HANHART 417 ES

Hanhart 417 ES: the first chronograph of the German Air Force

In the middle of the fifties the newly raised Bundeswehr faced a mundane question: where do you get pilot chronographs? The tradition for them lay in Glashütte, and Glashütte lay behind the Iron Curtain. So the contract went to the Black Forest. What Hanhart built between 1953 and 1962 was the 417 ES, and it became the first watch the German Air Force issued to its pilots. There were around a thousand of them. Anyone who finds an original today pays five figures. The suffix ES stands for nothing mysterious, only for Edelstahl, stainless steel.

Why the watch looks the way it does

The Bundeswehr specification had three points: robust, reliable, legible. Every decision visibly follows from them. Two subdials instead of three, so the face stays calm. A fluted bezel that turns with cold fingers and whose red marker you set as a reminder. Minute and second hands bent down at the tip so they sit closer to the scale and you do not misread a minute at an angle. None of it is decoration.

Hanhart built the reissue in 42 mm only for a long time and has since returned to the original size of 39 mm. Both now stand side by side, and both wear smaller than the number suggests.

The versions and their names

Some of the model names do not come from Hanhart at all but from the collector scene that coined them over decades. Panda and Reverse Panda refer to the contrast layout: a light dial with dark counters, or the other way round. The term appeared in the sixties because the two dark circles on a light ground recall a panda's face.

Moby Dick is the white version with blued hands. In the fifties it existed only occasionally, intended for civilian users without military requirements. Because it stayed so rare, collectors named it after Melville's white whale. Hanhart later adopted the name.

Flyback means a single press sets the running time back to zero and starts it again at once. In air navigation, where legs were strung together without a pause, that was not a comfort but a necessity. The Heritage Flyback combines this movement with a red pusher in ceramic, which carries its colour in the material rather than in a coat of lacquer.

415 ES is the sister from motor sport: instead of the pilot's bezel it has a tachymeter scale for reading average speeds. And the 417 TI Desert Pilot is the only one in titanium, limited to 200 pieces per size.