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quixet
·Hello everyone!
Not long ago, i found a nice vintage Monnin quartz diver with an unusual dial.
A modest Ronda quartz movement "lights" this up. Its still pushing fiercely but God knows when it was last serviced.
I had in mind a light restoration and service, like for example to refill and stabilize the hour hand lume, change seals, clean movement and case, etc.
(US Army SF Airborne Monnin diver)
But said i should dig up a bit before any work. To my surprise, most of my queries came up empty.
Then i started to look for anything related to Airborne forces and only found a couple 90's Hamilton Airborne quartz divers and an old O&W reference to the Vietnam war Airborne watch, and that's about all.
Then when i moved my attention to other similarties, like the bezel, which is strikingly familiar to a plethora of other vintage Monnnin cased divers, i finally came up with a few good candidates, like: Technos, Airain, J. Binachi or HGP vintage mil. divers.
But what is pretty unusual to the watch, is the Linnemann's spade (or paddle) hour hand, which, to my taste, is pretty popular with german taucheruhren (or dive watches). Hence, after more tries, i came up with an old SINN catalog excerpt of the 1980's, highlighting this as ref. 803 / 805.
And a better photo of a Sinn 805 bellow:
Photo belongs to WUS member yonsson, posted back in 2017.
Of course, since, i found others, like the VDST with the exact same dial specs, Nautilus, skandinavian prefered City with colorful spade hands, and others like CWC or MWC, but with the usual lozenge hands.
But still no sign of a US ARMY Special Forces (AIRBORNE) specie.
Back case is sterile. I mean no MIL SPECS there.
I'm not a military watch collector - for various reasons. So i wasn't looking for it when i bumped into this.
Questions: Is this a "fantasy" dial ? If it is, what's the story ?
If it does have any relation to the Special Forces, same question - what's the story ?
Any help would be highly appreciated.
Best,
/F
Not long ago, i found a nice vintage Monnin quartz diver with an unusual dial.
A modest Ronda quartz movement "lights" this up. Its still pushing fiercely but God knows when it was last serviced.
I had in mind a light restoration and service, like for example to refill and stabilize the hour hand lume, change seals, clean movement and case, etc.
But said i should dig up a bit before any work. To my surprise, most of my queries came up empty.
Then i started to look for anything related to Airborne forces and only found a couple 90's Hamilton Airborne quartz divers and an old O&W reference to the Vietnam war Airborne watch, and that's about all.
Then when i moved my attention to other similarties, like the bezel, which is strikingly familiar to a plethora of other vintage Monnnin cased divers, i finally came up with a few good candidates, like: Technos, Airain, J. Binachi or HGP vintage mil. divers.
But what is pretty unusual to the watch, is the Linnemann's spade (or paddle) hour hand, which, to my taste, is pretty popular with german taucheruhren (or dive watches). Hence, after more tries, i came up with an old SINN catalog excerpt of the 1980's, highlighting this as ref. 803 / 805.
And a better photo of a Sinn 805 bellow:
Of course, since, i found others, like the VDST with the exact same dial specs, Nautilus, skandinavian prefered City with colorful spade hands, and others like CWC or MWC, but with the usual lozenge hands.
Back case is sterile. I mean no MIL SPECS there.
I'm not a military watch collector - for various reasons. So i wasn't looking for it when i bumped into this.
Questions: Is this a "fantasy" dial ? If it is, what's the story ?
If it does have any relation to the Special Forces, same question - what's the story ?
Any help would be highly appreciated.
Best,
/F