I was very impressed to read about this piece of equipment for bomb trainers. The CCF at school had a navigation training aid – where they had got it from, I’ll never know – that worked on similar principles: lots of mechanical gears and a model cockpit that moved in response to pilot instructions and wind conditions etc. set by the instructor. Or at least, it would have done had it been properly maintained.
Nowadays all of this training would be done with a computer screen and a flight simulator. It’s a more powerful world, but one where all the magic is contained in black and white boxes, out of sight and beyond comprehension.