Hey, how's it going?
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.