What Makes This Iconic Pilot’s Watch the Gold Standard in Aviation?

Out of the ashes of the old company a new Breitling was born: Breitling Montres S.A. Ernst Schneider, an engineer and amateur pilot, had big ideas for transforming the company with the electronic revolution and he quickly put them into practice.

New quartz watches appeared under the Breitling banner, but soon, mechanical timepieces followed. The Navitimer reappeared in 1986 in the guise of the ref. 81600 with a manual-wind Lemania 1872 movement. In 1988, the Navitimer was again equipped with an automatic movement.

It’s interesting to note that the right to manufacture the existing Cosmonaute and Navitimer models, but not to use the names, passed to Mr. Helmut Sinn when the Breitling assets were sold off in 1979. The firm Sinn, founded in 1961, manufactures a chronograph very similar to the Navitimer to this day.

On the move

The 1990s saw the Navitimer powered by Valjoux 7750 and ETA 2892 variants while the Cosmonaute was driven by Lemania engines. By and large the look was the same, however, with the familiar slide rule bezel and sub-dials at 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 — although some models, especially in the 1990s, had the 7750’s more typical 6-9-12 layout.

The year 1993 saw a drastic increase in water resistance from effectively none to 3 bar. Minor updates occurred through the 2000s, but the Navitimer was still fitted with the modified Valjoux 7750.

In 2009 Breitling released the B01 movement, their first in-house movement and the heart of the current Navitimer. While Breitling has backed off their early hyperbolic claims that the B01 is the “best chronograph movement in the world,” its development is a significant return to glory for the company who pioneered the first independent pusher chronograph and then the separate reset pusher chronograph. The calibre B01 is the perfect movement for the most iconic of Breitlings.