Gloster Gladiator panel "sacred six" instruments

[Stephan Wilkinson]

One usually overlooked feature of the Gladiator was that as far as I can tell, it was the very first British fighter (in the MkII version) to position its flight instruments in the then-revolutionary "sacred six," or "sixpack" array, which of course became standard for instrument flight during the years before flight directors and then glass cockpits. This was introduced in February 1938.

Does anybody know if this was in fact revolutionary, or was it simply a fighter adaptation of something that was already common in multi-engine and commercial aircraft? Or was it a British adaptation of something that was already common in the U. S., maybe thanks to Jimmy Doolittle?

[k5083]

That's an interesting question (to me). I'd like to know more about the history of this important aspect of what we would nowadays call "user interface design" in airplanes. Together with better-documented stories like the well-known tale of how the widespread use of checklists was inspired by the Boeing 299 crash, I could imagine it being part of a cool socio-history of why airplane cockpits are the way they are.

August

[Archer]

I cannot answer your question as to how revolutionary the arrangement was, but the British Blind Flying Panel was in itself an important step in that these six instruments were arranged on a separate sub-panel in the main panel and these sub-panels were universal across most of the types used from the 1930s to the 1950s. See: http://www.gbairspares.co.uk/reference/bfp.htm A pretty big step in standardisation if you ask me. Wikipedia states that the US Air Force came up with their own standardised arrangement during WWII, so it would seem that they were one step behind the British there.