Omega dirty dozen

[CHE15SC]

Good evening,

I am kind of new on the forum. I am writing to you from Switzerland. I am currently trying to find information on a watch I bought a few years ago. I have read that around 25000 of those watches were made during the Second World War for English soldiers. The cristal is in acrylic signed Omega, not of origin for sure. It is running a bit slow (up to two minutes per day) but I guess it is a bit normal for an old lady.

According to my research this watch was produced in the late 1940. I believe we are looking at a redial. There seems to be two reference numbers one. The on the case is 10676796 and the one on the movement is 10279007 which are different one from the other. There also is a Y letter (code to classify this model at omega) 12597 (can someone tell me what that number is). How can I know if the two reference numbers (case and movement) are supposed to match?

One other element which I find a bit strange is that the seconds hand does not stop when setting the time. I thought if was one of the requirements of the British Army at the time?

if one of you who is specialized in dirty dozen watches can give me those explanations that would really be great. Thanks in advance for your help.

stephane

 

[MaartenF]

Hi Stephane, your watch is a nice original example of a WWW watch. These watches ware made for the British army and not the RAF, hence a hacking mechanism that stops the second hand wasn't a requirement. WWW stands for Watch, Wrist, Water-resistant. The watches were made in 1944/1945. The serial number on the mechanisms should be in the 101xxxxx-102xxxxx range, as yours is. The numbers on the case back are not directly related to the one on the mechanism. These number represents a serial number of the case and military serial number Y.

Many of these watches were redialed after the WW2 to replace the radioactive radium lume by tritium lume. The radium lume used to be whitish but has degraded to wonderful orange. It is still however pretty active when you put a Geiger counter to it. Omega was one of 12 manufactures that delivered to the British Ministry of Defence (MOD). If you Google on dirty dozen w.w.w. watches you will find much information. The worth of your watch is around £ 2000.

 

[MaartenF]

More info to be found on this website that unfortunately is taken out of the air in 2016
https://web.archive.org/web/20160410070332/http://www.time514.com/BritishX.htm

 

[CHE15SC]

Hi Maarten,

I bought mine around 8 years ago . Not really interested in selling it but being passionate about world war 2 history and watchmaking when the opportunity presented itself it seemed like a good idea. Do you know why both the case number and movement numbers in those watches did not match. Was it always the case? Was the Yxxxx reference, the soldier’s (matricule) number it was attributed to? Thanks again for your help with this matter. As per the radium, according to your explanation it would have been on the numbers, hour dots, hands (minute and hour), seconds dial and also on the omega logo and arrow marking? That is why everything has gone brownish on mine? I taught it was the redial which had given this effect. Thanks again for your explanations.

Kind regards,

Stephane

 

[watchyouwant]

It is a Re - dial.

 

[MaartenF]

In 2008 Thomas Koenig and Adrian van der Meijden wrote a nice article
https://web.archive.org/web/2015120...time.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WWW11.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/2015120...time.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WWW21.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/2015120...time.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WWW31.pdf

 

[MaartenF]

Regarding your questions. In British military watches there is never a correlation between movement numbers and case serial numbers.

(Almost) all of the 12 W.W.W producers have a stringent correlation between the manufacturer's serial number and the military issue number. Most of the time there is a fixed difference between them, only for the JLC it is a bit random between a certain bracket. So, I guess, the at kept a record of the military issue number versus the employee number. Given that the manufacturer gave the assigned a military issue number, you may wonder why this was necessary. It must have been just as easy to assign an employee directly to the manufacturers serial number

 

[CHE15SC]

Thanks Maarten for your precisions. Very helpful indeed!

 

[Dan S]

Actually, there is no connection between case serial and movement serial numbers on Omega watches in general. Of course, they stopped putting serial numbers on the cases quite early on.

 

[CHE15SC]

Thanks Dan