Rare Dodane Type 21 French military Pilot Chronograph with F
Up for sale is a nice condition original Dodane Type 21 flyback chronograph with flyback function supplied to the French Air Force pilots in the 60's coming from my military watches collection. Heavy stainless steel case, screwed-in case back engraved with the watch number, and FG with dates standing for Fin de Garantie meaning end of the serviced period. Diameter 38 mm and thickness 12 mm. Nice first edition original round pushers and large unsigned crown. Large steel bidirectional revolving bezel with engraved graduation. Nicely aged matt black dial signed Dodane with a large Type rubis (jewells) incabloc, with painted luminous Arabic numerals, outer minute/seconds track, subsidiary seconds and 30-minute register dials. Nicely aged original baton hands matching with indexes. Acrylic christal. The movement is a Calibre Valjoux 720 flyback, 17 jewells incabloc. The watch works fine but has not been serviced recently. It comes with a grey 20mm brand new NATO strap. I ship to all the world. See my profile and bid with confidence. The name “Type 20” refers to a specification issued in by the French Ministry of Defense describing a pilot's wristwatch as part of the standard equipment. The requirements for a “Type 20” chronograph include: * a black dial, with two registers at 3 and 9 o'clock able to count up to minutes; * a diameter of approximately 38 mm; * the flyback function; * a watch accurate to at least 8 seconds per day; * a power reserve of at least 35 hours; * the ability to operate satisfactorily at least 300 times. Four different companies supplied the Type 20 chronographs to the armed forces: first Vixa/Hanhart and Breguet starting in and subsequently Auricoste and Dodane (which also sold watches under other names as Airain and Chronofix) till the 60s. Dodane was founded by Alphonse Dodane in in Besançon. They were a long-time specialist in aviation timepieces, having constructed them for the US Army and Signal Corps since World War I. Besides manufacturing watches for the French armed forces, Dodane was a key part of their maintenance and service organization, and did general overhauls on all Type 20 and Type 21 watches in production. Dodane constructed Type 20 and Type 21 chronographs between and . (A small series was issued to NATO in the s.) Total production was around pieces. Dodane used different movements at different times. They started with the Valjoux cal. 222 and later change to the Valjoux cal. 720 with the switch to the Type 21.