Certain watches are inevitably part of the watchmaking landscape. These legendary watches have made history and are essential if you want to perfect your watchmaking culture. They often deal with big brands, but not only that. You will see it for yourself in other topics to come. Just as we did for the G-Shock, the Omega Speedmaster or the Tag Heuer Monaco, today we look at the history of the replica Breitling Navitimer. This cult watch that we immediately recognize with its dial with a calculation rule and which has traveled the length and breadth of the Earth on the wrists of many pilots.
The origins of Breitling
It was last year, Breitling celebrated its 130th anniversary. The famous Swiss manufacture founded in 1884 in the Jura by Léon Breitling has from the outset devoted itself to a very technical task: the design of counters and chronographs intended for competitive sports, automobiles and aviation. It was in 1915 that Breitling unveiled the first wrist chronograph, at the same time inventing the first independent chronograph pusher. A few years later, in 1923, Breitling improved this system by separating the “start/stop” and “reset” functions, a patented system allowing in particular to add several successive times. This innovation took physical form in 1934 with the creation of a second push-button which designed the chronograph watch as we know it today. 1969 marked another revolution with the design of the first self-winding chronograph movement. While remaining faithful to its original credo, Breitling has equipped the cockpits of the Royal Air Force, the wrists of NASA astronauts, and many others. Even today.
The story behind the Navitimer
It was in 1952 that the Breitling Navitimer was created with the aim of offering a real wrist instrument to pilots. Its name is a simple contraction of “navigation” and “timer”. Like an evolution of the Chronomat model with its circular calculation rule created in 1942, the Navitimer was capable of solving all operations linked to air navigation without tools: consumption rate, climb time, miles/nautical miles/kilometers conversion, etc. . It is no coincidence that the very first Navitimer featured the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) logo on its dial. The first model (reference 806) was equipped with a manual-winding mechanical movement, caliber Venus 176, the manufacturing of which was outsourced. A limited series of the 806 introduced in 1954 was also powered by a Valjoux 72 movement (just like the Rolex Daytona); a model very popular with collectors.
Subsequently, its success was ensured by its ambassadors and thanks to excellent marketing with the help of Swiss advertising executive Georges Caspari. By developing targeted campaigns aimed at groups of pilots and remaining the supplier of choice to the world’s aviation boom in commercial aviation, demand exploded. Some 1957 Boeings, such as the 707 (like John Travolta’s), are equipped with Breitling on-board instruments. Then came the orbital flight of NASA’s Aurora 7 capsule with American astronaut Scott Carpenter who wore a Breitling Navitimer on his wrist, making this model the first wrist chronograph to travel in space. The myth was born and this watch became cult.
A pioneering watch
Meanwhile, the watch industry continued to innovate and the self-winding mechanical movement created by Rolex became the standard for 3-hand replica watches, while simple complications (day, date, moon phases) became increasingly common. more common. Breitling then decided to change the Venus 178 caliber for a Valjoux 7740 equipped with a date complication and computer-aided manufacturing. But it was not in 1969 that the big step towards the automatic chronograph was made.
The legendary caliber 11 was then created thanks to Gérald Dubois, then working for Dépraz & Cie (now Dubois-Dépraz), in collaboration with Jack Heuer and Willy Breitling. It was by using a base from the Buren Watch Company, a fine automatic movement equipped with a micro-rotor to which a modular mechanism was added, that the first automatic chronograph movement was created. This design method explains why the oscillating weight is invisible once the watch case is opened (photo above). Small particularity of this movement, the crown is positioned on the left and the push-buttons on the right, which radically changed the look of the watch, going from a tri-compax dial to a bi-compax dial.
Death and rebirth of the Breitling Navitimer
The 1970s arrived and the advent of quartz watches straight from Japan. The crisis begins and Breitling reacts by designing a digital version of the Navitimer. In vain, sales collapsed and the end of the 1970s marked the end of the Swiss brand which was forced to close its doors and then be sold. The Sinn brand took advantage of the opportunity to buy all the spare parts of the Navitimer as well as the rights to use the dial to sell its own version decorated with the Sinn logo. In 1978, the owner of the affordable watch brand Sicura and an aviation fanatic bought the brand and breathed new life into it in 1982. His plan finally worked in the early 1990s when mechanical watches were on the rise again . A new version of the Navitimer was released, this time equipped with the famous Valjoux 7750 caliber. Many versions were introduced onto the market, but no caliber 11 was on the horizon.
It was in 2009 that Breitling took a giant step forward, the consecration of a bad history ending, with the introduction of a manufacture movement: the Breitling caliber 01. A real in-house chronograph movement with an integrated architecture (without module ) and chronometer certified by the COSC. A final evolution appeared in 2014 with a case size increasing from 42mm to 46mm in response to the growing demand for large diameter watches. Since then, the Navitimer has remained as cult and retains its status as the favorite watch of aviators. John Travolta even became its ambassador and many air forces continue to equip their pilots with it.