SpazSinbad (#50),
...Photos of Spitfire front instrument panels look very similar to early VAMPIRE single seaters and that flowed onto the many variations of layouts in the dual seat Vamp family ... It has been some 46 years since I've seen a working Vampire cockpit ....
63 years in my case ! During WWII and for a long time afterwards, all the s/e RAF aircraft I flew had the standard "Sperry Panel" of the six flight instruments right in front of you, engine 'clocks' on the right, odds and sods on the left, below, and everywhere else they could find room for them. So it was in the Vampire and Meteor. Only sat in a "Hunter" once, same again, felt: "I reckon I could take this away anytime" (only a pipe-dream, of course).
American aircraft much the same, but not so precise as our arrangement.
...Meanwhile back at NAS Nowra we likely lost a CMDR Air to the dastardly altimeter one night.... the aircraft would fly overhead at 20,000 feet to descend outbound to the east (over coast then water) to turn inbound at 10,000 feet to the airfield and usually picked up by GCA .... Anyway it was thought the CMDR misread the altimeter by 10K to then crash into the dark ocean on probably a dark night...
Ah, the dreaded three-needle altimeter claims yet another victim ! In the early 1950s "slaughter of the innocents" (off the cuff, I think we in lost 900 + Meteors and 400 + pilots in training in 18 months), the major killer was the asymmetric landing accident, but the "Controlled Descent", which you describe, involved a descent at 8,000 ft/min (8,000 rpm, 250 kts with airbrakes out), which had you "standing in your stirrups", with a 180° + turn (usually in cloud in UK) inbound at "Half plus two", claimed a fair share.
The idea, of course, was to get the stude down from 30,000 + into the circuit ASAP, as we were flying 35 minute sorties with 40 minutes fuel in the aircraft, and not a few didn't make it. Poor Bloggs, who'd only had an "Oxford" as a lead in, found 8,000 ft/min down through cloud plus a turn on instruments a bit of a handful - tended to miss the little needle which had gone past "1" and ......
We "old hairies" from WWII, who'd managed to stay in (or who'd wriggled back into) the RAF "under the wire", had well-developed instincts of self-preservation to protect us, and survived as a rule. And my experiences of 25,000 ft/min vertical descents as a dive bomber were a great help to me.
But they were good days .........
