Why We Love It
The IWC Pilot's Watch can trace its history back to the oversized timepieces produced for military aviators in 1940. These enormous pieces were originally designed for maximum legibility in a cockpit setting, and were originally designed to be worn on the pilot's thigh!
Today the Pilot's line is perhaps IWC's most identifiable collection, featuring a variety of case and dial configurations suited for any taste - provided your wrist can handle the larger than average dimensions!
This particular chronograph, a Reference IW3741-01, offers something a bit different... Powered by a Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 631 Meca-Quartz movement, this piece features an excellent 36mm stainless steel case, a domed acrylic crystal, and a gorgeous matte black Tritium dial with a matching handset.
In excellent condition throughout with a lovely rich patina, this svelte and surprisingly versatile neo-vintage chronograph packs a hell of a punch, offering decades of pedigree, established looks, and grab-n-go usability.
We're into it.
The IWC Pilot’s Story
The history of IWC can be said to be one of marriages. For example, a marriage of the Old World to the New, or of the craftsmanship and tradition of the Swiss with American innovations and technology. But perhaps the most enduring association is between IWC and aviation.
When an American watchmaker named Florentine Ariosto Jones arrived in Schauffhausen, Switzerland, he found a city almost frozen in time. Though the Industrial Revolution had swept through America (where Jones worked as a director of a prominent watchmaking company), in Switzerland the situation was very different. Watchmakers still plied their trades by their own firesides, as they had done for centuries; but Jones had in mind something different: an American-style factory where the watches would be designed and assembled in keeping with the old Swiss ways.
His methods caught on, and soon there were 196 people employed at his factory.
Though IWC was founded 35 years before Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first flight, the association between aviation and IWC began just as the aviation age dawned. A pocket watch made by IWC in the 1890s found its way into the pocket of one Robert Albert Lotter. Lotter was a pilot in the German Luftwaffe who served with distinction during the First World War.
Two decades later, in 1936, IWC would release a watch that set the standard, more or less, for what a pilot’s watch is supposed to be—in fact, this watch, the Spezialuhr für Flieger or Special Pilot's Watch, was the first specially-designed pilot’s watch. Another would follow in 1940, the Big Pilot, which has spawned an eponymous model in IWC’s current collection. However, despite the Big Pilot’s current popularity, it was the Special Pilot’s Watch that would lay the cornerstone for IWC’s most iconic line: the Mark series of pilot’s watches.
IWC released the Mark XI in 1948 according to specifications set forth by the British Ministry of Defense. These watches had to be legible, compact, and able to withstand exposure to the magnetic fields emitted by instruments in an airplane’s cockpit. The Mark XI, therefore, had a black dial with large luminous Arabic numbers, and the Calibre 89 movement (regarded as perhaps the best mechanical movement ever produced) was encased in an iron cage.
The Mark XI served as the basis for design inspiration for a robust line of pilot’s watches still being produced today – easily identifiable by their clean, uncluttered dials, robust cases, and outstanding quality.
