THE ESSENTIALS

MAKE: SMITHS
MODEL: W10
YEAR: 1969
CASE DIAMETER: 35mm
CASE MATERIAL: STAINLESS STEEL
BRACELET MATERIAL: TEXTILE NATO
MOVEMENT: MANUAL WIND

By the late 1960s, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) needed a replacement for its ageing Omega and Lemania-issued watches. They turned to Smiths, a British watch and clock maker based in Cheltenham. True to form, Smiths chose to do things the hard way. Rather than using pre-assembled movements from suppliers such as Lemania or Valjoux, they developed their own calibre: the 60466E—a simple, robust manual-wind movement with hacking seconds.

The end of the W10 in 1970 coincided with a perfect storm: the onset of the Quartz Crisis and shifting government priorities. As the British government looked to cut costs, the contract was awarded to Hamilton, which used Swiss-made movements housed in a similar tonneau-shaped case. Unable to compete with the influx of cheap, highly accurate quartz watches from the East, Smiths shuttered its watchmaking division in 1979—cementing the W10 as the final truly British mechanical military watch.

This example is among the finest we’ve seen. Fitted on a mint, period-correct NATO strap, it appears to have seen very little wrist time over the past 55 years. The dial is near perfect, with only the faintest oxidation on one of the hands, barely visible to the naked eye. A few small marks are present on the crystal.

The movement has been serviced and is running superbly at +6 s/day, with an amplitude of 240° and a beat error of 0.1 ms.

A fantastic example of British watchmaking—for roughly the same price as a modern quartz TAG Heuer Formula 1!