Elgin WWII U.S. Army A-11 Military Wristwatch Black Dial Elgin 539 Movement circa 1944

Record summary

Catalogued by LiveAuctioneers auction archive (lot Item 222759299), this is a wristwatch by Elgin, made in United States, dated c. 1944. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Wristwatches collection. The record is illustrated with 4 photographs.

Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.

Catalogue description

Atlas type guide

Military, pilot and travel watches

The wristwatch owes much of its adoption by men to warfare and aviation. Wristlets — small pocket watches soldered with lugs and worn on a strap — were used in colonial campaigns and became standard equipment in the First World War, with protective grilles over the crystal ('shrapnel guards'). Louis Cartier's Santos (1904), designed for the aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, is often cited as an early purpose-made pilot's watch.

In the Second World War governments specified watches in detail: the German B-Uhr observation watches, the American A-11, and the British 'W.W.W.' (the 'Dirty Dozen' set of 1945). After the war, jet travel brought GMT and world-time watches, which show two or more time zones at once — Louis Cottier's world-time mechanism and the Rolex GMT-Master (1955) are examples.

General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.