IWC Pilot's Watches: The Comprehensive History and Ultimate Guide

Few watch brands are as readily identified with aviation and the history of pilot’s watches than IWC, which not only gave the watch world two of the genre’s most iconic (and widely emulated) timepieces, the Big Pilot’s Watch and the Mark 11, but also has used both these groundbreaking models as foundations for a sprawling and diverse collection of contemporary aviation-inspired watches today. Here is the story of IWC Pilot’s Watches, from the Special Watch for Pilots to the Spitfire to the Top Gun, from simple three-hand to perpetual calendar, and everything in between. 

F.A. Jones’ International Dream (1860s - 1930s)

IWC founder Florentine Ariosto Jones

Other than the fact that he came to Switzerland in 1868, at the relatively tender age of 27, to become the first American-born founder of a Swiss watch company, little is known about the life of IWC patriarch Florentine Ariosto Jones. He was born in New Hampshire in 1841 and fought in the American Civil War for the Massachusetts Infantry. His postwar career at the renowned Massachusetts watchmaker E. Howard & Co. led to his European sojourn and the establishment of the International Watch Company in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. From the outset, Jones’ business plan was to marry the generational watchmaking expertise of the Swiss with the then-new, assembly-line production techniques of the U.S.A. His decision to locate his factory in Schaffhausen, near Switzerland’s northern border with Germany, rather than in more traditional watchmaking centers like Geneva or the Vallée de Joux, was a strategic one. The Rhine River on which the facility was situated provided the hydroelectric power that its modern, precision-engineering machines required, and also offered easier access to markets outside of Switzerland, including Jones’ homeland, the U.S.A., which was already growing into a major market for timepieces. (Trivia: the first factory space Jones rented for his watchmaking enterprise was in a building owned by Heinrich Moser, founder of H. Moser & Cie., the only other major watch manufacturer still based in Schaffhausen.)

IWC factory in Schaffhausen, circa 1870s

At first, the timepieces that came out of Jones’ factory were pocket watches, notable both for their highly precise movements and their luxurious decorations. Eventually, after the end of World War I, those gave way to the wristwatches that had come to supplant them in popularity among gentlemen as well as the ladies who’d already begun to embrace them decades before. But it wasn’t until the tumultuous years leading up to the Second World War that IWC (as the company had become abbreviated) made its most historical and ultimately impactful contribution to horological history. F.A. Jones, it should be pointed out, wasn’t actually a part of this milestone. He had been forced out of the company after a feud with his board of directors and returned to America in 1876, apparently never to return to the watch business before passing away in 1916. Ownership of IWC passed to the Rauschenbergs, a family of machine manufacturers in Schaffhausen, who owned and operated it for four generations, starting in 1880, before its eventual absorption into the Richemont Group in 2000.

IWC vintage advertisement

The first post-Jones regime at IWC was headed up by Johannes Rauschenberg, the former company shareholder who had engineered the takeover. Upon his death in 1905, the reins passed to his son-in-law, Ernst Jakob Homberger. (More trivia: Homberger’s brother-in-law was Carl Gustav Jung, the famed psychoanalyst, who was married to Johannes Rauschenberg’s daughter, Emma, and thus a shareholder of the company through marriage. Homberger eventually bought Jung’s shares to become sole owner.) Homberger was a savvy businessman, successfully steering the company through the worldwide economic crisis of the 1930s. He also paid close heed to world events, like the military buildup in neighboring Germany, and to the interests of the younger generation, like his sons Hans and Rudolf, both aviation enthusiasts. From these dual tracks came IWC’s most important wristwatch of the early 20th Century.

Watches in Wartime: Special Watch for Pilots and First Big Pilot’s Watch (1930s - 1940s)

IWC Special Watch for Pilots (1936)

The historical timepiece in question, which emerged from the IWC workshops in 1936, was the so-called Special Watch for Pilots, and it established many of the criteria that we associate with aviation watches today. It was uncommonly large for its era — 37.5mm in diameter — and made of steel rather than a more common contemporary material like chrome. It had a bezel that rotated in both directions, equipped with an arrow index that aided pilots in tracking takeoff times. Its dial was matte black, with large, legible white numerals in a classical serif font and a classic cathedral handset. Its movement featured an antimagnetic escapement, another rarity for the time — an invention meant to secure the watch’s accuracy against the magnetic fields generated by radio transmitters and radar devices, which had become standard equipment in airplane cockpits.

