IWC Pilot Watches Review: Big Pilot, Mark XVIII, Saint Exupery | SwissWatchExpo

Fresh from the showcase here at SwissWatchExpo, 
today we’re exploring IWCs line of pilot watches.  
Now the important thing about pilot watches is 
that so many of them are used and designed for  
the actual purpose of pilots in their use. The 
issue is that so many other manufacturers are  
pretenders. They are not actual pilot’s watches. 
The IWC was designed as a pilot’s watch from day  
one. There were some very important innovations 
that IWC incorporated into their watches,  
and a lot of people think they’re just 
gimmicky because the large pilot came out  
in 2002 and that’s the first recollection 
that people in the United States at least,  
remember the IWC pilot. That’s the one that 
they usually think of. Most of all, this is  
the IWC big pilot. This particular watch is large 
enough. It’s 46 millimeters, but it’s actually  
more like 48 millimeters in terms of the way that 
the dial expands the outside edge of the watch.
Now, the interesting thing about this particular 
watch is, there’s a lot of little innovations.  
This is an in house movement. This is a 
manufacturer caliber IWC movement. It also has an  
eight day, well it’s technically seven and a half 
day, power reserve. Now the indication on the dial  

is that it’s only a seven day power reserve, but 
I know from personal experience that this watch  
will go almost eight days when fully wound. That’s 
an interesting feature on this watch. Now, yours,  
of course may vary – temperature, humidity, 
all these other things influence and impact  
the ability of the watch to continue to keep 
moving throughout the week. This watch also has,  
the most famous portion, is the large crown, 
and the large crown was designed to so that a  
pilot could get their hands on this particular 
crown and adjust the dial or the things that  
they needed to adjust within the watch or 
even wind the watch when they had gloves on.
Now, most pilots, of course, don’t mess 
with the dial and they don’t mess with the  
crown during flight. So in some sense of the word, 
it’s just a little bit for this particular model,  
because it’s an automatic wind watch, and 
because it’s not a manual wind watch. It’s  
a little bit gimmicky, but just the same, it’s a 
throwback to an original watch that was designed  
and that watch was 55 millimeters large. So 
if you can imagine how much larger that watch  
would have been in the early days now that 
watch was designed as an observers watch,  
it was an onboard, it was a crew member 
or a flight crew. The purpose was  
on bombing runs, they would be able to see 
that dial even in low light conditions,  
because at that time, those particular watches 
didn’t have that great of luminescence.
They were, the radioactive loom, they 
just didn’t – for hours and hours,  
they would not glow all that great. They 
were very, very dull so at certain lighting  
conditions they couldn’t be seen. So the larger, 
the watch, the hands were painted bright white  
under that luminescence so that they can 
be seen even in low light conditions,  
regardless of whether they were glowing. So IWCs 
pilot watch history began in 1896 with a gold  
pocket watch. Now, incidentally, that particular 
gold pocket watch was not designed just to be a  
pilot’s watch. It was just incidental that it was 
the first watch that was ever used during flight.  
Now Breitling has a really extended history 
in flight pilot watches as well, and we don’t  
want to take away from that because they truly 
were an innovative pioneer in pilot’s watches  
as well. But when we talk about the true 
nature of pilot watches, we talk about IWC.
One of the things that IWC incorporated into 
their watches in the early days, and it still  
continues to this day, are shatterproof crystals, 
temperature control – extreme high and extreme low  
temperatures. The reason for that is because if 
you could imagine, pilots in the early days didn’t  
have pressurized cockpits. So they had to deal 
with extremely hot temperatures on the ground,  
and then as they rose in altitude, extremely 
cold temperatures. So the watch had to be  
fairly impervious, and of course they didn’t have 
quartz watches to compensate for these things.  
So the internal mechanisms had to be impervious 
to quick and rapid changes because obviously if  
pilots were moving quickly up and then moving 
quickly back down, those changes would happen  
rapidly inside the watch, and that would 
cause all kinds of accuracy issues. Now,  
one of the other things that people don’t think 
about is sudden pressure changes, even though  
the human body can put up a certain pressure 
changes at certain altitudes, the watches cannot.
So those rapidly expanding temperatures, and 
contracting temperatures inside the watch would  
actually cause the crystals to blow out the top 
in much the same way that diver’s watches do. So  
these watches have always been designed keeping 
in mind that they wanted to make sure that those  
crystals didn’t blow out the top of the watch. 
Then, you know, a pilot would land and have  
no crystal protecting the dial of the watch or 
the hands of the watch – that would be a severe  
problem. Now, as IWC has progressed through 
the years, they have designed certain watches  
for ladies. In the early days, watches by 
IWC were pretty exclusively made for men.  
Of course there were a few exceptions in 
the world. I happened to be wearing one  
it’s called the DaVinci. It is one of 
my favorite watches in the IWC lineup.
There’s a lot of reasons why. It 
has the articulating lugs on it.  
The design to me is just outstanding. It’s 
just a gorgeous watch. The reason I bring this  
watch up is because really when you think 
about ladies watches in the IWC line, the  
DaVinci was worn by ladies because it was small 
enough to be worn. IWC never really did cater,  
