Warbird Information Exchange

I recently acquired an Elgin 37500 8 day Elapsed Time clock that was used in Naval airplanes starting late in WW2 and used throughout Korea and Vietnam. I'm looking for a copy of the service and operating manual for the clock. I've looked at ebay and have done extensive Google searches as well as contacting some of the specialists who work on the restoration of these clocks but no luck. I found some old posts on the forum from several years ago but other than the occasional ebay auction I didn't see anyone having any luck tracking one down. If anyone is aware of where I can acquire a copy of the manual it would be greatly appreciated. Official publication is - HAMILTON AN-5741 (37500) AIRCRAFT CLOCK / SERVICE AND OPERATING MANUAL. Thanks in advance.

I have one, it's about 60 pages front and back. See if you can find one using the Navair number otherwise scanning will take a while.

IIRC these clocks never had radium paint and never glowed. The original faces have the Cream/off-White & Green numbers. Sometimes when overhauled by the Navy the faces were silk screened White only.

Wow, that is awesome. I will do some digging using the number and see if I have better luck. You're correct that they didn't use radium. Luckily mine hasn't been tampered with and has the original dial that glows when a UV light hits it. Hence the UV lights in the WW2 cockpits on the planes. Saves the pilots eyes when night flying.

I think your best bet would be whomever runs the website Cockpit Clocks. AeroAntique would be my next guess.

I know you said you tried the historic watchmaking community already, but in case you missed any of them or for anyone else who stumbles on this thread looking for information. For example, one site offers replacement parts and a blog post from a watch restorer links to a page on the website Historic Aviation Supply where he bought his example. A short article about another restoration cites the book Military Timepieces by Marvin Whitney for information and notes that the patent for the 37500, 2,360,305 shows some of the inner workings.


And the all important question: Where did you get it?

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Thank you for the links to the cockpitclock site and the other site with antique manuals. No luck on the manual site but I will contact the owner of cockpitclock to see if they have any leads. I did find all the other links you added but they are great links and good documentation for others who may own one of these clocks or who are interested. The gentleman at Historic Aviation Supply was very helpful in sharing some related PDFs but not the manual. Should note that I'm not trying to take this thing apart and try to put it back together. Have already talked with Historic Aviation about them doing a service on the clock. It's running really well right now but something I will definitely be doing down the road.

Have struck out doing searches using both the title of the manual as well as using the military designation numbers. The search goes on......

Ebay 10+ years ago.

I had mine serviced at a local watch repair shop. It's basically a big wrist watch.