Pilot watches

Several brands call their aviation watches Pilot. The name covers IWC's Pilot's Watches, Zenith's Pilot line, and pilot's watches from Formex, Steinhart, Archimede and Breguet.

IWC made its Special Pilot's Watch, Ref. 436, in 1936, the Big Pilot's Watch Ref. 52 T.S.C. for military pilots in 1940, and the Mark 11 in 1948, which set a standard for precision and anti-magnetic protection. Since 1997 it has auctioned Le Petit Prince and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry editions for the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation. IWC's Pilot's Watches run from the 28 mm Lady Mark XII to 46 mm: the Mark XII to Mark XVIII, the Spitfire, the Top Gun, mostly in titanium or ceramic, the 42 mm Doppelchronograph in steel, yellow gold or platinum, the Double Chronograph, the UTC and Timezoner, and the Le Petit Prince and Saint-Exupéry editions.

Zenith's link to flying goes back to 1909, when Louis Blériot crossed the Channel with a Zenith on his wrist, and the brand trademarked the word pilot for watches. From 1939 it made the Type 20 montre d'aéronef, the clock on the instrument panel of French aircraft, with large luminous numerals. A 57.5 mm Pilot Montre d'Aéronef Type 20 wristwatch followed at Baselworld 2012. The Type 20 wristwatch runs from 40 to 60 mm, in Extra Special, Ton-Up, Adventure, GMT and chronograph versions. In the early 1960s Zenith supplied pilot's chronographs to the Rome retailer A. Cairelli for the Italian air force, the Tipo CP-2, with Zenith's hand-wound calibre 146 DP; the current Cronometro Tipo CP-2 is a 43 mm steel chronograph with a rotating bezel.

The rest are Formex Pilot automatics and chronographs at 46.5 mm (the quartz chronographs have mineral crystals, the automatics sapphire), Steinhart Nav B-Uhr and Nav B-Chrono models at 44 and 47 mm, hand-wound or automatic, with A-Type and B-Type dials, Archimede Pilot models at 42 and 45 mm, and Breguet's 39 mm steel Type XX and 42 mm titanium Type XXI 3815, the latter limited to 250 pieces.