Among the many new releases from IWC’s flagship Pilot’s Watch collection in 2021, the most significant has indisputably been the Big Pilot’s Watch 43, which brought a new, more wearable 43-mm size to the aptly named line of oversized aviator-style timepieces. This week, the manufacture unveils the Big Pilot’s Watch 43 Spitfire, offering it in two distinctive case materials and colorways, one in matte gray titanium with a black dial, the other in bronze with a military green dial.

The Spitfire editions of IWC’s Pilot fleet take their main aesthetic inspiration from the legendary Mark 11, the navigation watch the company developed for the British Royal Air Force in 1948; its name, appropriately, comes from the Supermarine Spitfire, a British military plane used by the RAF during and after World War II and now enshrined as one of the most notable aircraft in history. The watch’s functional, “mil-spec” (military specifications) design sets it apart from its brethren in the Pilot’s Watch family. Like their historical predecessor, the new watches feature highly legible dials, prominent conical crowns, and soft iron inner cages inside their 43-mm cases to protect the movements from magnetic fields, such as one would encounter in an airplane cockpit.
The grade 5 titanium case of the first model (Ref. IW329701, pictured above) achieves its dark matte gray tone from “an elaborate surface treatment in which...