IWC Big Pilot's Watch (1940)

When war actually arrived in 1939, IWC’s management had a slew of new military customers — particularly the German Luftwaffe. And the Special Watch for Pilots, designed for civil aviation, evolved into a larger, more rugged form, intended for use in the cockpits of bomber pilots. The first of these ”Big Pilot’s Watches” were issued in 1940, and they lived up to their rather simplified name: the steel cases were enlarged to a titanic 55mm in diameter and 16.5mm thick, and the dial’s hour markers were in a bold, straightforward sans-serif font, with an inverted triangle at 12 o’clock, flanked by two dots, for orientation. The watch featured an oversized, fluted, diamond-shaped crown for winding the movement, designed to be easily gripped by hands in heavy pilot’s gloves, and was mounted on a thick calf leather strap, secured by rivets, meant to be strapped on over those gloves. Essentially a pocket watch repurposed for the wrist, it contained a large pocket-watch movement, Caliber 52 T.S.C. 

A "B-Uhr" pilot's watch from Germany's Laco

The IWC Big Pilot’s Watch remains the most recognizable example of the so-called “B-Uhr” style of pilot watch, which had its origins in German military aviation. Short for Beobachtungs-Uhren, which translates to “observation watches.” B-Uhr watches were all made to strict military specs, and the earliest ones, which were actually the property of the German government rather than the pilots who wore them, are among the rarest and most coveted vintage watches, especially for collectors of militaria. IWC became one of five firms, and the only Swiss one, that made these watches for the Germans during the war years; the others were German-based Laco, Stowa, Wempe, and the original A. Lange & Söhne. 

Postwar Pioneers: The Mark 11 and the RAF (1940s - 1980s)

IWC Pilot's Watch Mark 11, circa 1948 (photo: Analog/Shift)

After the end of World War II, the victorious Allied nations needed to maintain vigilance in the new Cold War era that had dawned in its wake. One of those nations, the United Kingdom, reached out to IWC in 1948 for a wristwatch that its Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots could wear in their aerial patrols for the newly constituted NATO alliance. The watch that IWC developed was an evolution of a watch the Swiss company had previously made for British troops, the Mark X, one of the 12 timepieces that made up the so-called Dirty Dozen. (I urge you to learn more about the story behind those watches here.) The Mark 11 was substantially smaller than the Big Pilot’s Watch (just 36mm, more suited to modest postwar tastes) but retained the matte black dial and bold Arabic hour numerals and orientation triangle of its wartime predecessor. Most significantly, it contained a movement enveloped within a soft-iron inner cage that protected its mechanisms from the magnetic fields in a modern cockpit — a strict requirement of the RAF and now a staple of IWC Pilot Watches to this day. British pilots wore the Mark 11 for the ensuing three decades, and the watch ultimately found its way to the wrists of military aviators in other Commonwealth countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

IWC’s Pilot Watches would remain mostly the purview of military customers, rather than civilians, during the ensuing decades, while the company’s ownership changed and the focus shifted to other product families, like the Aquatimer diver watch, introduced in 1967; the Da Vinci dress watch, with the revolutionary Beta Quartz caliber, in 1969; the redesigned Ingenieur in 1976; and the now-famous collaborations with Porsche Design in the 1980s. 

