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Found WWII aircraft battery. What's it from? Observation plane?


mmerc20
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Our museum had almost 20 volunteers helping a couple weeks ago find relics on our former WWII camp and I brought this battery out of the woods.

I found it at the site of the old dirt airstrip where the L-4 observation planes trained from, but I only recently learned that the basic L-4 did not have a battery. I don’t know enough about them, but did any WWII observation aircraft use batteries like this for powering radios or something? The aluminum housing definitely looks to be from an aircraft and not vehicle related. The battery pack was made by Reading Battery but there are no other markings to see. It would have been nice if there was a part number!

 

I want to put it on display in the museum but need to know what it came from exactly and would love to find a photo (or drawing) of one installed.

Any help would be certainly appreciated!

Mike

post-3373-0-54186600-1526395865.jpg

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phantomfixer

The bonding/ground strap is curious...not knowing much of older aircraft battery types...it seems the battery case itself would not be grounded...

I did find where the different model L5 had either a 12V or 24V battery

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The strap goes through a hole in the aluminum case and is not attached to anything inside. The photo is a little deceiving.

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