Is This Reborn 1950s Military Watch the Most Underrated Chronograph There Is?

It’s hard to imagine a better chronograph than the Blancpain Air Command.

a blancpain military chronograph watch against a colorful striped background

Published November 25, 2024

·

Every product is carefully selected by our editors. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more

If you’re a watch enthusiast, you’ve heard of Blancpain. The brand is well-known for creating the original modern dive watch in 1953 with its Fifty Fathoms. For many casual fans of the brand, their knowledge of Blancpain begins and ends with the Fifty Fathoms. To some degree, the Fifty Fathoms is a victim of its own success and notoriety.

But Blancpain is far from a one-trick pony. It’s the oldest extant watch brand in the world, having first opened its doors in 1735. The brand is also an accomplished haute horology manufacture, capable of producing its own movements featuring complications such as perpetual calendars, minute-repeaters, tourbillons and carrousels, and much more.

One watch made by Blancpain that doesn’t get nearly enough attention, at least in my opinion, is the Air Command. It’s a sporty, military-inspired flyback chronograph that shares a history and design with the Fifty Fathoms, and it’s perhaps the most underrated chronograph on the market.

a blancpain chronograph watch on a wrist — A 1950s U.S. Air Force watch reborn, chronographs don’t get much better than the Air Command.

Taking Command

Like the Fifty Fathoms, the Air Command’s story began in the 1950s as a military tool watch. But compared to its diver sibling, very little is known about it. What is known is that in the 1950s, the then-newly founded U.S. Air Force was in search of a chronograph that would meet certain criteria for its pilots.

Enter Allen Tornek, a New York-based watch importer whom you may know as the “founder” of Tornek-Rayville — those Fifty Fathoms divers issued to the U.S. Navy that were rebadged with the fake American brand’s name in order to get around the country’s Buy American Act — who again turned to Blancpain for some prototypes.

Tornek imported at least a dozen flyback chronograph prototypes from Blancpain. The watches featured very similar styling to the Fifty Fathoms — the bakelite bezel had the same markings but in reverse, the case appeared to be the same and the seconds hand was identical.

a vintage blancpain air command chronograph watch — One of the few surviving Air Command chronographs from the 1950s, previously sold by expert horologer Romain Réa.

The watch was dubbed the Air Command, with rumors suggesting that Tornek himself came up with the name, perhaps inspired by the 1955 film Strategic Air Command starring Jimmy Stewart. Little else is known about the original Air Command. Perhaps no fewer than those original 12 were ever produced, and they never saw regular service in the Air Force. A small handful have survived to the modern day.

But despite the watch’s murky history, the Air Command is still cool as hell. A Fifty Fathoms-adjacent flyback chronograph with a badass name that was created as a prototype for the U.S. Air Force in the ’50s is about as good an origin story as a watch could have. But that’s just half the reason why I think the Air Command deserves more respect.

The other half is that the modern incarnation of the Air Command, which debuted as a permanent collection in Blancpain’s catalog just three years ago following a limited-edition return in 2019, is an extremely impressive watch. I recently spent a week with the latest limited-edition Blancpain Air Command, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

a blancpain chronograph watch on a wrist reflects light — The modern Blancpain Air Command is as good as chronographs get.

Vintage Inspiration, Modern Execution

I test-drove the 36.2mm version of the new limited-edition Air Command, which only differs from the standard model by way of its camo green colorway and custom rotor.

The watch is crafted from Grade 23 titanium, which is Blancpain’s preferred form of the lightweight alloy. Most brands use Grade 5 or Grade 2 titanium, but Blancpain made the unique decision to use Grade 23 in its watches due to the material’s heightened purity and toughness.

Blancpain uses the seldom-seen Grade 23 titanium for its cases, a purer, stronger and tougher form of the alloy than the more common Grade 5.

Photo by Johnny Brayson for Gear Patrol

The watch feels exceptionally lightweight, and the 36mm case size is very refreshing for a pilot’s chronograph — it’s simply a dream on the wrist. What impressed me even more, though, was the finishing. It’s very impressive, especially given the hardness of the material chosen.

Most of the case features deep, deep lines of satin brushing, with a mirror-polished chamfer running along the lugs. The tips of the lugs are faceted, and every line of finishing on the case is crisp and sharp. Even the titanium pin buckle on the leather strap features multiple finishes, a deeply engraved nameplate and more attention to detail than the entire cases of most watches.

the buckle seen on a blancpain watch strapped on a wrist — Even the finishing on the pin buckle is beyond impressive.

Moving onto the dial, the camo green color is mated beautifully with a faded yellow color for all dial printing and lume. I guess you can call it fauxtina, but it doesn’t look aged to me; it simply gives off a classic military vibe when combined with the green.

The hour and minute hands, chronograph seconds hand, and puffy printed Arabic numeral indices are all coated with a ton of blue-glowing Super-LumiNova, as are all marks on the glossy black ceramic bezel insert. The watch, much like the Fifty Fathoms, glows like a torch in the dark and almost certainly has the strongest lume of any chronograph I’ve seen.

lume glows in the dark on a blancpain chronograph watch — Just like the Fifty Fathoms, the Air Command’s lume is some of the brightest around.

The functionality of the watch is also fantastic, which makes sense considering the original watch had the same features and was created to aid Air Force pilots. The Air Command’s calling card is its dual time-measuring features.

The simpler of the two is the countdown bezel. It’s 120-click, bi-directional, and boasts a fully lumed ceramic insert. The implementation of a countdown bezel makes more sense when paired with a chronograph than a dive-style count-up bezel would, considering a chronograph already measures elapsed time. With the countdown bezel, I was able to easily see how much time I had left whenever I needed to time a scheduled event, which is effectively a different feature.

The more complicated time-measuring feature is the chronograph, which of course, isn’t just any chronograph. It has a flyback function, meaning you can stop, reset and restart the stopwatch with the press of a single button. I don’t often need a flyback function, but it sure is fun to play around with.

the automatic movement of a blancpain chronograph watch seen through a display caseback — Who doesn’t love a rotor shaped like an airplane propeller? It’s made of 18-karat white gold, too.

The rest of the movement, in traditional Blancpain fashion, is just as impressive. The Calibre F188B is in-house, of course, with a column wheel for ultra-smooth operation, beautiful but still tool-watch-appropriate finishing, and an anti-magnetic silicon balance spring.

Most enjoyable of all is the rotor, which looks like an airplane propeller and is made of 18K white gold. Is it a little silly? Sure. But who cares? It’s fun, and if I were actually dropping $20K on this watch, I would want to have as much fun with it as possible.

One thing about the movement, however, is it doesn’t hack. This fact, coupled with the lack of a running seconds hand on the dial, makes standard time-telling decidedly secondary to the chronograph function. Maybe that’s the point given the watch’s military origins, but if I had my druthers, I’d replace the 12-hour counter with a small seconds display.

The other thing I’d change about the watch is the price: I’d make it so I could afford one. The $20,500 price point and the 1-of-100 rarity of the version I tested (mine was actually the only example in the country at the time) mean I’ll never own an Air Command, which is a bummer. But that doesn’t mean I can’t give this watch the respect and admiration it absolutely deserves.