Officine Panerai

pereztroika
21

• Show profile
• Show other posts

Top right is an anonymous Kampfschwimmer dial with fake Rinaldi engravings.

Hello Yves, the story of how our Tuscan amico came into possession of dozens of anonymous Kampfschwimmer dials is quite interesting. They were found at the old Arturo Junghans watch factory in La Giudecca, Venice in the early 1990s . At the time, the old factory was transformed into lofts and a theatre. While cleaning out the buildings, the workers found all kinds of Panerai-related items: anonymous Kampfschwimmer sandwich dials, Rolex Error-Proof (California) dials with missing dial feet and around 30! NOS 3646 with Error-Proof dials still in their cardboxes. In addition, they also found tons of so-called painted brass (fuzzy dial with closed 6 and 9) dials which had been made by Arturo Junghans to replace the Error-Proof dials. I don't like to use the term 'California' because what the term actually means is fake or reprinted dial. Anyway, the reason all this Panerai stuff turned up in Venice goes back to an event that took place around late Juli/early August 1944. At the time, the British 8th Army reached the outskirts of Florence. The Nazi occupiers paid G. Panerai & Figlio a visit and confiscated everything usefull to them. Watches, instruments, dials, machines, etc. The loot was shipped to Venice which was still under German controll and would remain so until late April 1945. From mid 1944 until the end of the war in Italy, Venice was the center of all underwater warfare activities.

In consequence, Arturo Junghans made new dials similar in style to Panerai sandwich dials but much thinner so that they could be installed instead of the Error-Proof dials. As I mentioned earlier, they also found Error-Proof dials with removed dial feet in Venice. This was long a mystery to me but at some point I realized the dial feet on those dials had been soldered in pocket watch configuration, meaning for crown at 12 o'clock. This is what those dials would have looked like in a wristwatch:

   

No idea how such mistake could happen. Perhaps Rolex forgot to tell Stern Frères (dial maker) the dials were meant for wristwatches. Cal. 618 was a pocket watch movement after all. Then, there is another possibility. In a Rolex Köln letter from 1984, it was mentioned these watches were not worn on the wrist but on the knee. Not sure what to make of this but given the "faulty" dial conguration, maybe there is something to it. This issue involves only the second last batch that still had Rolex stamps on the casebacks and Rolex branded movements. The last batch featured a corrected Error-Proof dial (Stern Ref. 2802 vs. 2731) and was completely anonymous, meaning the Rolex stamps were removed by Rolex and there was no Rolex signature on the movements.

One more thing, the modern Panerai company has been claiming for several years that the California dial version was the first Radiomir prototype from 1935. This is absolutely not true. Error-Proof dials in Ref. 3646 were introdced in 1944. Before that, Rolex used to send the watches to Florence with a white "transport' dial. It is also interesting to note that Rolex patented the Error-Proof dial in May 1941 (CH221643).

Coming back to the anonymous Kampfschwimmer sandwich dials, logically they could not be installed in the final batches so they remained unused. After they were found in the early 1990s, the dials ended up with the usual suspects who applied fake Radiomir, Luminor or Marina Militare engravings depending on what was needed or requested. 

 Cheers, Jose

Site Info.