person who gave me this, again may years ago, certainly had no reason to fabricate the story and did go into some detail regarding their visit to the site on the morning after the crash and also had a Heinkel marked makers plate that they did not wish to part with, apparently picked up at the same time.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]241784[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]241785[/ATTACH]
But I have never seen anything like it elsewhere, other than from AFVs but the latter have always been considerably bigger and high quality glass optics.
By: Whitley_Project - 8th November 2015 at 19:40
The Whitley and a number of other coastal command aircraft had a rear looking periscope arrangement to enable photograpy of depth charge attacks.
It’s quite possible the He 111 and other German aircraft had a periscopes…
By: N.Wotherspoon - 8th November 2015 at 19:29
The perspex ‘periscope’ is not for looking through; it is to ‘move’ light around an obstacle (as light likes to travel in straight lines).
I’ve seen similar things on old cars; it will be for illuminating one of the instruments or, more likely, a linear scale on some piece of radio equipment.
That’s my guess anyway! 🙂
Thanks for the replies – I always wondered how such a small periscope could be any use visually – someone suggested a while ago it could be for checking bomb or U/C doors were open, but just a small window would surely do that? as in the A-26 cockpit floor? – so illumination use would certainly make sense.
Yes Alan the story was that it was from that He III – the plate I was shown had a lovely Heinkel logo on it, but was blank! Have had a good look online at the Lotfernrohr Lotfe 7 bombsight, but not found anything showing internals.
By: Creaking Door - 7th November 2015 at 20:36
I am left wondering if the periscope is an internal part of a bomb sight…
You must have posted this while I was looking at the photographs but part of a bomb-sight sounds very plausible; is there a linear scale somewhere that needs to be illuminated?
By: Creaking Door - 7th November 2015 at 20:30
The perspex ‘periscope’ is not for looking through; it is to ‘move’ light around an obstacle (as light likes to travel in straight lines).
I’ve seen similar things on old cars; it will be for illuminating one of the instruments or, more likely, a linear scale on some piece of radio equipment.
That’s my guess anyway! 🙂
By: Alan Clark - 7th November 2015 at 20:22
Without having a bomb sight to break into I am left wondering if the periscope is an internal part of a bomb sight. There certainly seems to be something like that projecting slightly from the bottom of German bomb sights. If it is He111 and from this area then the candidates for which one are fairly low.
Sign In
November 7, 2015 at 6:19 pm