Thursday, July 14, 2011

Mirror Image

I'll do another dedicated post sometime on the topic of "fliegers," or WWII aviator watches. But here is a bit of watch trivia I just came across.

Very few watches are true-blue fliegers, but flieger styling is very popular. A rare but interesting feature of some fliegers is that they have minute/second numbers printed in reverse on the inside ring of the dial. Forumer Pawl_Buster on WUS posted an example and explained the reason for them.
    This is a feature used by WW2 pilots and Rocketeers. Basically, the watch is held underneath the mirror cavity on a sextant and the numbers then appear in the eye piece along with the other important info about trajectory etc. This allows the pilot/rocketeer to view all the info without having to look away at his watch then back at the sextant.


Watch and photo by Pawl_Buster.

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