ReviewIWC And The Big Pilot’s Watches Of 2021
This year marks a new chapter in the story of IWC’s flagship Big Pilot’s Watches. With updates including newer sizes, these modern watches are garnering wider appeal, but not without honouring the Swiss brand’s legacy and exemplifying their mastery in aviation timekeeping, ceramic and the perpetual calendar
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When a Big Pilot’s watch is a little too big for some people’s liking, it only makes sense to go bigger with the collection by going smaller with the sizes. And that’s exactly what IWC did this year, with the update to their very iconic and very distinctive Big Pilot’s range. Distinguished mainly by its big conical crown, the Big Pilot’s has always been the larger sibling of the Pilot’s Watches from IWC. Even though the watch celebrates the archetype of the traditional aviation watch—even in its contemporary renditions—like quite a few other brands do, the Big Pilot’s has always been very distinctly IWC, and stands out from the rest. However, at 46mm, even the basic automatic version—with just time, a power reserve indicator and date—was a little too big for some. So it made complete sense for the Schaffhausen-based manufacturer to come out with a smaller rendition of the series. “The idea of an ultra-pure Big Pilot’s Watch, without a power reserve display and a date window, had been the topic of conversations within the IWC community for many years.” Christian Knoop, the creative director of IWC, expresses, “Personally, I always wanted to design a three-hand Big Pilot’s Watch.” So unveil a three-hand watch they did—at the digital Watches and Wonders 2021, in April this year.
While the new Big Pilot’s features three-hand automatics, which are smaller than we’ve ever seen from the Big Pilot’s range before, the larger size is not completely gone in this 2021 update. The perpetual calendar edition is still sized at 46mm, as it benefits from the larger size, considering how full the display on the face of the watch is. Additionally, the Top Gun ‘Mojave Desert’ special editions in ceramic are also sized at about 46mm.
The smaller sizes expand the practical appeal of the collection, making the basic Big Pilot’s even suitable as an everyday watch, which it may not have been before. At the same time, the new updates to this signature collection of IWC’s reflects everything that the brand is about—from the genre of aviation timepieces and the Top Gun association to their pioneering work with the perpetual calendar complication and with ceramic as a material. Here’s a closer look at the weight that all these aspects carry for the manufacture, as seen in these 2021 updates to the Big Pilot’s Watch.
IWC And The Aviation Watch
Today, aviation watches are hardly essential for flying, what with all the GPS equipment and other electronic navigational tools that you’d find in a cockpit. However, back in the day, a pilot’s timepiece was a key instrument for aviators and their survival. While flight times and engine operating hours were the most obvious requirements, their watches were also used for navigation, when used in combination with a sextant—an old celestial navigation tool. IWC were among the early manufacturers of aviation timepieces.
It was in 1936, when they unveiled their first ‘Special Pilot’s Watch’—a brainchild of the sons of Ernst Jakob Homberger, the brand’s owner at the time. The young men were passionate pilots and brought their expertise to help create a watch with an anti-magnetic movement, a shatter-proof glass and resistance to temperatures between -40 and 40 degrees Celsius—essential for a time when cockpits weren’t temperature-controlled. This watch presented several design staples that are associated with aviation watches today, including large Arabic numerals, and a large crown—for convenient adjustment by a user even while wearing flying gloves. Following this piece, the first Big Pilot’s watch was launched in 1940, and measured 55mm—the largest ever by IWC. However, the first major milestone that helped truly validate IWC’s work in aviation timekeeping was in 1948, when they unveiled the Navigator’s Wristwatch Mark 11, for the British Royal Air Force, to meet their requirement of a watch that could withstand the strong electromagnetic radiation of the radar equipment in a cockpit. Their use of an inner soft iron cage, helped achieve this—one among several durability aspects. And ever since, there’s been no turning back for IWC.
Their modern era of aviation watches began in 1992, when they launched their Pilot’s Watch Double Chronograph. The modern Big Pilot’s was launched 10 years later, inspired by military observation watches, presenting the look of a very clear instrument. This watch basically paved the way for every Big Pilot’s from IWC you see today; even the 2021 update.
The 2021 Big Pilot’s Watch 43
The new Big Pilot’s is definitely similar to its predecessors—even the 2002 edition—but it’s unmistakably modern in its appeal, even as it presents traditional aviation elements. The steel case has a fine-brushed finish, except for on the bevelled edges, the smooth bezel and the gorgeously-knurled conical crown. Set within, the dial is clear without a date window or power reserve indicator, which helps the sunray finish to really stand out, while the Super-LumiNova-filled numerals and hands also have a stronger presence.
The caseback is transparent in sapphire crystal, revealing the automatic calibre 82100, with its skeletonised rotor and very detailed finishing. With a frequency of 28,800vph, the movement can store a power reserve of 60 hours. Riveted straps in leather—brown for the black dial and blue to match the blue dial—complete the vintage-inspired aesthetic of this watch. However, with the smaller size of 43mm, the reduced weight also made this watch suitable for IWC to offer it with a steel bracelet, presented on the blue dial version.
IWC And The Perpetual Calendar
Another blue-dial novelty, the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar checks two very important boxes for the brand—as an aviation timepiece, and as a perpetual calendar watch. The perpetual calendar is a complication that is extremely important to IWC, as they were the first brand to present one that could be adjusted entirely using just the main time-setting crown.
