Hi all, i'd need your help to identify this Leonidas Bomb Timer i happened to see.
The watch is the same of fig. 12-page 515-marvin Whitney's book, the strange thing is that "Federal Television Corporation".
My guess is a network inside an AFB, but no info found so far.
Would you be so kind to help me ?
Thank you, Aldo.

Interesting timer. The first I have seen with this contractor's name on it.

The Federal Television Corporation was a private contractor, and it must have been the one with the contract to supply this timer to the Government. That's not to say FTC made the timer, only that they supplied it. This corporation had publicly traded stock, at least as far back as 1950.

FTC also sold electronic equipment to the U.S. Govt.

Thank you for the images.

Best regards,
Greg

Thanks Greg.

Maybe this was a way, the private contractor, for acquisition of non-American objects, in this case from the Swiss Leonidas.

About the age, the year is the same code of aircraft tail code, in this case Air Force 1933.

Is it correct ?

And about the purpose, these watches have been used for navigation or bombing purposes ?

Thanks, Aldo.

Although the Order No. starts with "33" this does not indicate that the watch was made in 1933. This timer is more likely from the 1950's or 1960's.

A stopwatch like this could be used for lots of things. But the most likely use was for navigation. Such as, measuring the airspeed by timing the movement of the shadow of the aircraft as it moved past known points on the ground. Also, aircraft sextants used stopwatches for averaging of the sightings, which somehow increased the accuracy of air navigation.

A pilot would have better knowledge of these things than I.

Best regards,
Greg

One clue to its age is there was no U.S. Air Force in 1933. The name of the branch of service that is currently known as the Air Force in 1933 was the Army Air Corps. The name changed to the Army Air Forces in 1941, and then this was changed to the Air Force in September, 1947 when it was made an independent branch of the military. When ever you see a timepiece with the markings of either USAF or just AF it is going to be from between 1947 and today.

Very helpful infos, thank you.

Best regards, Aldo.

Ciao Aldo/Greg,

Mil-w-6510 (WATCH, STOP, NAVIGATION, TYPE A&8 )was issued in 1951, that dates the watch more or less, it is now cancelled...
When you step in cases as such you can make use of

ASSIST , a service provided by the U.S. D.o.D.
which stores and Mil Spec data
as per the below link...

That is for Group/class 6645 which includes all watches and clocks...

It seems to me that FTC became Hazeltine Corp later on...

brgds

Enzo

http://assist.daps.dla.mil/quicksearch/quicksearch_quer...fsc_area=6645&title=

Ciao Enzo,

As always, I'm impressed with your knowledge.

Best regards,
Greg

Grazie Enzo.


BW

Aldo.

Here is another military stop watch. It is a nine jewel movement marked "Aristo Import Co Inc." inside, and is Swiss. The black-faced dial shows one revolution in ten seconds, so I presume this was probably used by a bombardier. Does anybody know more about it?

It looks like a 1960s vintage navigation stop watch. These were made to be used not by the bombardier, but by the navigator or the pilot if there were no navigator on the type of aircraft being flown, or by the radar operator if the aircraft had one. They were made and supplied by several different companies. Here is a link to a page from a 1966 Wakmann catalog with the one they were selling at the time. Scroll down about halfway on the page until you get to page 8 in the catalog

1966 Wakmann catalog A-8, specification MIL-W-6510

Jim: Thanks for the Wakmann catalog. My Aristo looks something like it but I found a post by David Abbe on this board that looks exactly like mine. Scroll down to his pix of WWII nav watches and look at the one on the right.

Hi, Aldo, how do you do?
Well, it is not my field, but some informations are in my possession...

The Specification MIL-W-6510, figures between the cancelled specifications in the Department of Defense List "DODISS" of July 2005.

http://books.google.it/books?i...%20mil-w-6510&f=true

As you can see, this specification was written in 07 AUG 1951, but this specification is only the same 2nd world war time AAF Spec 94-27749, rewritten in post war military specification format.
It was widely used by USAF as part of electronic and radar equipment, as often happens.
The Federal Television Corp. was a supplyer of electronic instruments for the signal corps, it must have bought and supplied the timers too.
The real mistery is the number "33", as prefix to the Order number.

But it is not the only one I've seen with this prefix: as you can see in these links, you have the n°2735 (already seen on the web here: http://www.mwrforum.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3472 ), but another collector has got the n°1651, as you can see here:

http://forums.watchuseek.com/showthread.php?t=96924

I can not see the details of David Abby's Aristo A-8 stop watch so I can not say if it is WW II or if he has inadvertantly misidentified a more modern example it since there was not much change in these over many decades.

The serial number and contracts numbers on your A-8 place it at 1959 at the earliest, and possibly later.

It's an old thread but I thought I would just put the title into perspective...

quote:

Hi all, i'd need your help to identify this Leonidas Bomb Timer i happened to see.

This is a Leonidas Bomb Timer