Armed forces watches, as their name suggests, were designed to be used in the armed forces. The 1st military watches were naval pieces, chronometers that worked OK for their purposes, but as other branches of the army - aviation especially - made major technical advances round the time of the second World War, accurate measurement of the seconds became vital.
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 inaccuracies' and the navigational blunders that would result.
In World War I seconds continued to be crucial in both military technology and armed forces watches. The feature that allowed for synchronization between two timepieces - 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. Within another major Axis power, Seiko produced a fantastic number of military 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 army technology boomed. Watchmakers rose to the call by planning an instrument worthy 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 military watches were much bigger than the typical US citizen navigators before them. Averaging 36mm in diameter, the development of these watches was moved to Switzerland and the Swiss armed forces watch companies 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 three, six, 9, and 12. Another new addition was a shatterproof Perspex acrylic crystal, which protected its large 12 ligne movement from magnetic fields.
These hand-wound watches were planned to be water-resistant to 20 feet, including water-resistance under low pressure at operational altitudes, and added a naval dimension to the regular military watch.
Get to know what more you can discover about Invicta Pro Diver Watch from the Invicta Diver Watch Range site.
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Posted under Watches
This post was written by Weldon Duffy on April 5, 2010
