Breitling SuperOcean
By FRED S. MANDELBAUMDiving Watches
COURTESY OF BREITLINGintroduced by the watch was the
“Reverse Panda”. To make the
running seconds and the minute
counter easily visible, Breitling
chose to contrast them in white
on matte black dials. Panda dials
subsequently appeared on most
1960s chronograph designs.
A drastic departure from the
playful elegance of the 1957
SuperOceans, the Ref. 2005 is a
massive beast. The rotating
bezels have a diameter of almost
43mm, the Mk1 dials are much
simpler in design (Bauhaus
follows Jugendstil), reduced to
concentrate on easy readability.
Anyone who sees these watches
first notices that large “Diamond
Tip” hand. Those unfamiliar
with the SuperOcean Ref. 2005
will think it is a second hand, of
course, but Willy Breitling was
(characteristically) trying to
revolutionise the way diver’s
watches were used. Oxygen
reserve is calculated in minutes,
not seconds, so Breitling
designed a chronograph
calibre—again made by Venus
S.A.—to offer a large hand that
would, at a glance, show elapsed
dive time in minutes.
The missing second hand
made it hard to be sure whether
the watch was still running—the
huge diamond tip creeps along
too slowly to tell. But a diver’s life
depends on the tool on their
wrist, so a window at six
provides the vital confirmation—
it’s blank when the chronograph
is stopped, filled with a large
tritium dot when it’s active
and a small dot when it’s
paused. Unique, slightly
quirky, very useful.
When Breitling, together with
Heuer and Hamilton, launched
(one of ) the first automatic
chronograph calibres, the cal. 11,
they redesigned the SuperOceanT
he invention of the
aqualung in the 1940s
made free swimming
exploration of the depths of the
oceans possible for everyone and
a new category of watches was
born: the dedicated diver’s
watch. Willy Breitling saw Deep
Sea exploration as an exciting
new segment to market his
tool-watch designs, dreaming
about scuba diving as “a new
form of mass tourism”.
Rotating bezels to track the
remaining oxygen supply and
time the depressurisation, highly
legible dials with luminous
material to remain readable in
darkness, hour and minute
hands designed so you can
quickly tell them apart
underwater: both Breitling 1957
SuperOcean models have the
typical characteristics of a diver’s
tool watch. But Breitling also
brought its unique design twist to
the emerging market segment.
While many other diving
watches have stark, functional
designs, the Breitling SuperOcean
Automatic Ref. 1004 (although
rated for depths of 200m/600ft,
in line with its competitors from
the period) is a sublimely elegant
watch. Applied dial indexes
hovering above sunken radium
are an intricate work of art,
seemingly inspired by the
playfulness of 1920s Art Deco,
more Paris or Vienna ballroom
than a frogman’s instrument.
The 39mm-wide rotating bezel is
slim and concave, easy to grip
with the gloved hands of your
diving suit but adding to the
watch’s elegant profile. The
broad arrow of the hour hand
shows unique luminous inserts
that make the shapes easily
distinguishable from the
sword-formed minute hand—
both in the darkness ofunderwater exploration
and on the beaches of
the Côte d’Azur.
The 1957 SuperOcean
Ref. 807 Dive Chronograph
shares the design language of
the Automatic Ref. 1004 but
follows Breitling’s tradition of
chronograph innovation,
established in the late 19th
century. It is the very first
dedicated Divers Chrono, rated
20ATM or 200m/600ft like its
Automatic sibling and powered
by a 13 lignes Venus cal. 150—one
of the thinnest chronograph
calibres around at the time.
Another industry-first featureClockwise from
top left: 1957
SuperOcean
Ref. 8 07; vint a g e
Breitling “in the
submarine world”
advert; 1957
SuperOcean
Ref. 1004; vintage
Breitling “dans le
monde du silence”
advert62 VANITY FAIR ON TIME AUTUMN^2019