Recommended Reading

The Concise Guide to Military Timepieces 1880-1990 is the first illustrated guide devoted specifically to the highly collectable field of military watches and clocks.

Zygmunt Wesolowski (author), an experienced collector, offers great reading here for enthusiasts, collectors and dealers alike illustrations and detailed descriptions of more than 150 distinct models issued over the past century to the military forces of Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Holland, Canada, Czechoslovakia, and Japan.

Each description includes a guide to price ranges, and the book contains an illustrated guide to some 160 identification markings to be found on the military timepieces of the above mentioned nations, plus Spain, Sweden, Austro-Hungary, Poland, China, Chile and Peru.

Fascinating examples illustrated in these pages include:

the watches issued to Zeppelin airship crews of the Great War (1914 -1918), and to the first generation of fighter pilots who hunted them in the night skies over London;

the "trench" watches acquired by the officers and men whose struggle on the Western Front changed the face of warfare forever;

timepieces specific to the crews of Doenitz's U-Boats, and of the Allied anti-submarine destroyers and corvettes which scoured the wartime Atlantic for the "Wolf Packs";

watches issued to Luftwaffe aircrews in the Battle of Britain (May-October 1940), and to the RAF and USAAF flyers who carried the air war back over the Third Reich;

watches developed for the Italian Frogmen who led the world in clandestine underwater operations during the first half of the World War II, and for their US counterparts of the UDTs;

and the watches issued to today's jet fighter pilots, nuclear submarine crews, and Special Forces.

This book will be an invaluable reference for horologists at every level of expertise; and will prove particularly useful to collectors of average means, whose imaginations are captured by their dramatic historical associations.

Get a bird's-eye view on the exciting history of military watches

Read why military watches played a critical role in the Normandy Landings

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