A watch for the aviation hero “Saint-Ex”

Pilot’s Watch Chrono-Automatic
Edition Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Saint-Exupéry, pilot

This special edition of a pilot’s watch from IWC builds a bridge to one of the pioneers of aviation. More precisely, to the pioneer who, as both author and pilot, described the great human adventure of flying 75 years ago.

His name: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

who later became famous throughout the world for his “Little Prince”. But, in 1931, he created a literary memorial to the difficult early days of the airmail service in South America and to all his fellow aviators of the time. A more perceptive story about the struggle of mechanized man against the forces of nature and the relentless passage of time has not been put down on paper since his novel “Night Flight”, which describes the loss of an aircraft from Patagonia en route for Buenos Aires.

IWC Schaffhausen, a specialist in the construction of professional pilot’s watches since the mid-1930s, has taken this occasion to create a limited edition of its new Pilot’s Watch Chronograph with an automatic winding system: The Pilot’s Watch Chrono-Automatic Edition Antoine de Saint Exupéry. This professional timepiece with stop function and aggregate time recording up to 12 hours, a new 42 mm diameter case, classic protection of the movement against the effects of magnetic fields up to 24,000 A/m provided by an inner case made of soft iron, water-resistance to 60 m, a coated anti reflective and convex sapphire glass, screw-in crown and tobacco-coloured dial, which has not been offered previously by IWC in a pilot’s watch.

	Antimagnetic

The two inner dials for the minutes counter and the hours counter have a silver finish and are clearly larger than the small seconds hand. The circle of the hours counter is decorated with the initial “A” taken from the signature of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The case back is engraved with the likeness of the author and pilot and shows “Saint-Ex” in his flying gear on the airfield at the Borgo airbase on Corsica. This famous photograph was taken by LIFE photographer John Phillips just a few days before Saint-Exupéry’s last, fatal mission on 31 July 1944.

Edition limited by history

The horological tribute by IWC to “Night Flight” takes the year of publication, 1931, as the basis for a limited edition comprised of 1,630 examples in stainless steel, 250 in rose gold and 50 in white gold. This makes 1,930 watches in total. The missing digit from the publication date of 1931 will be a single Special Edition watch in platinum. This is not for sale, however, and it will be auctioned for charity together with a copy of the first edition of “Vol de nuit”in French and a handwritten page from the original manuscript plus a drawing by the author.

Every one of the 1,931 watches will be accompanied by a copy of the novel “Night Flight”.

This marks the start of a three-year trilogy in honour of Saint-Exupéry’s literary tributes to aviation. “Southern Mail” and “The Aviator” were also strongly inspired by his life as a professional pilot and will accompany the corresponding watches in the following years.

A further joint activity between IWC Schaffhausen and the Société Civile pour l’Œuvre et la Mémoire d’Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is an exhibition with the theme of time, aviation and pilot’s watches. The exhibition will open on 29 June 2006 and cover an area of 1,000 m2 at the Air and Space Museum at Le Bourget near Paris. Its historic content is a valuable addition to what is already regarded throughout the world as one of the oldest and best-endowed museums of aeronautics.

“I shall look as if I were dead;
and that will not be true ...,”

says the little prince to his friend, the pilot, before he leaves planet earth once again. This sentence from the best-known book by the great French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, can be read in retrospect as a premonition: “Saint-Ex” climbed into the cockpit of his Lockheed P38 Lightning on the military airfield at Borgo in Corsica for a reconnaissance flight over occupied France on 31July 1944. He failed to return. It was a flight into immortality.

A life devoted to aviation

Saint-Exupéry, weiter

“You must first learn to see and then write,” he had declared many years before. He himself learned to see during the period of his life spent in the pilot’s seat. The life history of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who was born in Lyon in 1900, runs practically parallel to the birth and rise of modern aviation. At the age of 21, he enlisted in the 2nd Fighter Wing at Strasbourg and took additional flying lessons at his own expense.

He later became a reserve lieutenant in the 33rd Fighter Wing at Le Bourget near Paris, and he put his aeronautical thoughts down on paper for the first time in 1926 in his short story “The Aviator”, which forms the core of his novel “Southern Mail”. In the same year, he found employment with the Latécoère Aviation Company, where he organised the Toulouse–Dakar–Casablanca airmail service. In 1929, he was appointed director of the Aéroposta Argentina, an airmail company in Buenos Aires.

Saint-Exupéry was involved in building up the airmail service there until 1931, and he brought the novel “Night Flight” (Vol de nuit) with him on his return. The increasing speed of the steamships and railways, which were attempting to make up for aircraft’s time advantage by adding night routes, forced the aviation companies into this previously unimaginable adventure, in which the forces of nature, technical problems and inadequate communication links frequently gained the upper hand over what was feasible according to plan. “Night Flight” describes the desperate struggle of a mail plane against an insurmountable thunderstorm – and against the flight time that was limited by a shortage of fuel.

The novel ends in a bitter defeat, yet it could not stop the ambitious project for the inception of night flights and its associated progress. The work, which deals with Saint-Exupéry’s own experiences, creates a literary memorial to the pioneers of aviation. However, above all, it put the central theme of flying under limited time constraints into focus in a unique fashion.

Tribute to a great man

The fitting idea of IWC is to mark the 75th anniversary of the novel with a Pilot’s Watch Special Edition Antoine de Saint Exupéry. A copy of the book will also accompany every example of the watch, which is limited to 1,931pieces. The limited edition IWC Pilot’s Chronograph bears the famous image of “Saint-Ex” in flying gear as an engraving on the back of the case. This was taken by his friend and photographer, John Phillips, just a few days before the 44-year-old author and pilot, who had longsince exceeded the age for such operations, took off on his last flight. Parts of the wreckage have since been found, after a search that lasted for many years.

But, “Saint-Ex” lives on.