A perpetual calendar is essentially one that doesn’t need correction with the changing number of days in the month, including February, and in leap years as well. Back in the early 80s, a younger Kurt Klaus—one of the most celebrated watchmakers of our time—who had already been working with IWC for a while, sought to make a perpetual calendar in-house at the brand’s manufactory. The perpetual calendar complication was not new to watches, but with so many correctors that they came with, they weren’t really user-friendly instruments. Over five years of exploring various perspectives of the mechanics, Klaus developed his now legendary perpetual calendar movement. In collaboration with IWC’s head designer at the time, Hano Burtscher—who created the case and dial of the iconic Da Vinci watch—Klaus presented the Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar reference 3750, which was completely synchronised. All calendar displays—the date, day, month, year, decade, century, and moon phases—could be adjusted via the crown.
Since then, IWC have celebrated the perpetual calendar like no other brand. Practically every new edition or series sooner or later includes a perpetual calendar edition. “The perpetual calendar is very much linked to our history, and Kurt Klaus’ invention,” Knoop declares. “We see several competence areas for ourselves as a brand. And the calendar features are among them. Other than the perpetual calendar, we also have annual calendars, moon phases and the double moon phase, which is an IWC patent.” And the double moon phase that Knoop speaks of can be seen in the 2021 Big Pilot’s Perpetual Calendar as well, at the 12 o’clock position, displaying the moon phases in both hemispheres of our planet. Other calendar displays on this watch include the analogue date at three, the day at nine, the month at six, and the year between seven and eight o’clock. At three and nine, you’ll also find the power reserve indicator and the small seconds, respectively. As in the 1985 watch, this one too can be adjusted entirely by the large, conical pilot’s crown on the 46.2mm steel case, which houses the IWC-manufactured automatic calibre 52615. It has a Pellaton winding system with ceramic components, and helps reduce the wear-and-tear of the mechanism. The blue dial is complemented by a blue leather strap.
IWC And Ceramic
The Big Pilot’s perpetual calendar was also released in this ceramic edition as well—a brand new addition to the Top Gun ‘Mojave Desert’ watches. In a very unique and distinctive sand-coloured hue, the ceramic used in these watches is an achievement in the material itself, which is hard to make in colours other than black and white because of the high temperatures that the material is subjected to during the manufacturing process. IWC’s accomplishments in ceramic, however, go way back. After all, they were the first watch manufacturer to make a watch in ceramic, which was also incidentally a Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar—reference 3755—launched in 1986.
“We have a clear field of competencies when it comes to materials, for instance, since we were the first brand to come out with titanium watches and with ceramic watches,” Knoop points out. So it was only natural that they would expand their use of ceramic after that first pioneering watch in this material. In 1994, they introduced their first Pilot’s Watch in zirconium oxide ceramic—the Chronograph Ceramic reference IW3705. Ceramic has been used in a number of Pilot’s Watches since 1994, particularly in the Top Gun series. This advanced sand-coloured ceramic was first used in 2019, but has been used for the Big Pilot’s collection for the first time. The automatic Top Gun Mojave has a caseback in titanium, which is corrosion-resistant, just like ceramic. Owing to its extreme hardness and scratch resistance, ceramic can withstand the strenuous work of a US Navy pilot, and is apt for daily use in the tough conditions of a jet’s cockpit. And these are the qualities that perfectly represent the Top Gun series.
IWC And Top Gun
The Top Gun series of watches from IWC’s Pilot’s Watch and Big Pilot’s Watch collection is named after the US ‘Navy Fighter Weapons School’, Top Gun, where the navy hone their finest pilots’ tactical skills, training them to be ‘strike fighter tactics instructors’. These watches are built to withstand the extreme conditions of US Navy aviation. Like these Mojave Desert watches, the first Top Gun Edition was also in ceramic. It was launched in 2007, and was followed by a number of editions, leading up to the 2019 Pilot’s Watch Chronograph Top Gun Edition ‘Mojave Desert’.
These 2021 watches are additions to the Mojave Desert series—the first Big Pilot’s editions. The series is named after the desert that is the location of the US Navy’s largest single land-holding, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. Inspired by the barren Mojave Desert, these sand-coloured Top Gun watches have soft brown dials that offer just enough contrast against the ceramic, with all markers, including Super-LumiNova-coated hands and hour indexes, complementing the ceramic. The simple automatic edition is much like the previous main Big Pilot’s range, with a power reserve indicator at three o’clock and the date at six, and it is sized at 46mm as well. It runs on the automatic calibre 52110 that can store a significant power reserve of up to seven days. The perpetual calendar version’s display and movement are identical to the blue Big Pilot’s Perpetual Calendar above, and also runs on the same automatic calibre—52615, with a seven-day power reserve—which you can see through the transparent caseback of this version. Both these editions come with a rubber strap with a textile inlay in hues that complement the rest of the watch.
With these new aviation timepieces from their signature range, IWC have certainly widened the scope of a flagship collection, as it is sure to appeal to many more, not just because of the new size. “The previous [2019] edition of the Big Pilot’s was more vintage aviation-inspired. It was just one aspect of what IWC’s Pilot’s watches are. This time, the focus is on the more modern, yet timeless pieces,” Knoop elucidates. “We want to present the Pilot’s collection as one that has a striking modernity in its design codes; and is not only about telling exciting stories of real pilots, but also a collection that has inspired and spoken to so many worldwide, whether they have links to aviation or not. It could be for sportspersons, for entrepreneurs…for anyone really.”
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