Resurrected British watch brand Vertex launches its latest model, a particularly poignant chronograph, at SalonQP this week.

By James Buttery

As readers of QP will no doubt be aware ? and if they?re not a ticket to SalonQP?s live spotlight on the Dirty Dozen this Saturday wouldn?t hurt – Vertex was a wartime supplier of watches to the Ministry of Defence during the Second World War.
While it supplied around 15,000 of its Cal 59 Nav watches, part of the Ministry?s ?Dirty Dozen? brief, not all of its military watches were so successful and in the difficult post-war landscape for manufacturing one model failed to materialise altogether.
The company, under the leadership of Capt. Henry Lazarus, was commissioned to make an ?Ordinance timing watch? for the War Office. Despite developing the watch in conjunction with Lemania, rationing meant that Vertex were unable import enough of the company?s Swiss movements to make it viable and the company abandoned the project, choosing to once again focus on watches for the civilian market. Vertex MP45 monopusher chronograph
While Lemania would go on to produce its own ?bomb disposal? hacking seconds watch in the 1950s, Vertex would never see its own design go into production, until now.
Don Cochrane, the man behind the modern day Vertex and great grandson of original founder Claude Lyons, has selected the ordinance timing watch, now named MP45, as the brand?s second model following the well-received M100 (and black DLC-co...