While that sounds simple enough, the Hour Angle is a complicated timepiece that few know how to use. The result was the Hour Angle Watch, which essentially helped the wearer figure out where they were. In 1931, Longines and Charles Lindbergh took the design of the Weems Second-Setting watch and built upon it to cater to RAF pilots even further. The idea is that the wearer can rotate the bezel to coordinate with beeps transmitted on their radio for each passing second, thus allowing the wearer to synch with an outside source and determine their margin of error. It featured a 60-second scale on the bezel. It was developed by Captain Philip Van Horn Weems in the 1920s using Longines’ rotating bezel technology. One miscalculation would send the pilots off course by several miles, and that’s where the Longines Weems Second-Setting watch comes into play. Techniques used for navigation before World War II were primitive. In total, Longines produced as many as 8,000 military-issued timepieces for the British during the war, some of which are the inspiration for the Heritage Military collection.
They are credited with helping trail-blaze the technology used in many pilots’ watches during WWII, including the Weems Second-Setting watch and Hour Angle (more on those watches below). Longines has a long history of making military watches, even becoming something of an innovator in that realm. Many of these innovative timepieces were the foundation for the watches produced by Longines for military use. Their portfolio is impressive, to say the least, with such accomplishments as the world’s first chronograph wristwatch in 1913, the first wristwatch outfitted with a rotating bezel released in 1931, and the first chronograph equipped with a flyback function in 1936, just to name a few.
Longines is one of the oldest watch manufacturers in the Swiss watchmaking industry, with roots dating back to the 1830s.
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