I was going to write a clever review of the Timor Heritage Field in the form of a “war letter” written from the WWII trenches, or by some army supply officer who managed the wartime distribution of the original Dirty Dozen timepieces. But I don’t have a good enough imagination and the research would’ve taken months, plus it may have belittled the real context and emotions that such an officer or soldier would have experienced in a chaotic and upheaving time in history.

So, I’m going to tell it straight, even though I avoid most kickstarter watches, this looked like a GREAT little homage to the original military field watch so I hit the “back this project” button. I say “little” as 36.5mm seems small by today’s prodigious sizes, but this was of course ‘de rigueur’ for the 1940s when the 2nd World War was engulfing Europe and beyond.

Thankfully small sizes seem to be making a comeback now, which is great news for those of us who prefer smaller watches, or indeed for those who aren’t comfortable wearing anything over about 38mm because they have smaller wrists. Most watch collectors are at least familiar with the term “Dirty Dozen”, a term bestowed upon a group of 12 Swiss brands (13 originally) who were asked to supply watches to the British Ministry of Defence for the army at the height of WWII.

I won’t dive too deeply into the history, suffice to say that 12 brands sold their field watch to the British Ministry of Defence in varying quantities from 1000 pieces (estimated, from Grana – which is why original ones of these are very rare) to 25,000 from Omega (Omega archives). Timor supplied an estimated 13000 pieces from their manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Their designated “letter code” was “K”, which was inscribed on the caseback of all of the Timor field watch batch, along with W.W.W (Watch, Wrist, Waterproof – to fit in to the British Army equipment nomenclature breakdown). The watches were also inscribed with the military “Upward Arrow” symbol and the serial number.

All of this information has been tastefully transferred to the back of the re-edition of the Timor Heritage Field watch, along with the text “Swiss Made”, a Sapphire Crystal rated to 5 atm and other features. This watch is stainless steel with a very fine shot-blasted surface that completes the field watch look perfectly. The crystal is about the ONLY thing I don’t LOVE, being almost flush with the flat bezel (raised 0.4mm at edge) and rising to about 1mm higher in the centre. More “dome” would have been great I think, but in fairness the photos available online of the original pieces do seem to have pretty flat crystals.

Two nato-style straps are supplied with the Timor Heritage Field watch. The first is an awesomely cool and comfy, simple sand-colored heritage style cotton and the other a black seatbelt, which is also nice. It’s a solid homage to a true field watch built to tell the time accurately and resist the ravages of war and do not much else. The manual movements in the original watches ranged from the nicely finished IWC to fairly basic engines in the (now) lower-end brands. They all had the swiss pride of workmanship and nearly all of them featured at least geneva waves, so still nice movements by today’s mass-produced standards. I wasn’t surprised to find the Selitta SW216 movement in the modern Timor Heritage Field watch, a nice basic workhorse calibre with simple frosted finish.

The watch is also available as an automatic with a Sellita SW260. Both reliable options, although not regulated to chronometer level as the original specs required. This watch has an 18mm lug width, nicely proportioned, and the dial is very close to the original featuring a simple matte black face with a particular numeral font and sand-colored ‘fauxtina’. I’m normally not a fan of this but here, definitely Yes! Take or leave the whole Timor history thing, but you have to appreciate this Timor Heritage Field watch for what it is, a fine tribute to one of the original beaters !