Has to be the winner.
I’ll use that (with your permission), if I can remember it 
Use at will.
Right - being sick with PESELosis you can have a problem to know what are you sick of 
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Old pots were wirewound fine nichrome wire wrapped on a copper enamel wire form. The nichrome will rust over time and the pot gets “scratchy”.
Cermet is a ceramic disk with a metal paste applied and baked. Then a resistive “mud” layer is applied and baked.
I used to work for Bournes.
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Scratchy is bad enough, but it seems to be common that electrical connection by the wiper becomes intermittent, leading to intermittent audio output. Were wirewound audio pots really common in cheap radios? These days I think of wirewound types as the better ones for multiturn panel mount applications. But I don’t think many high quality products use analog mechanical potentiometers any more.
Do the dimensions appear close to an AA cell? I am trying to make any sense as to whether that battery might have been 4V5. I just don’t think so. Of course this was long before the internet, so the battery would need to be something commonly available in stores. I do not remember ever seeing such a battery in the USA.
I thought the 3R12 was a ‘flat’ pack with rounded edges and flat flexible metal tags on the top. Radio linked looked like it needed a cylindrical pack with contacts at each end.
This seems to confirm your observation. But I can be certain that the radio in question did not contain that battery pack.
5 wire pots to crystal radios to batteries? 
There are a whole litany of mechanical problems with wipers. The most common is they lose their spring tension or you develop a burned spot when the wiper sits in 1 spot forever.
Wire wound was the technology up till 1970 when cermet became cheap.
I have (in Poland) one I bought about 20 years ago (for some electronic experiments done with children) and just there was no opportunity to throw it away.
I remember (when in primary school) disassembling such battery to remove the carbon rods from it and use it in experiments with electrolysis.
For me standard flashlight from those time was using one such battery - like on these pictures:
https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=Latarka+na+płaską+baterię&client=opera&fir=Wdw6pF52m7qntM%2Clc1KGuenpWWcFM%2C_%3BHvftcXK18OBw0M%2C0Xgunqwb7Kq-VM%2C_%3Bm9rNTc6NjnsXYM%2CC82teb3K11LNLM%2C_%3BQRgQ3JCUElzSDM%2CPt5EssnruzEJtM%2C_%3BNFDapuFnl0qZ2M%2CTtqJr44VJNNssM%2C_%3BTrf-ODCUepr7gM%2CBUhy_QFk6CKf8M%2C_%3BhvKaF2j_MDJFKM%2CcnMmXMMoeizsKM%2C_%3BoLqGjdQRrqZdgM%2CUveviWijXZHJTM%2C_%3BSydAat7-Iyr3mM%2COeTE7miiP62rBM%2C_%3B-6cvckpZHj2BsM%2CvnB-iFaIo-I0kM%2C_%3BLWoW-TR80TXf2M%2CEQH9eImbg6rnSM%2C_%3BnaoUQA5QmiUcnM%2ClDuavpmz1TNDBM%2C_%3BQix9uzmAxNzDyM%2CnFrvUJ74kCd81M%2C_%3BKom5szSvB7GhJM%2C5s6_jxXsS34G0M%2C_%3BSLmtinz0uV8hmM%2CKYRdJ4K46QweFM%2C_&usg=AI4_-kR27BXtOJEV-H4yFWt1pjy14Avt6w&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiN7J77x6n0AhWk-yoKHZXOBsgQjJkEegQIDBAC&biw=1880&bih=1059
I think that I saw a flashlight such as that in the 2019 film about WW1; “1917”! I cannot say that I have ever seen a real one. I might have but that memory would be too distant…
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