THE ESSENTIALS

MAKE: HEUER
MODEL: 1550SG
YEAR: c1976
BOX/PAPERS: NO/NO
CASE DIAMETER: 43mm
CASE MATERIAL: STAINLESS STEEL
BRACELET MATERIAL: TEXTILE
MOVEMENT: MANUAL WIND

The Heuer Bundeswehr has to be one of the most iconic military issued watches of the 20th Century. Debuting in the late 60's the 1550 was issued to pilots and other service personnel in the West German Federal Defence Force. The watches came supplied with the now famous bund strap that eventually made its way onto style icons like Paul Newman, Nina Rindt and Miles Davis. These straps were supplied for a reason though. In this era of fighter jets, the cockpit temps could change by 40 to 50 degrees, going from a normal ground temp to below freezing and above 35 degrees during a single flight. This made wearing the watch very uncomfortable at times, hence the bund strap.

The watch had some helpful features too, hacking seconds which enables the user to  synchronise the watch with a secondary timepiece or to be used as reference signal. It also came with a flyback feature, thanks to the Valjoux 230 movement. It was important as its instant reset and continuation allowed for the accurate measuring of consecutive events, meaning the stopwatch didn’t have to be stopped each time. Very handy when flying a Starfighter at nearly Mach 2. 

There are four dial variations found on this reference, this one being the small t no 3H type. The dial itself is immaculate as are the hands. There is some oxidisation present behind the back of the pushers and around the screw heads. The caseback engravings are all present and crisp. 

The movement came to us in great health, after several days on test its running around +6 s/d, 265 amps with a beat error of 0.4. 

For such a handsome watch with military pedigree and a mega movement to boot, these really are superb value for money.