Original Item: Only One Available. These are rare as hens teeth and this is a wonderful example! This is a very nice U.S. Army Air Forces Model M-9B head or "bombsight football" manufactured by Victor Adding Machine Co., serial V-3694. It has the correct data plate, with inspection marks. The data plate still has the full manufacturer information listed on it:

U.S. ARMY AIR FORCES
BOMB SIGHT
TYPE M-9B SERIAL NUMBER V-3694
ORDER NO. W535-AC-26105
SPEC NO. C-24827
MANUFACTURED BY
VICTOR ADDING MACHINE CO

This would indicate that it was made under a 1944 contract, so it was produced later in the war. Victor Adding Machine Co. was a fledgling company in 1918 when the operator of a chain of meat markets gave a Victor salesman $100, intending to buy an adding machine. Instead, he got 10 shares of the company's stock. In an effort to protect his investment, that man – Carl Buehler – became a director of Victor in September 1918 and was elected president of the company three months later. The first Victor adding machine, Model 110, was introduced in 1919.

In 1921, Carl selected his 24-year-old son, A. C., as Vice President of Operations and advised him to operate the company by "working like the devil, but treat the employees right and allow them to make some money." Carl also believed in reinvesting most of the profits so the company could grow. A.C. assumed control of the company on the death of Carl Buehler in 1932.

During World War II, Victor manufactured an aircraft compass, a B-24 bomber turret gunsight, and the Norden bombsight. After the war, Victor had all the necessary elements for success in the adding machine industry – quality products, a good research department, an efficient factory, an effective sales organization, and a dedicated service department. Therefore, it was no surprise that by 1947 Victor had become the world's largest exclusive manufacturer of adding machines, and five years later topped the million mark in units sold.

The Bomb Sight is in very good condition, though we cannot guarantee functionality.
The bomb sight comes complete with a handmade wooden base. Once in the bomber, it would be mounted into the bomber bay and connected to the aircraft's electrical and navigational systems.

A really fantastic example, with some great research potential, ready to display

The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in Army service, was a bombsight used by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and the United States Navy during World War II, and the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars. It was the canonical tachometric design, a system that allowed it to directly measure the aircraft's ground speed and direction, which older bombsights could only measure inaccurately with lengthy in-flight procedures. The Norden further improved on older designs by using an analog computer that constantly calculated the bomb's impact point based on current flight conditions, and an autopilot that let it react quickly and accurately to changes in the wind or other effects.

Together, these features seemed to promise unprecedented accuracy in day bombing from high altitudes; in peacetime testing the Norden demonstrated a circular error probable (CEP) of 23 metres (75 ft), an astonishing performance for the era. This accuracy allowed direct attacks on ships, factories, and other point targets. Both the Navy and the AAF saw this as a means to achieve war aims through high-altitude bombing; for instance, destroying an invasion fleet by air long before it could reach US shores. To achieve these aims, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, and was part of a then-unprecedented production effort on the same scale as the Manhattan Project. Carl L. Norden, Inc. ranked 46th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.

In practice it was not possible to achieve the expected accuracy in combat conditions, with the average CEP in 1943 of 370 metres (1,200 ft) being similar to Allied and German results. Both the Navy and Air Forces had to give up on the idea of pinpoint attacks during the war. The Navy turned to dive bombing and skip bombing to attack ships, while the Air Forces developed the lead bomber concept to improve accuracy, while adopting area bombing techniques by ever larger groups of aircraft. Nevertheless, the Norden's reputation as a pin-point device lived on, due in no small part to Norden's own advertising of the device after secrecy was reduced late in the war.

The Norden saw some use in the post-World War II era, especially during the Korean War. Post-war use was greatly reduced due to the introduction of radar-based systems, but the need for accurate daytime attacks kept it in service for some time. The last combat use of the Norden was in the US Navy's VO-67 squadron, which used them to drop sensors onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail as late as 1967. The Norden remains one of the best-known bombsights of all time.

As U.S. participation in the war started, the U.S. Army Air Forces drew up widespread and comprehensive bombing plans based on the Norden. They believed the B-17 had a 1.2% probability of hitting a 30 metres (100 ft) target from 6,100 metres (20,000 ft), meaning that 220 bombers would be needed for a 93% probability of one or more hits. This was not considered a problem, and the AAF forecast the need for 251 combat groups to provide enough bombers to fulfill their comprehensive pre-war plans.

After earlier combat trials proved troublesome, the Norden bombsight and its associated AFCE were used on a wide scale for the first time on the 18 March 1943 mission to Bremen-Vegesack, Germany; The 303d Bombardment Group dropped 76% of its load within a 300 metres (1,000 ft) ring, representing a CEP well under 300 m (1,000 ft) As at sea, many early missions over Europe demonstrated varied results; on wider inspection, only 50% of American bombs fell within a 400 metres (1⁄4 mi) of the target, and American flyers estimated that as many as 90% of bombs could miss their targets.[37][38][39] The average CEP in 1943 was 370 metres (1,200 ft), meaning that only 16% of the bombs fell within 300 metres (1,000 ft) of the aiming point. A 230-kilogram (500 lb) bomb, standard for precision missions after 1943, had a lethal radius of only 18 to 27 metres (60 to 90 ft).

Faced with these poor results, Curtis LeMay started a series of reforms in an effort to address the problems. In particular, he introduced the "combat box" formation in order to provide maximum defensive firepower by densely packing the bombers. As part of this change, he identified the best bombardiers in his command and assigned them to the lead bomber of each box. Instead of every bomber in the box using their Norden individually, the lead bombardiers were the only ones actively using the Norden, and the rest of the box followed in formation and then dropped their bombs when they saw the lead's leaving his aircraft. Although this spread the bombs over the area of the combat box, this could still improve accuracy over individual efforts. It also helped stop a problem where various aircraft, all slaved to their autopilots on the same target, would drift into each other. These changes did improve accuracy, which suggests that much of the problem is attributable to the bombardier. However, precision attacks still proved difficult or impossible.

When Jimmy Doolittle took over command of the 8th Air Force from Ira Eaker in early 1944, precision bombing attempts were dropped. Area bombing, like the RAF efforts, were widely used with 750 and then 1000 bomber raids against large targets. The main targets were railroad marshaling yards (27.4% of the bomb tonnage dropped), airfields (11.6%), oil refineries (9.5%), and military installations (8.8%). To some degree the targets were secondary missions; Doolittle used the bombers as an irresistible target to draw up Luftwaffe fighters into the ever-increasing swarms of Allied long-distance fighters. As these missions broke the Luftwaffe, missions were able to be carried out at lower altitudes or especially in bad weather when the H2X radar could be used. In spite of abandoning precision attacks, accuracy nevertheless improved. By 1945, the 8th was putting up to 60% of its bombs within 300 metres (1,000 ft), a CEP of about 270 metres (900 ft).