Original Item: Only One Available. This is a very good condition genuine WW2 issue 1945 dated Waltham A-11 military watch. This example has been fully cleaned, tested and does run. The watch was manufactured in 1945 for Pilots and Navigators in the US Army Air Force (USAAF). Watch case is 30mm and made of high quality stainless steel. It features a Waltham hand-winding movement, and is a "hacking" version that stops the movement while the time is being set, typical for early war examples. The band is a period authentic original.

Marking on the case reads:

A.F. U.S. ARMY
TYPE A-11
SPEC.NO.94-27834-C
SERIAL NO.A.F. 45-43943
MFR'S PART NO. 10616
ORD. NO.W-33-038ac-8424
WALTHAM

Watch Specifications:
Brand: WALTHAM
Case Size: 30mm
Lug Width: 16mm
Movement: Waltham 6/0 PREMIER 15-jewel (Hand-winding)
Model: A-11
Watch Shape: Round
Serial Number: 45-43943
Case Color: Silver
Year of Manufacture: 1945
Face Color: Black
Country of Manufacture: USA

There is no warranty for this watch and returns for a non-working watch will not be honored.

Please note all watches are wound and tested then recorded on video before shipment. We are not in the watch repair business- ALL SALES ARE FINAL.

History of the A-11 Watch

When World War Two-era watches are mentioned, many people think immediately of high-quality German-made B-Uhren and chronographs. But it was a comparatively small, unobtrusive, mass-produced American watch, the so-called "A-11", which has a claim to fame of having made a crucial contribution to the Allied victory in that war.
This is the watch that kept the United States Army Air Forces as well as the Navy and Marine Corps flying, and - to a lesser extent - the RAF (under the 6B/234 designation), the RCAF and even the Soviet Air Force. The A-11 was there when Germany was bombed and the World War II in Europe was turned around, when the war in the Pacific ended in the first - and so far only - nuclear explosions in anger occurred, and when the monumental effort of the Berlin Airlift turned erstwhile foes into friends and allies, and handed the Soviets the first resounding defeat of the incipient Cold War which their political system, and their empire, would not survive. The A-11 was superseded at some time - usually the Korean War is given as a time reference - by the all-lumed A-17.

The A-11 was not so much a specific watch model but a production standard used by a number of watch companies (Elgin, Bulova, and Waltham), with numerous case and minor dial/hands variations (there were even silver-cased watches, as nickel was considered a metal more critical for the war effort!), though some design aspects were largely universal: Black dial; white hands; a handwound hacking movement with center second hand, hour numbers from 1 to 12; a second scale with smaller minute/second numbers in increments of 10 on the outside edge of the dial; and same-type minute and hour hands. Several A-11 versions featured a characteristic coin-edge bezel and caseback. Some were dustproof, others were waterproof.

There are several design elements of the A-11 which are still present in today's US military issued watches, viz. the full 1-12 numerals, and the preference for the same type of minute and hour hands. Even the basic accuracy requirement for the A-11 (30 seconds per day at room temperature) is still the same for today's American mechanical military watches!

Elgin, Waltham and Bulova all made the A-11 from 1941 on. Hamilton, then the leading US watch maker, made a similar type of watch which was not subsumed under the A-11 designation, though the watches were very similar. Lumed versions of the A-11 were produced as well, as were occasional white-dialed versions. The USAAFs version was marked with the U.S. Army specification no. 94-27834, or its subsequent iterations 94-27834-A (2 November 1942) and 94-27834-B (22 February 1943). The U.S. Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics specified lumed dial and hands for their version of the A-11; the watches were marked FSSC 88-W-800.

While previous to the A-11 designation some issued watches were made with white dials, this changed after 1942 to the black dial version that is better known. Any white-dialed watch would be issued prior to the A-11 specification, most likely in 1941.
There were at least three A-11 versions made. As mentioned, Elgin, Waltham and Bulova made various incarnations of this classic watch, but the "official" version is the Elgin, as documented in TM 9-1575 from the War Department. This is the ordnance maintenance guide for wrist watches, pocket watches, stop watches and clocks, from 6 April 1945.

The A-11 movement is an 8/0 size: what does this mean? It's in terms of the Lancashire gauge, and refers to a caliber that is 23.71mm in diameter, and the slash refers to a watch that is smaller than a 0 gauge watch movement: in this case, a watch that is 28/30th of an inch in size (hence the 8/0 reference). This isn't the first Elgin military watch: the others were 7 and 15 jewel movements with sub-second dials, and there were at least one "canteen" style watch made with the same 16-jewel movement for the US Bureau of Naval Shipping that were amongst the first diver watches out there.

Now here's a point which is somewhat unclear. The 8/0 movement that goes into the A-11 was to be a 16-jewel movement, but where did they get that number? Further, what about all those A-11s out there with 15-jewel movements?

According to the TM 9-1575, it is a 16-jewel movement. The other A-11s with 15-jewels, though, aren't necessarily fakes: it just that they may have had a field-expedient replacement (i.e. the movement was replaced by a 15-jewel engraved movement that has had the pinion bridge added to that) or there may be some other, undetermined reason. But what's the key attributes of the movement that make it unique?