Roller-Smith WWII Aircraft Instrument - ID-14

Description

WWII Aircraft Instrument - Roller-Smith ID-14 APN-1 Radio Altitude Indicator USN USAAF

One really homely looking wartime ID-14 APN-1 Radio Altitude Instrument that would've been found in the Navy's torpedo and patrol bombers during WWII and in some USAAF transports. You'd have found this one lurking on the instrument board of the Grumman TBM and TBF Avengers , the Lockheed PV-1 Ventura and the PV-2 Harpoon , Consolidated PBY Catalina , the PBM-5 Mariner , SB2C Helldiver , and the Convair PB4Y-2 Privateer on Navy row. The USAAF used them as well in the Douglas C-47 "Skytrain" transport.

Post war you might have found this system in the A-1 Skyraider , too.

What the heck is it, you ask?

This instrument - indicator, as properly termed - was part of Radio Set APN-1 which was designed to measure and indicate to the pilot altitude over terrain during flight - specifically low altitude - where monitoring height over terrain was most critical. The instrument here was coupled with an Altitude Limit Switch which was used to set a determined altitude at which flight was desired between the range of 50 to 300 feet and from 500 to 3000 feet. This instrument has a knob that the pilot could use to operate the set on either LOW Range from 0-400 feet or HIGH Range from 400-4000 feet. The switch and instruments used lights on the instrument board to indicate height - Amber light on dash indicated flight ops were at SET altitude. The Green light would indicate flight was above the set altitude. You didn't want to see the Red light come on as that'd indicate you were flying below the set altitude. And that meant bing! bang! boom! ouch! coming your way shortly.

Battered and faded penolic data plate on the unit is on the rear of the instrument would've contained:

ID-14 / APN -1

110 QB / 47 (or something like it)

NXsa-62370 xxxxx: CAR

She's ugly. One of the trasures as found decades ago in the cast-off pile from a scrapping operaiton that carved up most of the Navy's patrol and torpedo bombers here in AZ in the late 1950s. The housing is rusty, the faceplate is faded, the back of the instrument has a few bumps - BUT she's all complete and glass is intact. From time to time we get asked for instrument that look worn and faded and distressed but complete for installation in a vintage panel. If you needed a less-than-perfect APN-1, well, here it is. The knobs for selection of Altitude and Range still work. Plenty of spare parts here if you needed them for fixing another example.

So these came from an absolute pile of instruments propbably removed from Catalina, Privateers and Avengers that were scrapped at Litchfield Park Naval Air Facility in Goodyear, AZ in the late 1950s. The instrument boards were pulled out of the airplanes and the airframes fed into the furnace to pop back out as aluminum ingots. So many of the "nice" useful instruments were sold off on the surplus marketplace and found their way into GA aircraft. The altimeters - the VSI, the dierectional gyroscopes - all of those had a direct application and need in the GA market (albeit flooded already with a glut of wartime instruments). But these little APN-1s - not so much. They were the lonely stepchildren nobody wanted. I remember as a kid seeing a scrap yard seller grabbing random ones like this and throwing them against other items in the yard just to hear them shattered and break. Pretty sad. I think that caught me in my formulative years and we've got buckets and buckets of "ugly children" like these that I am trying to home late in life. In fact, take one of these and you have offer of a free feral kitten from our yard if you desire it.

Radium? You bet your sweet APN-1, buddy. Roller-Smith used the luminous paint on all of these. It's still hot, but it's encapsulated. Don't take it apart and rub your testicles on the face plate unless you want glow-in-da-dark junk.

Ships cheapest via USPS Ground Advantage or FedEx Ground unless you direct otherwise. Questions? Please ask seller. And thanks for looking!