THE CLOCK
In 1930 LeCoultre designed the first CHRONOFLITE, a clock for airplanes with double chronograph, the “Air Corps”, predecessor of USAF, bought to Jaeger of New York this clock, it was the first clock with “elapsed time”.
It was the movement more widely used before WW II, Smith from England mounted a CHRONOFLITE movement just with elapsed time, and the Russian Wostok copied the movement without license and equipped from the Policarpov I-16 Rata, up till the MIG 15. It was also used in racing cars of the 30 and 40 decades.
The first models of Chronoflite was built with a 12 hour DIAL and without “civil date”. All of them have 13 jewels and only one mainspring barrel for eight days.
The main disadvantage of this clock is the winding up, which is done counterclockwise. Frequently you would wind it up it in the wrong direction (which was the natural direction), and it would break.
Another inconvenient is that the minute hand move counter clockwise. Both of these problems were solved with Elgin Hamilton 37500 design.
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THE PLANE
The Dauntless was the only U:S: aircraft to participate in all five carrier versus carrier engagements in the Pacific. The first deliveries to the US NAVY in 1940, in spite of its laking in range and engine power, its vulnerability and exhausting to fly, and in spite of it wings cant be fold, it become to be a legendary and most successful shipboard dive bomber of all time, it had more to do with the success in the Coral Sea battle and Midway where the Dauntless credited for Japanese carriers and one heavy cruiser than with the aircraft itself.
The dive bombing took place between 15.000 and 20.000 feet,A the pilot approached to the target, he would place his machine directly overhead, pull up the nose, deploy upper and lower dive flaps, and push over. Acceleration was slow and with the reflector the pilot point his aircraft at the target and drop his bombs. Free of his heavy bomb load, the Dauntless pulled out easily.
The original NAVY contract called for 57, this number increased to 500 after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
THE COCKPIT
The most remarkable of the cockpit is the chart table, it was stowed in the middle of the main flight instrument panel making the vision of instrument difficult even with the table stowed. In most pictures of Second World War Dauntless pilots, you can see them leaning forward. That´s because the stick is too short, again because of the chart table. (See last photo).
The instrument panel was limited at each side in the upper part by the twin 50 mm machine gun butts, it took up a lot of space.
At the right hand side was located the landing gear handle labelled "W", the flap handle labelled "L", and the dive brake "D", more than one lowered the gear instead the brakes in an attack, you really had be careful with those controls.
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