Back in 2016, Zenith caught the eye of vintage-military-watch aficionados with its release of the Pilot Cronometro Tipo CP-2, an aviators’ chronograph that paid tribute to the now-legendary “Cairelli” watch the brand made for Italian Navy and Air Force pilots in the 1960s. This year, concurrently with the SIHH festivities in Geneva back in mid-January, Zenith followed it up with a new version of the watch, this one incorporating a flyback function and available in two different vintage-look cases.
Zenith Pilot Cronometro Tipo Cp-2 in Aged Steel (Ref. 11.2240.405/21.C773)
Like both its mid-20th-Century ancestor and its 2016 predecessor, the Zenith Pilot Cronometro Tipo CP-2 Flyback has a case measuring 43 mm in diameter, a rotating aviator-style bezel, and a classical bicompax dial design (here with running seconds displayed on the 9 o’clock subdial and chronograph minutes, up to 30, tallied on the subdial at 3 o’clock). The dial ? in either a bronze-grained or slate-gray-grained color ? is guarded by a domed, nonreflective sapphire crystal and features applied Arabic hour numerals and rhodium-plated faceted hands, all treated with Super-LumiNova. The bezel and chronograph pushers, as they were on the steel-cased, black-dialed model released in 2016, were engineered to meet special easy-handling specifications mandated by the original watch’s military customers. Zenith Pilot Cronometro Tipo Cp-2 in Bronze (Ref. 29.2240.405/18.C801)
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