‘90s Revival: Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph, “Black Flieger” and UTC (1980s - 2000s)

IWC Pilot's Watch Double Chronograph (1992)

As the Swiss watch industry began slowly steering out of the doldrums of the 1970s and ‘80s Quartz Crisis, IWC was one of the heritage watchmakers at the forefront. As early as 1985, IWC defied the industry headwinds by launching the groundbreaking Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar, which offered both an elite complication that was nearly extinct in those days and a new material, ceramic, for its case. The company followed it up in 1992 with another rare and sophisticated mechanical complication — a  rattrapante or split-seconds chronograph — and this time, it used its nearly forgotten, military-tough Pilot collection, rather than the dressy Da Vinci, as its host. The movement, Caliber 79320, was based on the reliable Valjoux 7750 chronograph caliber and souped up with a mechanism that enables the built-in stopwatch to time two events simultaneously, hence the name “Double Chronograph” or Doppelchronograph in German, as the watch has become known to many international enthusiasts. 

IWC Pilot's Watch Automatic Chronograph Ref. 3705 "Black Flieger"

The watch marked the debut of horological complications in the Pilot’s series, though the series itself had yet to emerge from its historical niche as a military watch and forge an identity as a luxury timepiece for enthusiasts and collectors. Two years later, however, came a watershed for the model with the release of the Mark XII, the next generation of the venerable Mark 11 with a date window added to the dial (why the numbering switched from Arabic to Roman is unclear), and the Ref. 3705 Pilot's Watch Automatic Chronograph, nicknamed the Black Flieger, this one historically noteworthy as one of the first watches to use black zirconium oxide ceramic for its case; it was a forerunner of the “black-on-black” trend that was due to sweep over the watch industry in a few years. 

IWC Pilot's Watch UTC (1998)

IWC introduced another aviator-friendly function to the reconstituted Pilot’s series in 1998 with the introduction of the Pilot’s Watch UTC. The initials stood for “Universal Time Coordinated,” a military-jargon equivalent to the more familiar GMT for “Greenwich Mean Time,” and the watch’s movement, Caliber A301710, enabled the tracking of a second time zone — a useful perk for a pilot who needed to know the current time in both his current location and his destination. The UTC model laid the foundation for the even more complex Timezoner models that followed in 2016.

Old-School for a New Millennium: Modern Big Pilot’s Watches (2000s - 2010s)

IWC Big Pilot's Watch Ref. IW5002 (2002)

For IWC, the new millennium kicked off with another generation of its Mark series, called Mark XV. Why jump from number 12 to number 15? The number 13 (XIII) is regarded as an unlucky number in many countries throughout the world including the U.S.A. and the number 14 (XIV) is a particularly unlucky number in China. The steel cases of the Mark XV models were expanded only slightly from their original RAF-worn versions, to 38mm, and the dials were more or less identical to the Mark XII dials. Perhaps the bigger news (too-easy pun unintended) that year was the return of the granddaddy of all IWC aviation watches, the Big Pilot’s Watch, in a stately steel case (46.2mm) that was perfect for that era of huge watches but still not as massive as the 55mm original. Its dial, furthermore, left no doubt that this watch was not a pitch-perfect re-creation of its WWII-era ancestor: Rather than the spartan simplicity of the 1940 model’s three-handed dial, the new version (Ref. IW5002) featured a 6 o’clock date and an off-center subdial with an analog display for the watch’s week-long power reserve, a bragging right bestowed by the movement inside the case, IWC’s automatic Caliber 5011. 

The Spitfire Chronograph (2019) ushered bronze cases into the Pilot's Watch collection.

Just about a year later, the collection embraced even more variations with the launch of a limited series called Spitfire, named after the legendary RAF fighter plane and identifiable, IWC says, by their subtly more upscale design elements. Described as being inspired by the dashboards of the historical aircraft, these elements include a lighter, serif hour-numeral font and more elegantly formed sword hands. The first wave of Spitfire models offered a UTC model, a variation on the Mark XVI (the current model at the time), a smaller “midsize” model, and an Automatic Chronograph. Nearly a decade would pass before the Spitfire would be repositioned within the Pilot’s collection as its own family, but the introduction of another important branch of the high-flying series was just around the corner. 

