Lemania CH 27 C12 - Tuxedo Multiscale Dial - Twelve-Hour Chronograph - Circa 1943-1945

By 1943 the war had reached all the way into the jewelry store window. Waltham, Elgin, Hamilton and Bulova had been turned over the year before, and their machines were cutting fuses and bomb timers instead of movements. What still came off their lines went to the military. Black dial, white numerals, matte so it would not flash, built to be read fast and replaced when it broke. Europe had been dark after sundown since 1939, blacked out from London to Berlin, and the things people had once bought for the pleasure of owning them had stopped being made. Nobody was making a watch to be looked at.

Switzerland was the one exception, and it was an exception under siege. France had fallen in June 1940 and the Axis now held every border. Half the country's food had come in by rail from nations that were now at war, so it ploughed up its parks and its football pitches and planted potatoes. After their shifts the factory hands went out to hoe them. But the factories themselves never stopped, and the government fought at the table to keep them running. When Swiss delegates sat down with the Allies in 1942 to settle what the country would still be allowed to export, they brought a list in order of value. Chronographs are on it, listed among precision tools and ball bearings.

That same year, at Lemania, a twenty-eight-year-old named Albert Piguet drew a brand new chronograph. It ran on a column wheel and counted elapsed minutes and a full twelve hours, and Lemania called it the 27 CHRO C12, the caliber later catalogued as the 2310 and known today as the CH27.

Lemania built it during the war, in the same years as the simpler black dials with the white numerals. The dial on this watch was made to be looked at, it is bold and unique. It is three colors where the rest of the world had settled for one. A warm white  center sits inside a wide black ring that carries the numerals, and three white registers are set down into that center like coins, their rims breaking through the edge of the black. Around the outside, in red, runs a scale for reading speed off a measured distance.

When the war ended the lights came back on again, the watches on American counters were the ones Switzerland had been building throughout the war. Omega took Piguet's CH27 for its own watches from 1946 and named it the 321 in 1949. It went into the first Speedmaster in 1957 and to the Moon in 1969. Most of the movements went out under other names, signed for the brand that sold them, such as Omega or Tissot. This is Lemania through and through, dial and movement.

The dial shows age, wear, staining and spotting, and tells its own history from the last eighty years of life. The numerals, the sub registers and the logos are crisp and read well.

The case is steel, with long faceted lugs whose edges are still sharp. Two rectangular pushers flank a knurled crown. The back is plain and shows scratches from wear.

Under that back the chronograph bridge is engraved LEMANIA and branches out in two long arms. The column wheel stands above it and the regulator is lettered A and R. The movement runs and the chronograph functions properly. It will be regulated prior to shipping. Its service history is unknown.

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.

All sales final.