Okay, trivia time.

[Fantasio]

Bremont. (http://www.bremont.com/about-us)

OK let's try another and then it Alan's turn to ask a few. This French farmers name was chosen for a brand of Pilot and aviation themed watches. What is the brand name and the reason his name is is on the watches (according to the story)?

In the late 1990s, Nick & Giles were flying across France in their 1930's biplane. The weather was closing in. A rough-running engine forced them to make an emergency landing. Keen to avoid the French authorities, the brothers were more than happy to accept the gracious help of the farmer whose field they had landed in. They stayed in his home, the aircraft took cover in the barn. It transpired their host had flown aircraft during the war, as well as being a gifted engineer. Half-restored wall clocks lay everywhere, together with numerous engine parts. The farmer still even wore his own father's wristwatch. The brothers promised that his warm hospitality would never be forgotten. His name? Antoine Bremont.

[tribe125]

OK, here's one -

With Switzerland a land-locked country, and with Germany controlling continental European airspace, how did Britain import Swiss watches, chronometers and watchmaking materials during the height of World War II?

[T Bone]

OK, here's one -

With Switzerland a land-locked country, and with Germany controlling continental European airspace, how did Britain import Swiss watches, chronometers and watchmaking materials during the height of World War II?

According to Breitling's website, Willie Breitling was involved in smuggling some aircraft clocks in for the RAF...

[tribe125]

Yes, smuggling - initially in diplomatic bags via Lisbon, and Breitling were involved.

I'll post an article from the Horological Journal. I should credit 'Abraxas' who first posted it on TZ-UK in 2007.

I'll have to post it in two parts because the forum software is limited to 10,000 characters per post.

[tribe125]

Part 1


Military Timepieces: 'Gentlemen, synchronise your watches'

Watches in Wartime

Frank Edwards 'Horological Journal' July 1994 (British Horological Institute)

From the outbreak of war the British Government rigorously enforced the Trading with the Enemy Act (2-3 Geo 6 Ch87). How then were watches to be obtained? In those days the English of the Parliamentary Draughtsman was enviably precise; Any person who trades with the enemy will be guilty of an offence of trading with the enemy. Provided that a person will be deemed not to have traded with the enemy by reason only that every good law has exceptions.

The Editor no doubt had the current anniversary of D-Day very much in mind when he asked if I would care to contribute a piece on watches in wartime. My first thoughts were that it would be fairly straightforward, especially since in my recent articles about watches I had come across a number of references to firms having supplied watches to the Services.

Straightforward? Not a bit of it! In an eerie sort of way a wall of silence, albeit an involuntary one, seemed to have been erected around the arrangements whereby Britain, cut off from her former sources of supply, managed to get hold of the timepieces so necessary for the efficient and timely conduct of a war.

In the early days there was no problem. Ingersoll had been assembling nearly a million watches a year in their Clerkenwell factory; Newmark imported a somewhat larger quantity from Switzerland out of which they supplied Marks and Spencer with nearly half a million annually. Rotary was building up a nice reputation for its gold-plated models. Oris found ready acceptance for its pin lever watches especially since receiving an award for timekeeping from the Neuchatel Observatory (an accolade normally reserved for jewelled lever models) and the Loftus family were already large importers though not yet under the Accurist brand.

Among the upper echelons Omega, Longines, Rolex, Breitling, Zenith and IWC all had a presence in London and were distributing respectable quantities of jewelled lever watches among which were some chronometers, the navigational aspects of which had first been demonstrated by Lindbergh. Their importance to aviators was not lost on the British government who were not quite as unprepared as sometimes suggested and had placed substantial orders for the RAF in Switzerland in the late Thirties. By 1939 large numbers of these had been delivered and put into store.

Once war was declared, the government moved swiftly to commandeer stocks. Ingersoll continued to assemble watches at Clerkenwell from parts imported mainly from America, though they also used ebauches from Bettlach and Baumgartner Frères in Switzerland and from Junghans and Thiele in Germany - mostly 13 ligne rough movements. After the Clerkenwell factory was bombed the operation was moved to High Wycombe and continued until the supply of parts ran out and the factory switched to instrument-making. Down in Croydon, Newmark was in the same boat.

