Breitling began its fabulous run as a watchmaker in 1884. However, it is a lasting cooperation with aviation that began in the mid-1930s and a manufacture movement introduced in 2009 that has turned this brand into a watch industry legend. These milestones are just as important as they ever were in 2024 as Breitling celebrates its 140th anniversary with three new watches that build upon and even improve them.
Let’s start with Caliber B19, whose origins hark back to Caliber 01 of 2009, the first in-house movement at Breitling. At the time of its introduction, it represented a quantum leap in the development of Breitling, ensuring independence from external suppliers and raising the brand’s profile. This modern chronograph movement was not only simply designed and thus suitable for large-scale production, but also fulfilled the highest demands on precision, powering some of the best Breitling watch models. Caliber B01 was presented at the 2009 edition of Baselworld in the iconic Chrono-Matic case.
The production of Caliber B01 took place in the purpose-built, state-of-the-art facility in La Chaux-de-Fonds christened Breitling Chronométrie. At the time, its efficient assembly process was more automated than one generally saw in mechanical watches, right down to the oiling procedure and laser attachment of the balance spring to its collet. Today, though, its level of automation would be regarded as standard, showing how ahead of its time Breitling was. The well-thought-out laboratory even tests the assembled movements for potential assembly or C.O.S.C. problems in advance.
Throughout Breitling’s history, more in-house chronograph movements followed – Caliber B02 with a 24-hour function, Caliber B03 with split-seconds, and Caliber B04 with a GMT feature – but the automatic B19 is the brand’s first exclusive chronograph to include a perpetual calendar, and it features not only a full calendar with perpetual functionality, but also a moon phase. The perpetual calendar automatically corrects leap years and months with less than 31 days and will do so until the next secular year (2100). Caliber B19 also boasts an extraordinary power reserve of 96 hours (four days).
Breitling Caliber B19 powers three new watches
Not only did Breitling bring out a new automatic perpetual calendar movement, it also put it directly into three new red gold-encased timepieces each limited to 140 pieces with historical meaning.
Breitling Premier B19 Datora
The Breitling Premier B19 Datora 140th Anniversary has the 1943-introduced Premier as its role model. The Breitling Premier was the brand’s elegant watch, a so-called gentleman’s chronograph. The new edition in a 42 mm 18-karat red gold case retains the Premier’s distinctive numerals, contrasting minute track, and square buttons. Even the well-meaning tachymeter scale, which can be used together with the chronometer to determine average speeds, is elegant – though it is no match for the sumptuous moon phase at 12 o’clock that offers a rather charismatic red gold man in the moon.
Breitling Navitimer B19 Chronograph 43 Perpetual Calendar
The Breitling Navitimer hardly needs an introduction, and the brand-new Navitimer B19 Chronograph 43 Perpetual Calendar 140th Anniversary continues the illustrious history of the first pilot’s watch to include a chronograph and the brand’s proprietary slide rule “flight computer.” Breitling launched the slide rule, which offered pilots the convenient possibility of various calculating operations, in 1936 in the Chrono-Matic. That watch’s successor, the Navitimer, was first launched in 1952 and offered extended calculation functions – everything needed to put together a flight plan including fuel consumption. Acting like a mechanical navigation computer, the watch made it possible for the pilot to perform navigational calculations in the cockpit simply by moving the rotating ring under the crystal. The new chronograph quickly developed into a masculine status symbol for pilots all over the world. The Navitimer, which conveys the essence of the Breitling brand as almost no other watch in the collection, has lost none of its status and remains the flagship for Breitling’s range of models to this day. The Navitimer B19 Chronograph 43 Perpetual Calendar 140th Anniversary features this remarkable pre-digital instrument in a highly contrasting black hue encircling the watch’s 18-karat red gold dial. The characteristically fluted bezel of this classic timepiece looks pretty amazing in the precious metal too, lifting what is normally a real instrument watch to an elegance that matches the moon phase of the perpetual calendar.
Breitling Super Chronomat B19 44 Perpetual Calendar
The third and final watch in this trilogy of anniversary timepieces in red gold is the Super Chronomat B19 44 Perpetual Calendar 140th Anniversary. Naturally, this edition pays homage to the Breitling Chronomat launched in 1983 as the official watch of Italian aerobatics team Frecce Tricolori with a wider release following in 1984. This watch is quite significant thanks to the time in which it was born: Breitling had been feeling the effects of the quartz crisis the entire Swiss industry was enduring from the 1970s onward. In December of 1978, Willy Breitling announced that Breitling had laid off its employees and closed its doors. This closure, of course, was not meant to last: engineer and pilot Ernest Schneider secured the rights to Breitling and registered his new company, Montres Breitling SA, in Grenchen a year later. The “new” Breitling first specialized in manufacturing electronic watches as the era dictated, but with the booming renaissance of mechanical watches in vogue by the mid-1980s, the new-old company made an abrupt about-face, concentrating once again on traditional mechanical movements. The Chronomat marked the return of the mechanical chronograph and introduced the now-legendary bezel outfitted with rider tabs or “claws.” It quickly became the brand’s bestseller. This 44 mm red gold anniversary edition naturally features a redesigned set of rider tabs at the 15-minute marks on the shiny ceramic bezel as well as an oignon-style crown. A very attractive detail is the Rouleaux-style bracelet re-created in rubber. The busy skeletonized dial on this anniversary edition that nonetheless remains incredibly legible is a first for Breitling.
All these watches, like every Breitling watch since 1999, are certified as precision chronometers by Switzerland’s C.O.S.C. authority. A Breitling wouldn’t be a Breitling without that. Just like the number 1884, the brand’s founding year, proudly displayed underneath the brand name on each and every dial gracing a watch made by Breitling.
