Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Hey, how's it going?

  • Good.

  • Good.

  • What do we have here?

  • It's a World War II bombsight.

  • [patriotic music]

  • This thing is really cool.

  • Are you sure it's not, like, a James Bond nuclear bomb,

  • or something like that?

  • [bomb falls and explodes]

  • [laughter]

  • Anybody who collects World War II stuff is going to love this.

  • So how much you want for this thing?

  • I really don't know.

  • Based on what you shared with me, as much as possible.

  • OK, let me call a guy up.

  • He's the curator of an aviation museum.

  • So he'll know more about it.

  • I'll be right back.

  • All right.

  • Thank you.

  • I really hope I don't get embarrassed,

  • and this thing is a microwave oven.

  • You think you've got a real Norden bombsight this time.

  • I think so.

  • There's no identifying anything on it.

  • Yes, well, it's part of a Norden bombsight.

  • What you've got is the sight head.

  • What you're missing is the stabilizer and the autopilot,

  • the rest of the Norden bombsight.

  • But you have the iconic part, the part--

  • I have the head of the statue.

  • [laughs]

  • That's right.

  • This is the part that people know.

  • It probably was on a naval plane.

  • With the kind of wear that's on it, probably a Mark 15.

  • It's something that anybody who is

  • into iconic pieces from World War II,

  • they're going to be very interested in this.

  • Cool.

  • Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

  • Not a problem. Very cool.

  • All right, I'll tell you what.

  • I'll give you 800 bucks for it.

  • Top secret, historical significance,

  • head of the statue, great mantelpiece

  • for World War II buffs.

  • Yeah, I know.

  • It's not all there.

  • We have pieces missing.

  • And it's obviously not that secret.

  • Uh--

  • [laughter]

  • You know, I'll tell you what.

  • I'll give you 1,000 bucks.

  • I think it's a fair price.

  • You got it for nothing.

  • And I gotta find someone to buy it.

  • All good points.

  • Fair enough.

  • 1,000 bucks is more than I had when I came in.

  • I'll take it. Thank you.

  • Sweet.

  • I'll meet you right around the corner.

  • We'll do some paperwork.

  • Thank you.

  • It's not a pizza maker.

  • But I'm gonna make a lot of dough on this, hopefully.

  • You like it so much, it's not downstairs,

  • it's in your office?

  • Well, I'm thinking about, like, you know, I got my Bolt.

  • I got my Norden bombsight.

  • So what do you think?

  • I mean, they're incredibly rare.

  • They're very difficult to find because most of them

  • were decommissioned after the war.

  • You're lucky to get it.

  • So developed for World War II, used

  • in most of the major bomber aircrafts, the B-17

  • by Boeing, the B-24 by Douglas.

  • The B-17 had a crew of 10 men.

  • And now, there is a pilot, a co-pilot.

  • There was a navigator, and there was,

  • specifically, a bombardier.

  • You, as the bombardier, have to decide

  • when to let the bombs go.

  • Before this, they used to have to do charts.

  • And it would take them so long to figure it out

  • that they were already missing their targets.

  • Because of this sight, the accuracy improved

  • dramatically for the bombers.

  • This allowed them to get within about

  • a 30-meter circle of where they were

  • trying to hit from 20,000 feet.

  • Then that's why--

  • They were so advanced that they wound

  • up using them all the way to the beginning stages of Vietnam.

  • They're dropping thousands and thousands of tons of bombs,

  • based on one of these sights.

  • That's crazy.

  • I didn't know exactly what one of these things looked like,

  • so I had Mark Hall Patton look at it.

  • And yeah, he says, yeah, this is a Norden bombsight,

  • at least the major part of one.

  • Yes.

  • Well, there are-- there's an eye cup that goes here.

  • You can see this part, the post is gone.

  • But for the most part, from the ones that I've seen,

  • it is pretty much complete.

  • This plugs into allow it to have light.

  • And then these lever or dials over here

  • adjust and calibrate this sight.

  • And you're actually looking down through the plane,

  • down at the ground.

  • Dials help you understand your airspeed and your direction.

  • And from that, based on charts that you have,

  • which this whole part here slides out.

  • And they would have done that, and they would have

  • kept different maps, charts.

  • You do have a data plate here, US Navy.

  • Yes, so this is a Mark 16.

  • It's the M Series.

  • This is the standard bombsight.

  • The US Army Air Force used them, and the US Navy used them.

  • OK.

  • So what do you think it's worth?

  • Well, one in this condition, which is, I

  • would say on a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 7--

  • you know, there's a few minor missing parts,

  • but it's mostly clean and mostly together.

  • It's nice that you have the data plate.

  • That really helps it.

  • And this appeals to military collectors

  • but also instrument collectors because this

  • is the end of an era.

  • It was the height of what you could do with instrumentation.

  • So I think in this condition, it's at least $2,500.

  • OK, cool, because I paid a grand for it.

  • You did?

  • Yeah.

  • Good for you.

  • Yeah.

  • All right, I got some other stuff to show you.

  • Come on.

  • Oh, it's really cool.

  • I might actually keep that, though.

  • It looks good on your desk.

Hey, how's it going?

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it