airman – WatchesAndMoreCO

📅 Friday, August 21, 2026

In 1953, Glycine introduced a pilot’s watch that deliberately broke one of watchmaking’s most familiar rules. Instead of an hour hand circling the dial twice every day, the original Glycine Airman used a true 24-hour display, meaning its hour hand completed just one revolution every 24 hours. Midnight sat at the top of the dial, while noon appeared at the bottom—a layout that could initially look completely backwards to anyone accustomed to an ordinary watch, but made perfect sense to aviators working in 24-hour time.

Even better, the Airman was reportedly born from an actual pilot’s request. During a 1953 flight from Bangkok to Calcutta, Glycine representative Samuel Glur spoke with pilot Ched/Chat Brown, who described the watch international flight crews needed: automatic winding, a calendar, a 24-hour dial and an external rotating 24-hour bezel. Pilots increasingly operated using Greenwich Mean Time, so the proposed arrangement would allow them to keep one reference on the dial and use the bezel to read another time zone. Glycine took the idea back to Switzerland, developed the concept and launched the Airman that same year.

Its solution to dual-time tracking was beautifully simple. The Airman didn’t originally need a separate GMT hand: the same hour hand could be read against both the fixed 24-hour dial and the independently positioned 24-hour bezel. Rotate the bezel by the appropriate offset and the watch could simultaneously indicate another time zone without disturbing the actual timekeeping hands. A small crown around 4 o’clock locked the friction bezel into position, preventing an accidental knock from changing the pilot’s reference time.

That practicality helped turn the Airman into a genuine aviation tool. During the Vietnam War era, it became especially popular among American military aviators, including helicopter pilots, who valued its instant distinction between daytime and nighttime hours and ability to follow a second time zone. Surviving watches and veteran histories have helped cement that association, but the distinction is important: its military reputation wasn’t simply created by advertising—the Airman became famous because servicemen actually bought and wore the watches in the field.

There were other wonderfully clever details. Later vintage Airmen gained an extended “tail” on the hour hand that helped translate the unusual 24-hour display into familiar 12-hour time at a glance. The watch also developed a hacking mechanism for more precise synchronization—exactly the sort of practical feature that mattered to aviation and military users. What looked eccentric to civilians was actually a dial engineered around the way its intended users thought about time.

💡 Did You Know?

At 12 noon, the original Airman’s hour hand points straight down at 6 o’clock rather than straight up at 12. That’s not a mistake: because the hour hand takes an entire day to complete one revolution, the top of the dial represents midnight and the bottom represents midday. For someone wearing a normal 12-hour watch their entire life, reading an original Airman for the first time can genuinely make you question what time it is.

Category: Military Watches

Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to keep these watch facts accurate, but the world of horology is full of myths, disputed stories, and fascinating trivia. Consider these facts a starting point for discovery rather than the final word. If you have corrections or additional insights, let us know—we’re always happy to keep the record ticking in the right direction.

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