Hamilton WWII Army Air Corps Navigation 24H Pocket Watch with Shockproof Case
Hamilton WWII Army Air Corps Navigation 24H Pocket Watch w/ Shockproof Case. To provide enough accuracy to be reliably used for navigation, all three companies decided to retrofit their most valuable and accurate railroad grade movements. Officially called the Master Navigational Watch, these pocket watches were used by the Navigator on bombers like the B-17, B-24, and B-29. When determining your location by using the stars, if your watch is off by about four seconds, you could be as much as one nautical mile off course. For that reason, these pocket watches needed to be extremely accurate and were even mounted inside shockproof cases to protect them from the aircraft vibrations and flak explosions in worst case scenarios.
These were also used by Naval crews and Army tankers to navigate. The dials were all standardized to be black with simple, white 24-hour markings. Each had a set of white hands, and a long sweeping second hand with a hacking feature that allowed the timepieces to be used not just as pocket watches but as stopwatches.
Each dial was marked with G. Known at the time as Greenwich Civil Time because that was the standard European timezone. Was used by the U. Military from 1924 to 1952, when they adopted the term Greenwich Mean Time. This specific Hamilton watch is a Korean war example as evidenced by No. On the outer caseback and serial number 4C114758 on the movement. The case is an earlier Army Air Corps example which means the case was produced pre-1941(and pre-Air Force) making it the rarest variant for collectors. The AAC case would suggest that it most likely saw use in a WWII bomber which is further supported by the wear on the case. The cases are much rarer than the pocket watches themselves these days. This watch is currently running and keeping accurate time, but please note the last service date for the mechanical movement is unknown and therefore a service is recommended if you plan on regularly running this timepiece. Pictures are part of the description.