BLANCPAIN FIFTY
FATHOMS
B
eyond their propensity for
hipster facial hair, what do
Osiris, Prometheus, Moses,
and Jesus of Nazareth have in common?
According to author Joseph Campbell,
their lives are all examples of the
monomyth—a single unifying archetypal
narrative that he dubbed the “hero’s
journey” in his 1949 work The Hero with
a Thousand Faces. So influential was
Campbell to filmmaker George Lucas,
that the latter cites the monomyth as
the structural underpinning of Luke
Skywalker. But, when it comes to
watches, there is one particular model
whose narrative perfectly aligns with
the “hero’s journey”—a watch worn by
innumerable elite divers in navies the
world over: the mythical Blancpain
Fifty Fathoms.
Let’s examine the parallels. In
Campbell’s monomyth the hero is
compelled from a mundane existence
towards his destiny. And this is almost
precisely what happened when
Swiss watchmaker Blancpain was
tapped by military legend Bob
Maloubier to create a purpose-
built submersible timepiece to be
used by France’s nascent elite
diving unit, known as Les
Nageurs Combat.
In the early 1950s,
Maloubier had been tasked
with creating the French
equivalent of the US Navy Seals
and it soon dawned on him that,
for any elite diver, the most critical
piece of equipment was his watch.
After rejecting every commercially
available model on the market,
Maloubier went to Blancpain’s
president Jean-Jacques Fiechter who,
as an avid scuba diver himself, was
keen to take up the challenge to create
the ultimate dive watch. In 1953, the
horological hero that was the Fifty
Fathoms was born. It was characterised
by its massive luminous
uni-directional rotating bezel
which, when set at the start of
the dive to the minute hand,
would read elapsed time to
provide a reading of remaining
oxygen and mission duration.
From its relatively obscure
roots, Blancpain’s Fifty Fathoms
soon became legendary and was
eventually used by everyone
from the US Navy Seals to the
West German Bundeswehr
Kampfschwimmers. The other
extraordinary thing about the
Fifty Fathoms is that it was
extrapolated into a seemingly
infinite variety of versions for
both military and recreational
use, making Campbell’s
sobriquet, “hero with a thousand
faces”, highly applicable to this watch.
Since 2007, Blancpain president
Marc Hayek has done a spectacular job
at tapping into this marvellous
timepiece’s legacy while injecting it
with new world materials such as a
sapphire crystal bezel with luminous
minute indexes—a first in high
watchmaking—and even a ceramic
case that perfectly mimics the look and
feel of steel at a fraction of the weight
and with far greater surface hardness.
In 2017 Hayek created what is my
favourite vintage tribute to the Fifty
Fathoms’ history: the Mil-Spec, a
perfectly sized 40mm dive watch
replete with luminous sapphire bezel
and a tribute to the moisture indicator
found on the dial of the military
watches used by the US Navy Seals,
among others. As an expression of his
passion for the rare, obscure yet
delightful timepiece that is the Fifty
Fathoms, this year Hayek reached into
the recesses of the Fifty Fathoms’
history to create two extraordinary and
heroic special edition watches, both
based on some of the most enigmatic
Fifty Fathoms ever made.From top: Bob Maloubier prepares for a dive;
1953 Fifty Fathoms; Maloubier’s false identity
card from 1943; the new 2019 Fifty Fathoms
Barakuda; Jean-Jacques Fiechter diving BLANCPAIN (FIECHTER DIVING); MARTYN COX/INNOVISTORY (IDENTITY CARD);COURTESY OF BUSINESSMONTRES (MALOUBIER DIVING)VANITY FAIR ON TIME AUTUMN 2019Case Study
By Wei Koh
Point Blancpain More than 60 years
after their birth, the Fifty Fathoms and
Air Command still fire on all cylinders
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