Aviation watches

Aviation is a name two brands use for pilot-style watches: Steinhart and Ollech & Wajs (OW). Steinhart's Aviation models and OW's P-101 and P-104 share steel cases, black dials and sapphire crystals, but they are built at very different sizes.

Steinhart's Aviation models use a 44 mm case. The Aviation Automatic (A0704), the Aviation GMT Automatic (A0703) and the Aviation Vintage (A0707) are 14.8 mm thick; the Aviation Chronograph (C0406) is 17.2 mm.

Ollech & Wajs sold thousands of watches to American soldiers in the Vietnam War era. The revived brand introduced the P-101 and P-104 in June 2019. The P-101 takes its name from the McDonnell F-101 supersonic jet fighter and has a black 12-hour bezel that turns in both directions. The P-104 draws on the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and replaces that bezel with a slide rule for calculating speed, distance and range. Both use an ETA 2824-2 fitted with a custom rotor and adjusted in-house; it winds automatically or by hand and beats at 28,800 vph. Both are rated to 300 m. On the P-101 the hour hand and the tip of the seconds hand are lumed, while the hour markers and bezel are not. The P-101 takes a 20 mm strap.

The two OW models share a steel case just under 40 mm wide and 12.5 mm thick, so the bezel is what tells them apart: the 12-hour scale of the P-101 for a second time zone, the slide rule of the P-104 for calculations. Next to the 44 mm Steinharts, the OWs are the compact option, and at 12.5 mm thinner than the 14.8 mm Steinhart automatics.