After the fall of France the sources of supply dried up and both companies had to live off what the government left them from the stocks they had piled up over the preceding couple of years. For their loyal customers among the general public it was all too little. (Sales of watches in 1939 amounted to about 10 million pieces.)

The importers of Swiss jewelled lever watches were in no better shape. Being agents, they hadn't the financial resources of the manufacturers to lay down stocks and what they did have were soon exhausted.

Since the requirements of the Services were bound to increase, the government had to take steps to satisfy that demand. One of the firms contacted was Omega. As a result of some excellent results from tests carried out at Kew (97.8 out of a possible 100) they were given a substantial order for steel-cased watches which had to be specially waterproof. Although initially for the RAF, they subsequently (1948) became the role model for their highly successful Seamaster. The order was placed through the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company and amounted over the years to a staggering 110,000 pieces delivered between 1941 and 1945.

Curious to know how such a quantity of watches had been brought into the UK during a war, I asked Omega at Eastleigh. They couldn't help and put me on to their archivist in Bienne. He confirmed the figures - in fact he had the delivery notes in front of him, 1. So how had they been delivered? "Good question" he replied, "I have no idea!". There is no doubt that the watches were supplied. A distant cousin in the RAF has confirmed that on joining his squadron he was issued with a "Black faced Omega with luminous hands".

I was beginning to get intrigued. I tried Longines, who had the perfect pilot's prototype in their Lindbergh watch, designed by the aviator himself in 1927, and put into production about ten years later. No-one could tell me a thing though Bonham’s recently auctioned a 1940 Longines pilot's watch for a handsome Cartier had an office in Bond Street that was used by General de Gaulle, from which he addressed the French nation in June 1940. But no luck. Cartier had ceased production during the war.

Next I tried IWC. They too claimed to have had contracts with the Ministry of Supply (as it was then) but once again no-one could be found with actual knowledge of the details. Their history illustrates a deck watch with the government arrow and the number 6439 on the dial, one of a batch of 105 supplied in 1938. The same book shows a large airman's watch in a steel case with oversized crown, 6. The extra-long strap was designed to fit over a flying suit. This model had special protection against magnetic fields and was the forerunner of the famous Ingeneur still being produced today. But there was still no information as to how they were delivered. Perhaps the absence of records was because the factory was bombed on 1st April 1944 by the Americans, in error it was said (they were notoriously bad navigators), but the Allies may have suspected that Schaffhausen was not averse to supplying the U-boats of the Kriegsmarine with a deck watch or two.

Breitling seemed a good bet. They were one of the firms awarded contracts by the MoS and specialised in cockpit chronographs. At last I had a breakthrough! Yes, they had supplied Britain (but not, they insisted, the other side). An elderly woman who used to work for Willy Breitling at the time confirmed that the timepieces were packed in Mr Breitling's own office and were taken away in diplomatic bags. They sent me a picture. Now, I was getting somewhere!

Most of the watches ordered by the MoS had been for the RAF. So far as I can tell the Army were not issued with any sort of timepiece - though a centre-seconds chronograph might have been a whole lot better than the sand - compass we were issued with for navigating the featureless desert. Some of us did obtain Swiss watches, though by quite unorthodox means. In 1943 when I was a PoW in Bavaria, we heard from the Swiss Red Cross that the German High Command had agreed to let Rolex supply watches to us - they even showed us a catalogue. The only condition was that we gave our word as British officers to pay for our watches after the War. Cheered by the thought that the canny Swiss were certain we were going to win, we placed our orders. Some 3,000 pieces came into the camp and were duly paid for in 1947. So Rolex at least are confirmed as suppliers to (some of) the Armed Forces!

