Horological Meandering

As Germany prepared for war the German Ministry of Aviation responsible for aircraft development understood that being able to coordinate mass attacks combined with the use of cutting edge weaponry would ensure overwhelming results in their war efforts. As timing was a key element to unmatched precision, the German Ministry of Aviation sought a commensurate time piece for its bomber navigators, the responsibility to produce accurate and usable timepieces with which to control the war was given to five manufacturers: A. Lange & Sohne, IWC, Wempe, Stowa and Laco.

The B-Uhr watches (B-Uhr in german stands for Beobachtungsuhr or observation watch in english) were 55mm in diameter to accommodate large hand-wound movements typically used in pocket watches, black dials with white Arabic numerals and flame-blued sword hands covered in luminous material further aided the task of precise reading.

There were two variations of the B-Uhr, the A and B-Dials.The A dial is a much cleaner design with large 1 to 11 numerical, all numerical markers were also filled with luminous material.

I have several WWII B-Uhr 55mm German Luftwaffe pilot watches. I bought them because I love military history and horology, and they’re very cool, oversized watches, having been the inspiration of many modern pilot watches, including the IWC Big Pilot. When that watch was was introduced, I figured why spend the money for a reproduction when I could buy the real original! Disclaimer: I am no fan of the Third Reich. My interest is based solely on horology and these historical watches are intriguing and, in my opinion, very cool original, masterful timepieces. 

I got them out of the safe today and took all the case backs off for purposes of photographing them as I am contemplating possibly trading or selling a few. 

RLM NAV. B-UHR 

This one is unusual in that according to military watch expert, Konrad Knirim, “There is a second type of aerial navigation watch in the standard 55 mm casing marked ‘RLM Nav. B-Uhr’ with numbers up to 2000. All movements were adapted Swiss pocket chronograph movements like Valjoux cal. 61 or Minerva cal. 19-9CH, where the chronograph mechanism was stripped and the chronograph second was changed to going centre-seconds. These were not precision timepieces in the traditional sense, but could meet the need when the radius of Luftwaffe action became increasingly limited in the later years of the war. There is no documentation available on this type of watch.”

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