Breitling

Breilting is no stranger to aviation, having made a name for themselves with the Chronomat series in the 1940s for producing high-quality slide rule computers. The present watch is part of a small batch of watches that were produced in 1974 and 1975 for Italian Military Helicopter Pilots. Following the ‘CP-1’ designation that other Italian Military watches in similar period used, the Breitling 817 follows a straightforward design brief. Highly legible, highly luminous, and incredibly robust – everything you would expect from a military timepiece. These watches are seldom seen, and the present example is of particularly noteworthy provenance, as it was part of a new-old-stock lot of 40 that were sold by the Italian government in 2016. As it was sold then, the watch is still mated to it’s original Japanese made stretch bracelet, and Breitling supplied box stamped ‘Cronometro da Polso Mod. 1 Unif.’ While nobody knows the exact amount of these watches that were produced, scholarship suggests that there were less than 1,000 watches made in total. This makes this Breitling 817 as beautiful as it is rare.