A rusty item washed up also:
just kidding 😉 I bought that and it just arrived by royal mail this week, lil offtopic but would anyone know their guns? I think its a 9mm browning but im not a gun expert… 😉
Brataccas is appears you are a gun expert. It is clearly a 9mm Browning Hi-Power by its contours and enclosed loop hammer. The serial number on the receiver dates its production to approximately 1955 I think, although I’m not a BHP collector. Like the M1911A1 Govt. Models I collect, it is another design of John Moses Browning.
I won’t say what I think the serial number is yet so as not to bias other views.
Thanks Anne.
It is a Fairchild model H-1 gun camera. Here is what the data plates from that model look like:
Most of the Fairchild gun cameras shared a common mechanism inside and differed by their housing assembly, the installed optics and filters, and the operating voltage. The “M” models operated at 12 volts and the “N” models operated at 24 volts. They could be set to operate at 16, 32, and 64 frames per second and 32 frames was the standard setting.
Here is a short U.S. Army Air Corp film showing the details and operation of the Fairchild AN (G.S.A.P.) gun camera, which is very similar in most respects to the H-1 and H-3 models.
The great Anatoly Kvotchur demonstrating the Flanker at eye level. Note the refueling probe is extended on the port side. Does the Flanker change the sensitivity of the flight control system when the probe is extended like the Hornet does so that the aircraft won’t be so twitchy near the tanker? Flanker Man? Beuller? Beuller?
Does anyone know what the device is to stbd of the pilots windscreen, is it a gun camera?
Pagen none of my other historic photos of Devastators shows that device attached to the starboard side of the aircraft, but these color Time/Life pictures of VT-6 show that virtually every aircraft photographed has one installed, and the ones that don’t still have the mounting struts installed. Some of the other types of aircraft on deck also have the same device installed in the same location. Look at aircraft 6B10 in this next picture, there is an additional tube that looks like a telescope mounted on the cowling in front of the side-mounted device. This is in addition to the winshield-mounted sight that all of the TBDs have. It sure looks like a camera or some type of optical device, and there is a cable loom coming out of the back of it. The Bombardier had to lie prone to use a Norden bombsight that looked down through the belly of the aircraft so I don’t think it has to do with bombing. There was a film made around 1941 that was shot in Technicolor (“Dive Bomber”?), maybe it has something to do with that. Possibly a mission camera to gather more intel that just a gun camera?
Here is an article from February 2011 with some details regarding the (then) current hunt for TBDs. I’m pretty sure that the 2 Devastators at Jaluit Atoll, Marshall Islands were brought to the surface a few years ago but this article seems to indicate that attempt was abandoned due to cost. I have pictures of those 2 TBDs in the lagoon at Jaluit that were taken by divers in 2008, and their notes say that after the pictures were taken Americans came and salvaged both of planes and took them back to the U.S. for restoration.
I’ve got a friend in Pensacola that should know the current status of the existing examples, I’ll ask him about it.
http://www.eaa.org/news/2011/2011-03-02_tbd.asp
Also, if you haven’t seen the Time/Life pre-war color pictures of a Devastator squadron, they really are amazing. Here are a couple.
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