A Short Recap On The History Of Armed Forces Watches

Armed forces watches, as their name implies, were designed for the armed forces. The 1st army watches were naval pieces, chronometers that worked OK for their purposes, but as other branches of the army – aviation particularly – made major technical advances round the time of the second World War, correct measurement of the seconds became urgent.

As the old chestnut goes, ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ and Navigator ( often called ‘Pilot’ ) watches were born. In the Navigator watch design, the seconds bezel allowed the pilot to synchronize the second hand with a correct reference time before takeoff, and to make manual corrections to radio time signals while in flight, thus dumping any ‘chronometer error’ and the navigational blunders that would result.

During World War I seconds continued to be important in both military technology and armed forces watches. The feature that permitted for synchronization between 2 watchs – continued to enhance and advance. These watches were worn on the outside of a flight jacket or on the navigator’s thigh.

The Germans also added antimagnetic protection to their chronometers. Inside another major Axis power, Seiko produced a fantastic number of armed forces watches for the Japanese Imperial armed forces and Navy. These watches averaged around 49mm in diameter.

As the times of WWII faded into memory and the strained peace of the ‘Cold War’ became fact, army budgets and military technology boomed. Watchmakers rose to the call by planning an instrument deserving of going into battle with humankind’s strongest weapon. Those were the excellent times of the division watch, though no definite design house can claim full credit for the steps made in that time.

Cold War-era armed forces watches were much larger than the characteristic US consumer navigators before them. Averaging 36mm in diameter, the creation of these watches was moved to Switzerland and the Swiss army watch corporations who came to the task with centuries’ old reputes for precision.

Like those before them, these Navigators also featured a matte black dial marked with white Arabic numbers 1-12, and with white indices. The new designs didn’t have white numbers at cardinal 3, six, nine, and twelve. Another new addition was a shatterproof Perspex acrylic crystal, which protected its giant twelve ligne movement from magnetic fields.

These hand-wound watches were envisioned to be water-resistant to twenty feet, including water-resistance under low pressure at operational altitudes, and added a naval dimension to the regular army watch.

Next, get to know what more you can discover about Invicta Pro Diver Watch from the Invicta Pro Diver Watches resource.