Pilot’s Watch from IWC Schaffhausen

IWC Schaffhausen gets off to a powerful start in 2012: the year of the Pilot’s Watch. With five new models, the TOP GUN collection establishes itself as an independent formation within the IWC Pilot’s Watch family. The year’s high-flyer is the TOP GUN Miramar: a tribute to the place in California where the myth of the elite pilots was born. And two Pilot’s Watches featuring many of fine watchmaking’s greatest achievements prepare for takeoff: the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar TOP GUN and the Spitfire Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month. “For the new TOP GUN Pilot’s Watches we drew on our long tradition of manufacturing unusual deck watches. In the 1940s, Pilot’s Watches made in Schaffhausen were widely used as so called B watches for flight navigation,” explains Georges Kern, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen. “Back then, only wristwatches with the highest possible precision were good enough for navigators: the pilot and his crew would synchronize their watches to the navigator’s.” Since the main priority for navigation is optimum legibility of the seconds and minutes, these two were often the only indicators shown on the outer ring; the hours would be relatively small and appeared on a central ring. This particular detail inspired IWC’s designers to display the hour circle and the chapter ring separately on the dials of the Big Pilot’s Watch TOP GUN Miramar and the Pilot’s Watch Chronograph TOP GUN Miramar. Pilot’s Watches for 76 years The Schaffhausen-based watch manufacturer IWC has been making rugged and reliable timepieces for pilots and their passengers since the mid-1930s. Right from the start, IWC Pilot’s Watches were designed to offer optimum legibility by day and night and established the look of an instrument: a look that has since determined the appearance of this special breed of watches, to this day. The IWC Special Pilot’s Watch, launched in 1936, stood out with a distinctive black dial that was set off by striking luminescent hands and large luminescent numerals. Outstanding technical features of the IWC Special Pilot’s Watch included a shock protected balance wheel bearing and a nonmagnetic escapement. With its 55-millimetre diameter, the Big Pilot’s Watch 52 T. S. C. of 1940 is the biggest wristwatch IWC Schaffhausen has ever manufactured. As a deck watch it featured, among other things, a central hacking seconds to enable pilots and navigators to synchronize their watches with down-to-the-second precision. An extra-long leather strap also meant that it could be fastened around a flight suit. The clearly arranged dial was a perfect example of reductionism: a style cue and a paragon for all classic Pilot’s Watches. The Mark 11, with its hand-wound 89calibre, manufactured from 1948 onwards for the Royal Air Force, established itself as the best-known IWC Pilot’s Watch of them all. Its movement was enclosed in a softiron inner case to shield the mechanism from magnetic fields. The Mark 11 was used successfully by the Royal Air Force for over 30 years.