1st Moscow Watch Factory, Kirov...Military Aircraft Chronometer

[Geronimo]

Everyone knows the Marine Chronometers made by Poljot and Kirov, but this is not as widespread, as only about 1000 pieces produced of these military aircraft Chronometers. I picked it up today, with a copy of the manual.
It comes in an oak case in which the watch is gimballed, moreover sprung horizontally, probably because of the many potholes in the soviet airways :lol:
The Chronometer itself has a light and heating which makes sense as that the bombers were not heated and dimmly lit and above 10,000 meters it can get cold.
The movement is an anchor-chronometer in contrast to the "normal spring chronometer", the difference is easy to see through, the anchor-Chrono moves the second hand about 5 times per second, and the "normal chronometer" 1 per second. In Germany the lever chronometer was only used for Marine navigation, mainly because it was assumed the shock would be too great for other purposes, the Russians were always a little more pragmatic!
The movement also has contact terminals for slave clocks of which the mechanical time Signal is converted to one second electric impulses which are transfered via the 'calculator box' to the plane's repeater clocks, sextant and astro-compass. U.S. and British aircraft at the time did not incorporate such an integrated & interconnected system. My Russian is probably just as good as your Indian but I can understand the pretty pictures in the manual which is in Russian, of course.
I'll take a few detail shots of the movement, as it is well worth seeing.

[Geronimo]

The chronometer was used connected to these secondary timepieces: http://www.ussrtime.com/cgi-bin/details.pl?id=0252

[bowie]

That's different very nice.

[River Rat]

Congrats you all ways see the Russian shipboard ones not many ones for aircraft navigation.

[Argon]

Fascinating piece - thanks for posting!

[Valekk]

Great piece thanks

[seadog1408]

Great piece, and a good write up thanks.



mike