BREITLING
Navitimer
CURSIVE B

An exceptionally rare example of an early vintage Navitimer with gold applied ‘Cursive B’ logo.
Coming from the original family and grandson (Mr S) who inherited this watch from his grandfather, an airline pilot during the period 1952-1978 at TAROM airlines. He flew over especially from Romania to tell us the story of the watch and his grandfather, he himself now a private pilot after his father also flew for TAROM, the family now in their third generation of aviators.

The acquisition of this Navitimer has also helped to inform us more on the potential reason for the production of the ‘Cursive B’ dials, with our other ‘Cursive B’ 806 also coming from a Romanian pilots family.
Mr S told us how the Romanian communist goverment bought in 1956 a series of about 20 watches from Breitling and offered them as a reward to the most loyal pilots. His grandfather and others being drafted from commercial airlines to fly in the Air Force. He used it for in flight calculations, while piloting soviet airplanes Lisunov LI-2, Ilyusin IL-14 and IL-18.
With Breitling only producing the AOPA dial 806 for the US market at this time they would need a different logo on the dial for the Romanian Pilots. Is it possible due to the unbelievably low numbers of ‘Cursive B’ Navitimers that we see only from 1956 that they were only produced for the batch of 20 purchased by the Romanian government in 1956…

What we previously knew… The very first pre 806 Navitimer’s were produced for the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) during 1954/55 and featured their Wings logo on the dial with no reference to the manufacturer Breitling.
For the first time in late 1955 and realizing the commercial potential of the now iconic Navitimer Breitling began to experiment with their own logo to feature on the dial, this began with the gold applied ‘Cursive B’ and Breitling Geneve text. Whilst used on other models such as the Chronomat 808 during the 1950s the logo was very quickly changed and redeveloped for the Navitimer. Making for an extremely short production run of the first 806 references with this dial.
With only a handful known to exist this is probably one of the rarest of all Navitimers with what was in our opinion the most aesthetically pleasing design of an early Breitling logo, creating a clean and well proportioned dial layout with the quality of the gold application.
A highly sought after piece in original and correct condition that almost never comes to market…

Case
Beaded Bezel
Stainless steel
41 mm diameter
Signed Breitling Watch Corp case back
Signed Breitling crown
Rotating inner Slide Rule bezel with khaki patina fading

Movement
Venus 178 calibre mechanical manual winding
Signed Breitling Watch Corp curved around the bridge
as is common for very early Navitimers
BOW import code

Dial
’Cursive B’
Rare Gold Applied B logo
Matte black dial with Radium lume arabic markers
Original steel hands (now skeleton after lume loss)
The dial has taken on an overall patina with khaki tones to the lume.
(The mark at the 1 marker is where a dial foot has pushed very slightly upwards from underneath and affected the surface of the dial, not very noticeable to the normal eye)

Strap
New JPM vintage style two stitch khaki leather strap and steel pin buckle

Complete with
Breitling Archive Extract Certificate
Confirming watch details and manufacture
Dating to 1956
Case number - 87xxxx

In overall very good condition with wear marks to the case, bezel and case back.

This particularly rare Navitimer is made even more appealing due to its original and correct condition. Featuring the key signatures of a very early Navitimer such as the Breitling Watch Corp (BOW) markings.

Dating to 1956
Serial number - 87xxxx

A beautiful piece of aviation history!

S O L D