Gallet-made Desert Storm/Desert Shield watches

That about sums it up. Little more of a pulse than UG. In their heyday they had some fantastic designs. I have have four in my rotation.

The fabled Gallet Flight Officer/Flying Officer model is another minefield of crazy just-so stories. The thing that got me started wondering how much can be believed about Gallet watches was this article in Timepiece Chronicle about a seemingly untouched example of a WWII-era Flight Officer.

The caseback engraving struck me as just looking nothing like what you'd expect a government-issued piece of equipment to look:


It makes zero sense that the manufacturer would engrave by hand boilerplate officialese onto every item they supply to a government client during a war effort. "PROPERTY U.S.A. ORD. DEPT." rather sounds like an imagined recreation of what a WWII military-issued piece would have on it. According to one watch collector, Gallet USA has explained that "genuine military markings would be hand engraved in a more period appropriate type style," which again is inconsistent with basically every other military-issue watch I have ever seen, especially US watches.

The poorly hand-engraved inscription reminded me of the look of another "military issue" Gallet Flying Officer model, supposedly supplied to the Swiss air force in the 1970s.



Every example of the "AS 7584" Swiss armed forces Flying Officer model has a clumsily executed Swiss Cross on the caseback, clearly done inexpertly by hand, with no two being identical (although the AS 7584 stamp lines up perfectly—believe me, I've taken to Photoshop to check this).


Gallet Flight/Flying Officer watches are beautiful, but the sloppy engravings on the back of the purported Swiss SA watches look, candidly, like shit. There might be some fascinating explanation for everything; I don't know. But one thing I haven't seen is evidence that any Gallet chronograph was ever issued to any military organization anywhere, and the only people who seem privy to whether all this is true or not are also in the business of selling off a collection of oddly pristine antique watches.

Ugh...With good examples rare and selling at a premium, there is simply no rhyme or reason for this kind of mutilation.

This is certainly worth looking into. Some Marathon-branded watches definitely seem to have Gallet movements, including the one Gallet is promoting to potential eBay bidders now, and some quartz military-issue Marathon watches have Gallet stamped on the back.


As I've commented before, if I had a watch that was going to be featured in a book about historic pieces, I would think the time to sell it would be after publication and not before, but that's just me.

@Shane Reed, I tried to get in touch with you after you posted your watch to the Gallet thread in the WUS forum some time ago. I remember you said Gallet gave you the bad news about your watch being inauthentic and that the explanation included something about the markings on the back not being hand-engraved. Can I ask what it was and who at Gallet gave you that explanation?

That reminds me, the official preposterous story of the ultra-rare "Desert Storm" prototype Gallet watches supplied to the US government was updated recently.