1990s Breitling Old Navitimer II Automatic Blue Arabic A13022 [ON HOLD]
Ref: A13022

Points of Mention

This watch is sold with its original Breitling box and Breitling service records. The watch comes paired with an aftermarket 22mm brown leather strap, and the original heavily worn 22mm Breitling brown leather strap with a worn signed buckle is in the box. The watch is from Circa. 1990s and is sold in worn condition, with some faint hairline scratches to the anti-reflective coating, the bezel rotates but is quite tight, in May 2012 service paperwork shows a new dial, hands and bezel were fitted during that service. The case and buckle can be refurbished to look close to new, please get in contact if you'd like a quote on getting this done. The watch comes with our 12-Months NON-Waterproof Warranty.

The Watch

Here we have a 1990s Breitling Old Navitimer II Automatic Blue Arabic A13022 with a 41mm stainless steel case that curves over your wrist with thick chamfered edges tapered lugs, a lug-to-lug length of 47.5mm and a case thickness of 13.5mm gives the watch an impressive wrist presence. Down the right side, we have the chronograph piston pushers and a signed crown. A bidirectional stainless steel bezel has a white rotating logarithmic slide-rule navigation computer which makes complex mathematical calculations useful to pilots. You can measure a lot of things such as gasoline consumption, miles per minute, ground speed, rate of descent/climb, distance in descent/climb and nautical / statute mile conversion. The flat sapphire crystal AR coated sits above the blue dial. A silver Telemetric scale surrounds large Arabic numerals coated in luminance to mark the hours, at 3 o’clock a framed date window, at 12 o’clock a 30-minute register with a blue hand, at 6 o’clock a 12-hour register with a blue hand and finally at 9 o’clock the continuous second register with a blue hand, each register is silver creating a nice contrast against the blue dial. Steel syringe style hands infilled with luminance complemented by a red-tipped chronograph hand complete with its Breitling anchor counterweight. At 3 o’clock we have the Breitling motif with Breitling Navitimer printed underneath completing this dynamic tool watch. On the reverse, a screw-down case back with an engraved temperature scale from degrees centigrade to Fahrenheit and embossed Breitling Navitimer wings in the centre, inside an automatic Breitling Cal. 13, 25 jewels beating at 28,800 beats per hour, the movement has a base of the ETA 7750 and is used in many of the Breitling ranges. The watch comes fitted on an aftermarket 22mm brown leather strap, the original heavily worn 22mm Breitling brown leather strap with a worn signed buckle is in the box and the watch comes with its Breitling presentation box, Breitling service records and swing tag.

Personal Note

The Brand

Breitling was established in 1884 by Leon Breitling in the Swiss Jura Mountains. In 1915 Gaston Breitling introduced a pusher at 2 o’clock to start, stop and reset the chronograph. Leon later moved the reset to a pusher at 4 o’clock. During 1939 Breitling shipped a huge quantity of chronographs to the Royal Air Force. During the war with Germany surrounding Switzerland Leon and some friends created a makeshift runway near their factory. Planes would use the car's headlights as a guide to land. Once on the ground, they were quickly loaded, taking off before the Germans knew what was going on. They introduced the “Navitimer” a navigation computer in 1952 used to calculate a flight plan. In 1969 they collaborated with Heuer, Burne, and Dubois-Depraz on a top-secret project called Project 99. Together they developed one of the first self-winding chronograph movements. Breitling stands for high precision, outstanding performance, and functionality. During the early days of space exploration, Lt. Commander Scott Carpenter went around the earth three times whilst wearing a modified Navitimer. In 2017 they were sold to CVC Capital Partners, Europe's largest private equity firm.