The latest addition to my collection of military dive watches is a British military dive watch made by a little-known company named Precista. It is water resistant to 300 meters, has screw down crown, and is equipped with a proper 20mm black NATO band.
The heavy steel case, measuring 48mm from lug to lug, has crown protecting shoulders that is pretty much identical in design to those that first appeared in Vietnam-era Benrus military dive watches. Compared to Benrus dive watch, this one however has a thicker unidirectional bezel for easy operation with gloves and has 0-59 minute markers that is more appropriate for underwater missions. A fellow Timezoner have written to me that Marathon Watch Co. based in Ontario, Canada had made these cases for Precista in their Swiss based factory.
The perfect black dial, signed Precista, has tritium coated hour markers with a circle "T" to denote the presence of tritium as required by British military specification. There's also a tiny "SWISS MADE" mark at the six o'clock position on the dial.
The back of the case is inscribed with a British arrow mark and marked as follows:
6645-99
757-3314
269/93If I am correct, the last line means that the watch was issued in 1993 and is numbered 269 of that year. If there is anyone who know what the other codes mean, please let me know.
Now, to the movement. The original movement used in the watch was quartz but it was not running when I purchased it. Rather than replacing the battery, though, I, being a quartz hater, decided to ask my watchmaker to replace it with an automatic movement. He had performed such transplant before on my other quartz watches, so I was confident he'd do the right job. Well, he did. After waiting for two painful weeks, the watch is now equipped with a hacking 23 jewels ETA movement. The second hand sweeps! I can now sleep with the fully charged tritium watch by my side and hear it go tika, tika, tika, tika...
I hope you enjoy the scans. More military watch reviews to come later...
