What time is it? Watches and horology

It seems unless you were majorly clued up about watches they would just look vintage. They didn't seem to have the Reichsadler on them or any other emblems.

They were purely a tool watch so kept deliberately plain.

A quick image search shows a 1941 Navigator, looks like any other pilot's watch to be fair.

Happy to be corrected though.

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The people of Gernika and Poland may have a different view of Luftwaffe activity .

I'm sure Hamburg has the same view of the RAF.

To my mind there's a difference between an issue B-Uhr, an accurate replica (i.e. massive), and one that copies the face and hands at smaller scale. The latter has become genericised to the point where it's just a 'pilot's watch'.

(Drifting further OT, many Luftwaffe personnel were able post-war to whitewash their reputations as chivalric knights of the air pretty easily. Whilst by no means everyone serving in the Luftwaffe was a committed Nazi, it was after all one of the armed forces of the regime, with all that entailed. If the scholarship of the last quarter century has shown anything, it's that 'they weren't the SS' turns out to be a pretty poor excuse - every branch of the German forces was implicated in war crimes and genocide.)

I'm sure Hamburg has the same view of the RAF.

Firstly you’re missing the point, as posted above the Luftwaffe weren’t some gallant band of aviators untouched by nazi ideology.

Secondly if that’s your view don’t wear an RAF watch then (personally I wouldn’t wear uk armed forces or Luftwaffe Kit either)

Hey, no worries. A good typographic thing to watch, also watch related, is the Jonathan Hoefler episode of Abstract on Netflix.

https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80057883

@Thrustvector @underuser53929

OK. I'm going to leave it here before the whole thing goes completely strawman.

It's a thread about watches, the pilot's watches look nice. I'd buy one.

If it was a SS Full Uniform Dagger I obviously wouldn't.

Can you please remove that image? It really is unnecessary.

It was to prove a point but, yes, I'll edit.

Thank you

I think generally (vintage) watch collectors see it as history that is interesting in its own right rather than any kind of endorsement.

Personally it’s not my area of interest in terms of watches - I’m not drawn to field watches or WW2 pilot watches or anything, to me it does feel like wearing one would be an affectation or some kind of romanticising of wartime, or playing soldier.

[art school bollocks follows, please feel free to ignore]

Without wanting to get too art school about it, I think there are always going to be those who separate the deeds from the man, right? Like those who separate the art from the artist. For me the visual signifiers are inseparable from the context, but then I’m gen X.

Postmodernism was about taking all those visual signifiers and deliberately re-applying them to new contexts. The post-postmodernist reality we’re in now is that those signifiers have (as a direct result of postmodernism) broken down to the point where they cease to carry the weight of meaning that they once did. Whole generations have grown up with a copy & paste graphic vernacular where basically everything is fair game.

Tl;dr: some people will have a problem with it, some people won’t, some people won’t understand why you’d even care.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to start an argument; as I said, I think the design is now seen as a generic pilot's watch, and nothing should be read into it. But I understand why some folks might be uncomfortable with the history, and as an academic historian of military aviation, I'm perhaps overly-sensitive to the argument that militaries should be viewed in a depoliticised manner (which goes for all sides of a conflict).

Back to watches - some of the Steinhart B-Uhr models are nice, though when I was looking for a pilot's watch a few years back they didn't have many sterile dials, which were what I wanted. Laco were nice but pricey; in the end I went for a Timefactors Speedbird III, as I'm a sucker for the Mk. XI-style stubby hands.

(Edit: I've also got a replica one of these in my living room, but it's a bit big for the wrist...)

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Didn't realise this was related back to @damskodonny 's post.

All I can say is that my Dad was in Brizzle during WWII, signed up to the Army and still bought German watches, cameras and binoculars. Which I now own.

Thanks for all your insights, quite interesting to read them all. I didn't mean to hijack this thread with a political direction, so apologies if that was out of order. I will carry on and won't mention the war again, even though I think I got away with it this time :)

Ooh an RAF sector clock.

Lucky enough to have a genuine one of these. Once my dad could no longer work on watches clocks were his thing. Always always admired it and it was one of the pieces he promised not to sell. Very cool.

Also liking the Len Deighton books in the background, have randomly been reading them.

Very jealous! I nearly bought one a long time ago, but couldn't afford it, and by the time I was in a position to think about it again they'd climbed out of reach; even normal station clocks are a couple of grand these days.

ha. funnily enough we have some of them too. Grew up in a house full of clocks.
None of them over showing the right time of course.

Currently cataloguing and will be selling the excess over the next year. Will pop them in here in case of any interest. As well as those there's a lot of nautical stuff. It's fun going through it and finding random stuff and brings back nice memories.

Finding things like this under the couch which he badly tried to hide from my mum is always fun.

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Not out of order, rather side tracked.

Are we allowed to post a Faulty Towers meme?

Hahaha

The 30 year old Germans I work with defiantly have a view on RAF activity .
They have never comentated on my Laco

@Regal great insights, thanks for sharing!

👍

G-shock Thursday again. Have been wearing this quite a bit.

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Same. Still can't quite wear anything else. Comfortable enough to forget to take off at night, legible, accurate. What more do you need?

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I mean what more do you need than this and 19 other watches in your watch box? 😄

The accuracy is what bug me about automatic watch, the idea of having to adjust time once every month or two is not appealing.

You wear the same watch for a month?! Madness!