with all the other size of their watches, to the 
ladies market. Now, when this watch came along,  
this watch came along around 2017, this 
is a 36 millimeter ladies pilot watch.  
Obviously, one of the things that they introduced 
for this watch was the multitude of straps options  
that are available. So you can really customize 
this watch in a lot of different colors and a lot  
of different ways for different outfits. Now 
don’t get me wrong, all of the men’s watches,  
they have different straps that are available 
for theirs as well, especially the big pilot.
There’s a multitude of different 
straps available for those watches.  
If you don’t like the large pilot, the 40 
millimeter watch, this one here, is available  
and it’s a thin lightweight model. This is 
more like the pilot watch from the mid 1940s  
onto present day. So when you think about a 
true pilot’s watch the British used this watch  
all the way from 1948 until 1981. It truly was 
a standard issue watch for the Royal Air Force.  
Now this particular watch has changed throughout 
the years, and there’s been different names for  
this particular watch. Some of the names are like 
the Mark 15 that we have here. This one has a  
unique IWC bracelet. That’s something that in the 
marketplace has changed over the years as well.
Certain people have certain feelings about certain 
watches throughout the years for IWC. This one  
happens to have, on the back a more or less 
flush clasp and a hidden clasp with a button  
on the side that you press to deploy it. The 
new clasps were very different than that. But  
as the market has changed, most people actually 
like the leather straps on their watch or even the  
canvas straps on their watch. So it’s very rare 
to see these watches on a metal bracelet. This  
is a multi-link design, it’s very comfortable, 
it’s very fluid. This is just a gorgeous watch.  
Now this particular dial was a throwback to that 
original pilot’s watch dial from 1938 to 1981.  
There’s different Mark versions of these watches 
from 10 all the way through present day through  
17. So they can get kind of confusing, which one 
is which. Well, the difference in the Mark series  
of watches are subtle differences on the dial, 
there’s subtle differences in the bracelets.
So if you really have a specific, and also 
by the way, subtle differences in the hands  
on the dial. So if you have a specific watch that 
you’re going after, and you happen to think, wow,  
I like these particular hands in this particular 
watch. It could be from a very specific year set  
because in some cases, these watches weren’t made, 
but three or four years, maybe five at the most,  
then they changed the design again. So this can 
get really confusing, especially if you’ve seen,  
maybe you’ve seen this one in the present day 
form, but you’ve also seen the blue dial. We have  
the blue dial available here at SwissWatchExpo 
as well. These are great alternatives to,  
again, Rolex, a lot of the Rolex are very, very 
hard to find, and IWC is an extremely good watch.
It’s a professional series 
watch. It’s casual, it’s dressy.  
These watches are worn universally throughout the 
world, and what I want everybody to understand is,  
even though there’s a Rolex craze, we have a 
lot of IWCs here to fit every single style.  
In fact, we have a huge assortment and array of 
IWCs, and you can get these things at really great  
discounts to the original price. I think that’s 
one of the value stories here. You want to make  
sure that when you look at an IWC, okay, you may 
be considering something new and that’s great,  
but you have an opportunity here to be able to 
purchase these watches at a much lower price,  
and they’re in phenomenal condition. In 
very, in serious terms, you probably won’t  
find that these are much different than the 
one that you can purchase new. This is the  
great value story behind buying a pre-owned 
watch and I just want to make that clear.
So if you have any questions about the pilot 
series watches, obviously give us a call  
here at SwissWatchExpo. One of the other last 
pieces that I do want to document to you here,  
and this is a great watch. We have 
this in gold. Antoine Saint-Exupery,  
was a very connected pilot. He was a World War II 
pilot. He also was a writer for children’s books.  
Saint-Exupery is very highly regarded through 
the IWC line. Usually indicated, not always,  
but usually indicated by an “A” and a period. 
In fact, being from Atlanta, the “A” often  
looks like the script that “A” from the Atlanta 
Braves. So some people get that confused, and  
they don’t know where that “A” comes from. It’s 
Antoine Saint-Exupery. So it’s his first initial.  
Now we’ve got a couple of the Antoine 
Saint-Exupery line of watches here.
They typically are engraved on the back. 
This one’s really unique because it’s got  
Antoine Saint-Exupery’s head engraved on with his 
pilot’s helmet. Now Saint-Exupery of course was,  
he had flown too many times. He was told not to 
fly. He was actually very ill at his last flight  
when he and his plane was lost and he disappeared.  
So he’s considered a really huge hero in 
children’s lineup of books, all throughout  
the world, The Little Prince, in case you’ve ever 
seen that book. In fact, actually IWC has a lot of  
watches to The Little Prince. Now, there are a 
lot of watches in the lineup of IWC that have a  
lot of different character. So I want to make sure 
that anytime you see an IWC, you’d give us a call,  
email us, let us know which IWC you’re 
interested in. And even if you don’t  
know which one you’re interested in, we 
can introduce you to one. Again, we have  
a lot of IWCs and we have a lot of different 
lineup from the different styles and designs.  
So I want to make sure that we get just the 
right one for you. Visit [email protected].

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