The AM Forum

While looking at some pictures I shot today of the radio ops position of a TBD Dauntless torpedo bomber undergoing restoration at Quonset Air Musuem, I noticed an unusual piece of gear below the ART-13.  At first I thought it might be a bellmouth for deployment of a trailing wire antenna, but I'm  now thinking that it might be a logrithimic function facilitator to be used on long missions.  Any airdales out there know for sure?   

Would that be an SBD Dauntless or a TBD Devastator?  If it's a Devestator, they were all shot down/scrapped before the ART-13 came out.

That could be some sort of analog computer for bombing soloutions, althouth the SBD was a dive bomber and probably didn't need such an animal.

The pic isn't really clear enough for me to see exactly what it is.

I might be wrong on the ID of the plane - maybe its a TBM. and I stand corrected, its nickname would be the Avenger.  Its one of the later WW2 torpdeo bombers, with a 3 man crew.  I believe this is the type of plane that George Bush Senior flew. The radio operator also operated  an aft pointing  belly machine gun down below and aft of the pilot and co-pilot.  Its one HUGE single placed airplane, and the torpedo is carried within an interal bay with doors.   QAM is doing a fantastic job of restoring the plane, and the detailing in the radio ops bay is amazing so far.  This is the first one I have seen where the ART-13/ATC (standard issue for the plane) was positioned forward of the operator.  Other examples I have seen of this plane in print and in other musuems (Pima, NASM) have the transmitter located aft of the operator on a shelf, facing forward.  I think the companoin receiver used with the ART-13/ATC was the Autotuned ARR-15, although I did not see a reciever installed (yet)  in the QAM plane.

The mystery device in question is the hose with the funnel shaped end on it. I don't think its a speaking tube to talk to the pilot with... and if it is what I think it is, I wouldnt want it anywheres near my face anyhow!

It is a TBM-3E Avenger.  Here is the link to its QAM web page:

http://users.ids.net/~qam/AircraftPages/tbm3e.htm

I will be able to show the cabin picture to my father next Tueday.  He was a civilian radio and radar technician attached to a Marine unit in the Pacific at the end of WWII.  He didn't work with TBM's but on SBD's and other planes. 

He says that they all had pee tubes for the crew members.  A common practical joke was to rotate the external pitot tube 180 degrees so that the air pressure on that funnel became positive instead of negative in flight and then you discovered you couldn't take a leak - ha ha.