? We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine … my apologies for the slight musical intrusion into your otherwise peaceful perusing.
When is a diver not a diver? When it’s a Yellow Submarine of course; or when it’s a 90’000CHF piece of haut horology with a mechanically illuminated dial and a water-resistance exceeding 100 meters – just 5 meters more btw.
This is the Yellow Submarine AKA DB28 from De Bethune. It is what they describe as a diver’s watch in the colors of fire with a water-resistance a 105 meters, and diver’s bezel so actually it is in fact a diver.
It also said to offer excellent readability even in the darkest of depths thanks to the ingenious lighting inside the watch’s mechanical movement as well as the use of a new photo-luminescent blue.
In addition to the above its diver’s bezel rotates with the crystal to indicate dive-time whatever that means – perhaps a crystal inlay. The watch’s main Sapphire crystal also has double anti-reflective treatment.
The watch along with its Manufacture DB2080 caliber, hand-cranked movement with 5 days of power-reserve is all spectacularly presented in a lightweight Zirconium and Titanium case along with a natural rubber diver’s strap (or canvas).
The Yellow Submarine’s movement consists of 400 components and boasts tons of De Bethune in-house innovations. It has a self-regulating twin barrel, a Titanium balance wheel with white gold inserts, a Silicon escape wheel as well as a triple pare-chute shock-absorbing system.
Meanwhile the 44mm by 12.8mm watch case is made from black Zirconium (mid-case) while the rest of its components such as the case-back, bezel and floating lugs are all made of yellow brushed Grade 5 Titanium.
The dial is in satin-brushed and yellow grade 5 Titanium with cut-out Arabic numerals and a power-reserve indicator between 9 and 10 o’clock. The dial is illuminated entirely by mechanical means working on the dynamo principle powered by a twin barrel and manually controlled via a pusher.
Thoughts? This is next level stuff indeed – I would love to see some lume shots. What do you think? This or a new 911?


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