Breitling: History of a Manufacture -Part 2

In the 1970s, Breitling, jostled by many prestigious competitors who arrived successively on the preferred markets that made it famous, saw its sales and its reputation severely tarnished.

The Rolex GMT Master and the Glycine Airman prove to be dangerous competitors in the field of aviation and Omega with its Speedmaster chronograph, on the strength of its referencing by NASA as the chronograph for the Apollo missions, relegates the Breitling models to the background of news... and sales....

Breitling, in a desperate effort, made a return to the methods which had contributed to its successes of yesteryear: watchmaking technique through innovation in movement, and it was through this that Breitling, in the early 1970s, posed a foot in the still very closed circle of manufacturers of automatic chronographs.

With the use in its new Navitimer model of the caliber 11 movement developed by the trio of companies: Buren, Dépraz and Breitling (the same movement that will be used in Steve McQueen's famous watch at Le Mans: La Heuer Monaco) Breitling will revamp its range of watches and update its image to stick with the aesthetic standards of those years. A redesign partly due to one of Willy Breitling's latest decisions to invest in computer-aided microcomponent manufacturing technology that will revolutionize the watchmaking sphere.

The result is a movement that remains of a very atypical design due to the arrangement of the oscillating weight under the dial, opposite the bottom of the case (which makes it invisible when the case is open)

This arrangement, beyond the fact of making it look like a conventional chronograph movement, allows the watch to better protect itself from the constraints exerted by the kinetic effects due to accelerations by centering this mass in the middle of the case... another equation well known to pilots….

Like the Heuer Monaco models, this “Chronomatic” automatic movement positions the winder to the left of the watch, because handling the winder, if the watch is worn regularly, remains anecdotal.

The New Breitling Navitimer will be equipped with a date and will feature only two counters, a counter totaling the minutes from zero to thirty positioned at three o'clock and another calibrated in hours on a scale of twelve. The whole thing remains surrounded by a removable crown which animates a slide rule comparable to that of the origin, although more readable by its larger size. All this, set inside a new, very “seventies” case that corresponds to the aesthetic developments of the time.

The Japanese surge that followed will see the advent of digital and quartz which will, for a time, establish itself as the most precise and fashionable device. Breitling will design just after the model equipped with the famous caliber 11 Chronomatic, a model driven by a quartz movement, Swiss watchmaking going through a dark period which makes it qualify as a true industrial “Pearl Harbor”.

This attack that Bretiling unfortunately did not see coming will sink the company whose rubble will be bought by the German company Sinn which will acquire in addition to the stock of spare parts of the Navitimer the operating rights of the model which will be signed and produced in its mechanical version by the firm of Frankfurt am Main, established in 1961. A company founded and managed by another aviation enthusiast, official supplier of the German Air Force, Helmut Sinn, to whom we owe the famous chronograph equipped with a flyback movement which also equips the Bundeswher.

The Time of the rebirth of the Brand

In 1979, another part of the Breitling saga was initiated following the takeover of the Breitling brand by Sicura. Its owner, Ernest Schneider, a former soldier from Friborg will relaunch the brand by renewing ties with the world of aviation. This orientation will obtain such a remarkable commercial success that it will reinstall the brand in the hearts of all air enthusiasts.

With a Special Series dedicated to the Frecce Tricolori military aerial acrobatics patrol in 1984, the Brand is initiating an unprecedented production of various watch models in an ultra-limited series that bears the colors of major events such as the aerobatic world championship in Le Havre. in 1992 or slightly larger series such as the Military Aerobatics team watches.

       Chronographe Aerospace                    Old Navitimer                         Navitimer 2

                       Championnat du monde de Voltige           Patrouille de France                   Patrulla Aguilla

With the Navitimer Patrouille de France edition watch, the US Navy's Chronomat Blue-Angels or the Spanish Patrulla Aguilla's Navitimer 2, Breitling is reconnecting with the air and space community.

This is a period during which Breitling will experience its peak. A resounding success in the watchmaking microcosm will follow, which will bring the different versions of Navitimer, Ernest Schneider version, to a very large number of amateurs and collectors.

Ernest Schneider had based his company in Granges in Switzerland and he would rely heavily on La Navitimer to develop a range of professional chronographs such as the Chronomat in 1984 for the airline community or the Astromat 1461 in which a perpetual calendar movement. With regard to diving watches, the brand will cooperate with Eric Tabarly to design a model of watch for deep diving in a helium-enriched atmosphere and will develop, thanks to the results of research carried out by its design offices, the Shark range with a Quartz model and a model with an automatic movement.

In 1986, it was the turn of the Old Navitimer date and Old Navitimer Cosmonaute ranges to undergo an upgrade: Abandonment of Quartz, with the introduction of the 81600 model, then the following year a total rebalancing of the face of the dial with counters positioned at 9, 12 and 6 o'clock with the new reference 81610.

In 1992 The Navitimer chronograph evolves and is renamed Navitimer 2. A more modest-sized model but completely redesigned: The pivoting crystal of the bezel of the Old Navitimer model does not offer the water-resistance services that users would be entitled to wait for this time will be redesigned and will provide better water resistance. Another unprecedented modification: a tachymeter, a pulsometer and a telemeter are integrated into the circular slide rule of the rotating bezel. Finally, a new movement will equip these new Navitimer editions in Cosmonaut versions graduated in 24 hours and aviation editions with a 12-hour dial in homage to models from the 1960s.

The year 1995 saw the arrival of a watch with a function never seen before: An integrated distress beacon, capable of sending an alert signal emitted on the 121.5 MHz frequency or 243 MHz for the military version. The transmitter integration and the beacon antenna are developed in cooperation with Dassault Aviation. A true distress signal tool, users are required to register with authorities. The signal is detectable within a radius of 167 km by an aircraft flying at an altitude of 6000 m.

Despite the abandonment of this frequency by the Cospas-Sarsat satellite system for another range of frequencies in 2008, the 121.5 frequency is still scanned by air traffic controllers and by aircraft equipped with a VHF. Having been the first watch with such a device, it is collected by many watch and aviation enthusiasts.