WW1 Military Watches

A Brief History of British Military Watches 1914-1919

British Watches, Aircraft

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Historical Background

Britain was notoriously slow to adopt powered flight. The first flight in Britain of a heavier-than-air, manned, craft was not recorded until 16 October 1908. (The pilot was Samuel F Cody, an American, assisted in his efforts by the Royal Engineers based in the ‘Balloon Factory’ at Farnborough). When the first British Military Aircraft Trials were held in 1912 to provide aircraft for a proposed Royal Flying Corps (RFC), Cody won both Foreign and Home categories, but Cody was killed the following year and the recently-formed Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers, its observation kites and balloons now supplemented by fixed wing aircraft, was surrendered to provide the basis for the Military Wing of the RFC, when it was formally established in 1912. The Naval Wing of the RFC, administered by the Air Department of the Admiralty (1912-1915), quickly evolved into the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), which was part of the Military Branch of the Royal Navy, and under the control of the Admiralty from 1914 onwards.

This separation of air power continued throughout the war, with both organisations often competing for the same resources, because the separation between them was never clear cut or even necessarily intuitive. The RNAS operated seaplanes from bases such as Calshot in Hampshire and Eastchurch in Kent, and pioneered the flying of aircraft from naval vessels. However, the Admiralty also sent land-based aircraft to France in support of RFC operations there and interpreted its historical role as guarantor of the island’s borders so liberally at times as to include responsibility for the air defence of Great Britain and to justify attacks on Zeppelin bases and manufacturing sites located in Germany.

On 1 April 1918, the Royal Air Force was established as an ‘independent’ force, ie as a third arm, separate from both the Army and the Navy, and the RFC and RNAS were both disbanded.

The working assumption among military watch collectors has always been that the RNAS issued the Admiralty Type I and II aviation watch throughout WWI whilst the RFC issued the Mark IVA, and later the Mark V.

The 8-day Movements used in British Aviation Watches of the WWI era

1. The Octava Watch Company (8-days, 15 jewels)

An 8-day ¾ plate nickel movement; 15-jewelled; club tooth and straight line lever escapement; bimetallic compensated cut balance.

Typically, the movements are marked thus:

OCTAVA WATCH COMPANY SWITZERLAND/15 FIFTEEN JEWELS/3 THREE ADJUSTMENTS/U.S.A.P. 816321

U.S.A.P. expands to United States Approved Patent.

Some examples carry both USA and German patent numbers: U.S.A.P. 816321-D.R.P. 175275 (where D.R.P. expands to Deutsches Reich Patent). Sometimes + [PATENT] 33103 is seen as well, denoting a Swiss patent.

The extended patent numbers tend to be associated with earlier movements, showing 2 TWO ADJUSTMENTS rather than 3 THREE ADJUSTMENTS. It is possible that the variation in marking implies a pre-WWI importation from Europe and a later importation from the U.S.A. (the U.S.A.P. only marking).

The movement design is protected by a patent for a remontoir winding watch that was filed in the USA on March 23 1905 by Frantisek Hartmann of Prague (then located in the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and issued on March 27 1906 (one half being assigned to Josef Oliak, who was apprenticed as a watchmaker but later achieved greater fame as an actor, especially in films). The subject matter of the patent was to so arrange the several wheels and other parts of the gearing as to make the winding at relatively long periods possible without increasing the size of the watch, the number of the wheels, and the height of the barrel or spring-box, and retain the center wheel in the middle.

This is a well known commercial movement, commonly available under the brand name of the Octava Watch Co (registered on 12 April 1907 by Graizeley et cie, La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, which from 1915 became Manufacture d`Horlogerie Schild & Cie SA, based in Rue du Parc, La-Chaux-de-Fonds). Note: the company name is often mistyped as ‘Octavia’.

The Octava Watch Co supplied movements seen in the Admiralty Marks I and II, (possibly) the Mark III, the Mark IVA, and an anomalous version of the Mark V (which otherwise is a 30-hour watch).

For a while, Favre-Jacot supplied a Mark IVA with a movement of strikingly similar design that was marked with its own trademark BILLODES (but later examples showed Octava).

All Octava movements carry serial numbers, allowing broad sequencing to be established.

To include:

• the Admiralty Types I and II;
• the Mark IVA;
• the Mark V.

British Watches, Pocket General Service

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To include the various General Service watches.

British Watches, Wristlet

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To include what ZMW describes as the ‘1917 evaluation issue’:

• the 38mm snap back;
• the various Dennison cased screw-back watches (3 distinct types).

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