Well, that disposed of the Army and Air-Force - what about the Navy? I asked my destroyer friend what they used for timepieces. 'Ship's chronometer', he said in Navy-speak. Where did they get it? "Came with the ship", he said. Well, it would, wouldn't it? Then I thought of that old-established firm of Mercers of St Albans who had practically a monopoly in making marine chronometers. I asked Tony Mercer how they got on during the war. "No problem. Small items like screws came in by diplomatic satchel", he told me; "Jewels were hidden in pots of shaving cream. The big stuff - material for mainsprings and detent springs was flown in weekly from Sandvik in Sweden". In return for these concessions Mercers were only allowed to sell their chronometers to the government.

This was starting to get somewhere and confirmed what my old chairman Laurie Bateman used to say, that the Swiss, being neutral 'for us rather than against us' made sure that we got supplies of their favourite export through diplomatic channels - a view shared by his contemporary Geoffrey Newmark who told me that he believed that with the connivance of the Germans much vital material was shipped out of Genoa.

What I next learned more or less bore this out. A large consignment of watches, believed to be Vacheron & Constantin, were shipped from Switzerland via Lisbon. Included in the shipment were some vitally needed machine tools, which subsequently, I was told, ended up in the National College of Horology at the Northampton Polytechnic set up by Andrew Fell in 1947.

I tried to check this with the Ministry of Defence but both the RAF and Army Records were politely but regretfully unable to help. Nor was Martin Garnett of the Imperial War Museum, who very patiently went through his collection of military watches - but there wasn't a familiar Swiss name amongst them! I was beginning to think there was a sort of diplomatic 'Omerta Orologio' in operation so far as watches in wartime was concerned. I wondered if things were any better on the home front.

[tribe125]

Part 2


In the thirties Smiths Industries had built up quite a successful business in electric synchronous clocks which worked off the mains but their alarm clock side had taken a beating from cheap 'dumped' imports from the Continent - deliberately designed, it was said, to ruin our potential for making time-fuses for torpedoes.

Smiths had started work on a new factory at Cheltenham where they intended to produce high quality 'English Lever' watches but they were short of machinery and had in fact been negotiating with a German supplier when war broke out. Dennis Barrett, then Smiths General Manager, discovered that the machinery and tools had got as far as Dieppe.

The exact details are hazy but it would seem that Dennis, with the help of some French citizens, a detachment from the Royal Navy and the temporary use of a naval craft - loaded the crates on board at a Channel port just ahead of the advancing enemy and brought them back to England.

They were installed in a private house close to the Cheltenham factory from which hairsprings by the million were ultimately produced. A subsequent attempt to repeat the exercise to rescue some clockmaking machinery belonging to a Frenchman called Duvardier was thwarted by bad luck and bad weather and Dennis barely escaped by the seat of his breeches.

But it was to be years before Smiths' watch production got off the ground. In the meantime I still had no real evidence as to how we had obtained the necessary quantity of watches to satisfy the Services' requirements. The Americans had their Elgins and Hamiltons but their need was greater than their ability to produce and I had no indication that they shipped vast numbers across the Atlantic - unlikely in any case in view of the high losses sustained by our 'blockade busters' (put at something like 80%) though I have heard that some Bulova and Waltham watches were made available under lend-lease.

I was about to draw this chronicle to a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion when, out of the blue, came the information I had been seeking. A well-placed and very knowledgeable source told me that, firstly, there had been regular flights, negotiated with the enemy, between Britain and Switzerland and also between us and Vichy France. In return for payments in gold we obtained all sorts of horological goods and other material in short supply. What's more, the story of the weekly flights to Sweden was confirmed, again negotiated with the enemy. An ex-RAF pilot named Cotton regularly flew in quantities of diamonds (which the Germans needed for instrument manufacture) and gold, bringing back not only Mercer's mainsprings but tungsten carbide (which I gather was rather more important from the Ministry's point of view). All this, I am told, went on in spite of the 'Trading with the Enemy' Act as it was with the sanction and at the instigation of the Ministry of Supply itself. The story is, as they say, unattributable - my informant wished to remain anonymous - but I was told it could be checked at the Public Records Office at Kew. But Time, as the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers' motto has it, is the Ruler of all things and I had run out of it - the Editor's deadline was upon me. So you will have to judge the truth for yourself!

[Samanator]

Alan you have a very interesting circle of friends past and present. Thanks for sharing, I love a good story.