Everybody loves a flieger. Even if budget means you turn right when you climb aboard and aren?t allowed more than 100ml of anything, there?s still a romance to flying. Originally made for wartime pilots and observers where precise navigation was a very important thing indeed, fliegers are part of watchmaking heritage.
Back in the days when all the best pilots flew red triplanes and had ?von? in their surnames, the pilots shooting at them used pocket watches to navigate. The Mark IV.A and Mark V British pocket watches were the thing to have in the cockpit of your SE5. Large enough to hold with gloves on, solid enough to survive and clear enough to read in a shaking aircraft.

In WWII, the German Imperial Air Ministry fought back and laid down their own detailed criteria that still form the basis of flieger-spec today.
a hacking, chronometer movement, so an airman could set the time to the second and know it would stay there. Vital for long-distance navigation and making it back to the mess in time for medals and cocktails
a clear, luminous dial with 12 o?clock clearly marked – and a big, 55mm case to put it in
a large crown, so you could set your watch with gloves on
a long, leather strap so you could wear your watch over your flight jacket sleeve.

And, being German and thus precise, each watch had to be engraved on the caseback with ?FL 23883?, indicating that it was a watch, airmen for the use of.

Perhaps the best known of these was the ?B-uhr? styl...