Longines Weems, 1940s

Dealer description — Analog/Shift

In this age of global travel, it’s easy to take for granted the sight of contrails snaking across the sky. And yet in the early years of the last century, airplanes were a new invention. But thanks to the contributions of aviation pioneers like Alberto Santos-Dumont, whose achievements in aviation are matched by those in watches, flying became more commonplace. Since aeronautical navigation posed its own particular challenges, there arose a need for specialized tools and timekeepers. Due to the distance traveled at higher speeds, any error in navigation—even if it was as little as 30 seconds off—would put the pilot off course by as much as seven miles. Therefore, just as John Harrison did for sailors in the Age of Sail with his marine chronometer, so too did Captain Philip Van Horn Weems do for pilots. A native of land-locked Tennessee, Weems must have felt the call of the sea from an early age. At just nineteen, he enrolled at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. There he developed an aptitude for celestial navigation, and during his tenure with the Aircraft Squadron Battle Fleet, he encountered airplanes for the the first time. Despite the advances undertaken in the century between the development of John Harrison’s marine chronometer and the time Captain Weems joined the Navy, the tools and charts used in navigation were just as primitive. For example, Weems—and many of his fellow navigators—had been trained to use the American Nautical Almanac. This publication used tables, first published in 1757, that called for navigators to take measurements using observations that were so complicated that few navigators could even do them. First introduced in 1929, the Longines Weems Second-Setting Watch was the preferred timekeeping tool for navigators and pilots until the introduction of Charles Lindbergh’s version, the Hour Angle, in 1931. The Second-Setting watch allows pilots to synchronize their watches with radio signals without stopping the movement. The brilliant innovation was instrumental in the history of aviator watches. This particular iteration is one of the most valuable, executed in 14K yellow gold. Dating to the 1940s, the beautiful 28mm piece is powered by Longines manual-winding Calibre 10L and ready for a history lover's collection!