BLANCPAIN AIR
COMMAND
Despite the very clear design
similarities to the iconic model, the Air
Command is not, strictly speaking, a
Fifty Fathoms—it’s not a dive watch but
a pilots chronograph. Further, to call
the Air Command a “military” watch
br ings w it h it some a mou nt of
controversy. While the Fifty Fathoms
has an unabashed and inextricable link
with the world’s elite naval diving
units, the Air Command’s link to the
US A ir Force is shrouded in myster y.
The story goes that around 12 Air
Command watches were produced by
Blancpain in the ’50s at the behest of
US watch importer Allen Tornek and
placed with USAAF pilots. However,
for whatever reason, the Valjoux
222- powered Air Command never
gained traction. Further, no one knows
for sure the actual number of Air
Command watches in existence. Marc
Hayek, who has done extensive
research on the subject, explains, “It’s
very , very rare and the belief is we are
talking about tens of watches.”
Hayek is well placed to know the
history of this specific model. Sitting on
his w r ist as he spea ks to bot h me a nd
this tome’s inimitable editor Nicholas
Foulkes during our recent visit to
Blancpain is the most perfect, mint
condition example of the Air Command
in existence. Incredibly, when I later
posted side by side images of t he v intage
watch and the new re-issue on
Instagram, viewers were perplexed as to
which watch was which, as was I.
Hayek laughed when I told him this,
before explaining that “the idea was to
come up with a watch that was
incredibly faithful in appearance but
was actually an example of the brand
and the Swatch Group’s most advanced
technology.”
Just to get this out of the way so we
can get to the good stuff, the way you
tell the old and new watch apart is as
follows. The old one has the wide
uneven pusher spacing that is the
hallmark of the Valjoux 222, a thin
crown, a domed plexiglass crystal,
smaller Arabic markers and wider
spacing between the tachymeter and
the edge of the dial. The new watch has
a thicker crown, the word “Flyback”
on the dial (though both movementsGerman Bundesmarine ordered a
series of Fifty Fathoms watches from a
German dive supplier named
Barakuda. The Barakuda watch was
characterised by large rectangular
luminous markers, each marker
further divided into two tones with
cream luminous material inboard and
smaller red sections towards the
perimeter of the dial (presumably to
aid visibility). It featured sword-shaped
hands and a unique bakelite bezel with
a full 60-minute scale in luminous
material. Currently, vintage Barakuda
watches are trading for £33-40,000,
such is its cult status.
For 2019, Hayek and Blancpain
turned to this very special model to
create a 500-piece limited edition. “It’s
the dial that has this very strong late
’60s, early ’70s iconography that we
found so appealing,” says Hayek.
As with the new Air Command,
the limited edition Barakuda
showcases Blancpain’s and
Swatch Group’s technical
innovation. Its movement
is the reliable Calibre 1151,
featuring automatic
winding and a 100-hour
power reserve, thanks to
its twin-barrel design.
Finally, it comes on a
tropical rubber strap similar to
that found on the original watch.
Together, the Air Command
and the Fifty Fathoms Barakuda
serve as perfect reminders of
Blancpain’s halcyon past in the
creation of military timepieces and are
just two of the seemingly innumerable
faces of the most heroic dive watch
ever invented.From left: Blancpain 2012 X Fathoms; Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe; Blancpain 2017
Mil-Spec. Inset, below: Blancpain Air Command 2019WESTEND61 / GETTY IMAGES (OCEAN)
perform this function), even pusher
spacing and, amusingly, even darker
markers on the dial, hands and bezel.
Adding to the difficulty of
distinguishing modern from vintage is
the fact that the new watch’s case is just
0.5 mm larger than the original’s
42mm, and Hayek and Blancpain have
gone to great pains to recreate the
lovely bezels on the thin, elegant,
faceted lugs.
The new Air Command is powered
by the F388B movement, an integrated
automatic vertical clutch column
wheel-operated chronograph
movement. It beats at 5Hz or 36,000
vibrations, good for dividing time into
tenth-of-a-second intervals.
50 FATHOMS BARAKUDA
Take one look at the Fifty Fathoms
Barakuda and you’ll hear the
unmistakable bass refrain of
Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-
Da-Vida”, conjuring up
images of big hair, muscle
cars, platform boots and
dancing naked in the rain
at Woodstock, so strong
is its late ’60s Op art-
inflected look. At the edge
of each cream marker is
a signal red section that
creates a completely different
dial expression. “The great
thing about the Fifty Fathoms
is that the more research we
do, the more different and
interesting iterations we discover, so
vast was the impact of the watch in
both the civil and military diving
worlds,” says Marc Hayek.
A case in point is, in the 1960s, theAUTUMN 2019 VANITY FAIR ON TIME 47