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| Joined: | Sat Apr 11th, 2009 |
| Location: | Auckland, New Zealand |
| Posts: | 7504 |
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Thanks. Not sure I understand all of it.
Interesting that the pilots had to turn in their watch after each mission.
Mike, here are some prior posts of my Laco and its closed-loop strap. In the pic below, note how the rivets on the left side of the pic serve as a dam preventing a rolling buckle from rolling up to the lugs. The rolling buckle can't be seen on the pic, however.
But in the 2 pics below, you'll see the rolling buckle. Circular as it is, it really rolls up and down the strap almost all the way to the pointed tail-end and even up to the rivets themselves.
So technically and cleverly, the rivets aren't decorative as we may think they are.
Yup, the pilots/navigators were all assembled in front of their planes before each sortie and the squadron commander would hand out the watches to the squadron members. He would then give them out and they all would stand around him or in front of him and synchronize their watches to the commander's.....who by then would already have emerged from the quartermaster's tent. It was the quartermaster who had a chronometer and it was him who'd synchronize the commanders watch FIRST prior to handing out the entire stash to him.
Upon returning from a sortie, all the watches would be returned and thus one would never know which watch one would again get on the next mission. But they all had to be returned. If I were there at the time, maybe I'd bail out and walk home with the watch, which were then on D5 movements (LOL)
By the way, the pilots' deck watches watches (military designation of FL 232883) were used to navigate in conjunction with a bank indicator octant (pls see pictures below taken from the Laco Big Pilot owner's brochure).
I guess that's it. PM me if you need more info, amigo. Sources of my inputs are the Laco forum and my Laco brochures.
