Hi Folks,
I'll start the drip feed of my military PW's to the forum with this Elgin Timer. Would be very interested in opinions of what its age is, what the purpose of this watch would have been, and which branch of the military used.
Some opinion of value would be appreciated too if possible!

Best Reagrds
John Woolsey

Elgin Timer!

The case is in superb condition, with none of the usual mauling around the knife slit, no sprained hinges and all domes and bezel close tightly. Dial is in mint condition as are the hands. No dings or any visible damage.

The case appears to be Nickel plate over brass, (well polished through use), with hinged inner and outer domes, and snap-on bezel with plastic crystal. Plating is Matt finished on inner domes.
Dial is Matt black with top sub seconds dial, not sunk and marked in 10 sec & Minute increments. Large counter-balanced single sweep second hand. Dial is marked in 1/10ths second on chapter, large numerals for seconds.

When wound, the watch runs continuously until run down. Pressing the crown starts the timer, pressing again stops it, pressing again resets it. Very fast beat must be around 50k. Sounds very good indeed.

Movement details:
Engraved: 41096567
Elgin Natn'l Watch Co (All Cap letters)
U.S.A.
15 Jewels

All visible Jewels appear to be screw retained, Gold set Rubies, except centre pinion, appears to be a steel bush.

Engraving on the case back states:

(Triangular stamp enclosing 'AC' over 378)

Rest of text in order - set central:

TYPE A8
SPEC.No.94-27749
SER.NO.AC 42-17072
MFRS.PART.NO.1778
ORD.NO. W535AC-28071
ELGIN

Elgin Military Timer Case Back.

Still can't pick out the engraving!

JW.

Elgin Military Timer Movement.
JW.

John,
Your timer was made in 1942.
It is a grade 582 1/30-second timer used by the US Navy Bereau of Aeronautics and the US Airforce and known as Watch.Navigation(Ground Speed) Type A-8.There were 366,200 made.
This was taken from "Military Timepieces" by Marvin Whitney.
There is no mention of the actual balance speed.
Hope this helps.
J Smith

I used to be a pilot in the Air Force. Aircraft have an airspeed indicator as a basic flight instrument. One of its most important uses is in navigating your way around since there are no roadsigns in the sky. The way the instrument works is the indicator needle is moved by the force of the air being forced into it as your fly along. One problem is that as you go up in altitude, there is less and less air and so your indicated airspeed gets lower and lower compared to your actual airspeed. The other problem is there is always a wind blowing and your speed relative to the ground is going to be either lower or higher depending on whether you are flying into the wind or with the wind. You need some way to make corrections to get your actual speed relative to the ground or else you will wind up coming nowhere close to where you want to go. So, back in the days before GPS systems were added to cockpits, you needed to do some arithmetic to figure out your actual groundspeed and then compare that to what the airspeed indicator was indicating and adjust your navigation calculations accordingly. With a stopwatch and a map, all you needed to do was to pick out a pair of parallel roads or other landmarks about 5 to 10 miles apart early in your flight when you still knew what was what on the ground, measure the distance between them using the scale on the map, click your stopwatch on and then off as you flew from one to the other, do your basic division and voila, you got your actual groundspeed! It's a bit more complicated than this, but not by much.

Your A-8 stopwatch is perhaps one of the most common WW II Army Air Force timepieces (the Air Force was not created until 1947). Julian's information is correct as to its age. I could have been used in pretty much any Army Air Force aircraft of the time, either in the war or in the U.S. There is no way to tell if it was used in a bomber or just a transport or trainer. The value of these is surprisingly low as they are very common and many collectors seem to prefer actual watches and chronographs. You can buy all you want of these on places like Ebay for under $100 or if you wait for bargains they are not hard to buy for under $50.

Hi Julian and Jim,
Many thanks'for your replies, this is just the type of information I hoped for, Tech background as well as anecdotal memoirs from a 'pro' user of these timepieces.
This type of information gives the watches some 'life' and history to refer to.
I'm not too fussed personally about the actual monetary values of these watches, but my insurers see them differently. The real value to me,is in the joy of handling these relics, and pondering just what they 'lived through'- along with their 'owners'! If only these watches could talk! As Greg stated, they all deserve a salute!

Jim, you just have to be a former instructor, I don't know many pilots who could have written a concise description of track and groundspeed calculation as you just did. I think we both may be a product of training from times pre-dating 'multi-choice answer' exams!
Probably not the place to discuss the 'pro's' and 'con's'of GPS v Stopwatches, but personally I hate GPS in aircraft, pilots become lazy and relliant upon them and lose the skill of manual navigation and track keeping, then when a sat goes down or battery fails, they go into a total funk because they forgot basic training, can't handle the workload and everything then goes pearshaped.
I can see the benfits of GPS use in the USA with its vast swathes of featureless terrain to try get visual fixes, but in my view, regular checks for competent use of stopwatches, nav charts and nav-aids should be mandatory ........... but then I'm just a dinosaur that likes to hear that watch ticking!
Best regards
John Woolsey

Yes, I did a bit of training of pilots, but mostly I just flew various missions as that was more interesting for me. These days I just float around in a Skyhawk for my own amusement. I always make it a practice to fly as much as possible by the old ways - dead reckoning mostly, and checking the VORs on the radios or DFing plain old radio stations. I plot everything out on my charts and spin my old aluminum person-powered E6B to do my calculating. When conditions get nasty, though, I don't hesitate to switch to the GPS or LORAN - whichever is on the panel - as I am a firm believer in the saying that there are old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold pilots.

Updated photo's added (better camera!), plus a couple of additions.
JW.

Dial - Bezel removed.

Escapement!
No wonder these are dubbed 'Jitterbugs' with the size of that balance wheel!

JW.