IWC Pilot's Watch Double Chronograph Edition "Top Gun" (2007)

It was clear by the mid-2000s that American watch aficionados had discovered and embraced the IWC Pilot’s Watch collection — despite what must have been some initial trepidation about the model’s clear historical connection with Nazi Germany. Perhaps the watch’s subsequent (and much longer-term) adoption by the British RAF had blunted that edge for many; perhaps the growing acceptance of revitalized German watchmakers — like A. Lange & Söhne and Glashütte Original, which had even closer ties to the Nazi era as well as the Cold War Communist period — also played a role. In any case, the time had come for IWC to establish a strong partnership with an American military institution, and the brand delivered on that mission big-time in 2007. The Pilot’s Watch Top Gun subfamily burst on that scene that year, born from a collaboration between the Swiss watchmaker and the U.S. Navy’s elite Fighter Weapons School, nicknamed “Top Gun” and immortalized in pop culture by the blockbuster 1986 Tom Cruise film of the same name. The first generation of Top Gun watches established the line’s dedication to robust build and design as well as ultra-modern materials such as black ceramic and titanium. Then as now, the solid casebacks feature relief engravings of the official “TOP GUN” logo used by the Navy (and which you may recognize from the movie and its sequel). The headliner of the original collection was a Double Chronograph, in a 46mm black ceramic case outfitted with Caliber 79230, whose subtle Navy-approved details included a day-date window with a cockpit-style triple date window and jet-plane-shaped counterweights on the central seconds and rattrapante hands.

IWC Big Pilot's Watch Perpetual Calendar in steel (2021)

The double chronograph was not the most horologically complex timepiece to join the extended Pilot family in the aughts. The first Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar in 2006, one limited edition of many to follow, elevated the once-utilitarian pilot’s tool watch into truly rarefied air indeed. Its 46.2mm platinum case contained a version of the same groundbreaking perpetual calendar movement, developed by longtime IWC technical guru Kurt Klaus, that made its debut in the Da Vinci in 1985. Its wide, complex dial has indications for the date, day, month, and four-digit year, plus an ultra-precise moon-phase display that depicts the moon as seen from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and which will deviate from the natural lunar cycle by just one day after 577.5 years. IWC even managed to fit a power-reserve indicator, for the watch’s lengthy seven-day running autonomy, on the same 3 o’clock subdial that hosts the analog date display. After 37 limited editions in various metals, the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar joined the regular collection in 2021, the first unlimited model debuting in a stainless steel case and a sunray blue dial, powered by the most up-to-date iteration of IWC’s in-house perpetual calendar movement, Caliber 52615.

 IWC Big Pilot's Watch Constant Force Tourbillon Edition "Le Petit Prince"

IWC would occasionally scale even higher horological summits, in rare models like 2018’s Constant Force Tourbillon Edition “Le Petit Prince,” one of several special editions released within the Pilot’s collection’s most exclusive and luxurious subset, which pays tribute to the French pilot and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his literary character, the Little Prince. “Le Petit Prince” and “Saint-Exupery” watches are probably the furthest from the original, military Big Pilot’s Watches in terms of design and technical execution, known for their precious metal cases, high complications, sun-brushed blue dials with ornate applied numerals, and distinguished especially by their movements, which feature elaborately engraved gold rotors depicting Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince on an asteroid. 

Expanding the Fleet: Spitfire, Timezoner, and Top Gun (2010s - Now)

IWC Pilot's Watch Timezoner Chronograph Edition "80 Years Flight to New York"

The second decade of the 2000s has seen a continued expansion of the Pilot’s Watch collection, which has cemented its role as the undisputed flagship of the far-ranging IWC portfolio. Much of the growth has centered around either adding new functions and complications or in making bold advances in both materials and colorways. An example of the function-forward approach is the Timezoner, which debuted in 2016 and added a sophisticated yet notably user-friendly world-time complication — sort of an evolution of the UTC function from 1998. The automatic Caliber 82760, which IWC developed to power this model, features a patented world-time function that allows the wearer to quickly and easily re-set the time, along with the date and 24-hour display below 12 o’clock, with a single turn of the city-ring bezel. The wearer simply presses it down to turn it until the city of the desired time zone is positioned at 12 o’clock; the hour hand and 24-hour disk will move in unison with the bezel in either direction for a quick change of the local time and date while the minute hand is unaffected. Variations on the Timezoner model, some also equipped with a chronograph, have since been added to the Top Gun, Spitfire, and Saint-Exupéry subfamilies.

