Glycine Airman Special Automatic - Black 24-Hour Dial - Working Hack - Circa 1960s

In the summer of 1953 Samuel Glur, sales manager of Glycine in Bienne, flew from Bangkok to Calcutta in the first officer's seat of a Thai Airways DC-4. The captain was Ched Brown, and the talk turned to watches. Brown crossed time zones for a living. Calcutta ran an hour and a half behind Bangkok, the next leg moved the clock again, and a twelve-hour dial could not tell him whether the two o'clock on his wrist was morning or afternoon. He knew what he wanted instead, and he told Glur, hand by hand, what it should do. The hour hand should go around once a day instead of twice, over a dial marked to twenty-four. A bezel around it, marked the same way, should hold a second time zone. And it had to wind itself and show the date. Glur wrote it all down, and on July 14 he sent the list to Glycine's owner, Charles Hertig.

The first Airmen shipped before Christmas, and they did what he asked. On this dial midnight sits at the top and noon at the bottom, and two in the morning and two in the afternoon sit on opposite sides. The crown at four clamps the bezel so it cannot drift, and Glycine's patent for that clamp, dated December 1953, is still stamped on the back: PAT 314050.

A pilot also needed to set a watch to the second against a time signal, and the Airman had its own way of doing it. Pulling the crown sends a small pin up through a hole in the dial at 24. The seconds hand runs up to it and stops, and the watch waits there until the crown goes back in. Watchmakers who did not understand the mechanism damaged it or took it out, and on most surviving Airmen it no longer works. One with a working hack and a dial this clean is rare. Here the pin still comes up, and the seconds hand still stops at 24.

Under AIRMAN on the dial is the word Special, the version Glycine made for the American market. Pilots there took to the Airman, and NASA photographs from the Gemini 11 mission in 1966 show astronaut Pete Conrad wearing one.

The matte black dial is clean, and the white numerals are sharp. The date takes the place of the 6, under a magnifying lens set into the crystal. The lume on the plots and hands has aged to an even cream, and T SWISS T at the foot marks it as tritium. The lugs keep their edges, with only fine scratches, and the bezel shows a few small marks. The domed crystal is clean. The back reads STAINLESS STEEL, AUTOMATIC, INCABLOC and SWISS around the patent number and the serial, 805473. It runs, and its service history is unknown. It comes on a brown crackled leather strap.

Terms: Please review all photos carefully as they are a part of the listing. This is a vintage timepiece. Accuracy, power reserve, and water resistance are not guaranteed. Vintage watches may require periodic service. Performance can vary with wear, temperature, and position.

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