IWC Pilot's Watch Chronograph Top Gun Edition "Mojave Desert"

For material innovations and avant-garde aesthetics, one need look no further than many of the noteworthy releases from the previously mentioned Top Gun series. IWC introduced a proprietary alloy called Ceratanium in 2017 (initially on an Aquatimer model) and introduced the material into the Pilot’s Watch Top Gun line the following year. Ceratanium, as you might glean from the name, is a patented hybrid of titanium and ceramic that combines the former’s light weight and toughness with the latter’s hardness and scratch-resistance. It is now in common usage throughout the Top Gun collection, such as in the stealth-look, all-black Automatic Chronograph launched in 2022, containing the in-house Caliber 69385. 

IWC Pilot's Watch Chronograph Top Gun Edition "Lake Tahoe"

Along with Ceratanium, eye-catching and difficult-to-achieve colored ceramics have increasingly played a role in the Top Gun fleet. One of the most memorable examples — the “Mojave Desert” edition, named after the site of a major U.S. Naval base and boasting a case made of sand-colored ceramic — dropped in 2019. That popular 500-piece edition ushered in other boldly colorful iterations in the ensuing years, like the Top Gun Woodland editions, in a dark, forest-green ceramic inspired by the shades of pilots’ flight suits; and the Top Gun Lake Tahoe models, whose white ceramic cases take their aesthetic cue from the mountainous, wintry landscapes flown over by U.S. Navy pilots in training exercises. 

IWC Big Pilot's Watch 43 Spitfire in bronze (right) and titanium

By the dawning of the 2020s, the industry-wide toward bigger and bigger watches — pioneered by IWC’s Big Pilot Watch as well as other notable models like Panerai’s Luminor, Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak Offshore, and Hublot’s Big Bang — had begun to ebb substantially, and even the most iconic of these timepiece titans had started to offer less wrist-dominating, more widely wearable size options. The Big Pilot’s Watch 43, or BP43, was IWC’s answer to the changing mores in 2021. Its case was downsized from over 46mm to a more manageable (but still worthy of the “Big” in its sobriquet) 43mm. Perhaps even more significantly, its dial, unlike that of its larger predecessor, was about as historically accurate to the 1940 model as one could expect in this day and age: just a matte black, three-handed time display, with bold white numerals, sword hands, and the triangle with two dots at 12 o'clock — no power reserve, no date, none of the subdials of the chronograph editions or the city rings and scales of the UTCs and Worldtimers. The Big Pilot’s Watch 43 models, which now extend to other sub-collections including Top Gun and Spitfire, contain the in-house, automatic Caliber 82100, which boasts a 60-hour power reserve, and are the first IWC Pilot’s Watches to offer the brand-developed EasX-CHANGE system that enables the wearer to easily swap between several available strap and bracelet options.

 IWC Pilot's Watch Mark XX

The venerable and historically significant Mark series, which started with the Mark 11 in 1948 (though some might say it technically kicked off with the pre-aviation field watch, the Mark X, or even the 1936 Special Watch for Pilots, which was retroactively dubbed the Mark IX) passed its 75th anniversary in 2023 and has continued to evolve into the 21st Century. The most recent version of the historical timepiece is the Mark XX, which follows up the Mark XVI (with 39mm case and broader hands), the Mark XVII (with an expanded 41mm case and a vertical date display), and Mark XVIII (with the case reduced again to 40mm, a more conventional single-date window, and a more symmetrical overall aesthetic); for some undisclosed reason, IWC skipped XIX. The Mark XX retains its immediate predecessor’s 40mm steel case, here updated with an improved, slimmer and curvier lug geometry for wrist comfort. The dial options are expanded from classic black to shades of blue, green, and silvery white, and the latest models also offer the EasX-CHANGE system for its calfskin straps and steel bracelets. Originally envisoned as a tool watch with the narrowest of users in mind, the IWC Pilot's Watch, in all of its forms and functional designs, offers distinctive appeal to a wider audience than ever as it soars toward its centennial.