It’s not often that something you review ends up making a deep, personal connection, but… this review of the Avi-8 Bell X-1 watch is one of those times. Let’s start by playing a game of six degrees of separation. By the rules of that game, I’m only separated from Chuck Yeager by one person.
Chuck Yeager — Major General Charles E Yeager, US Air Force, Retired to give him his full and correct title — is, of course, famous as the first pilot to break the sound barrier. Well, the first pilot to break the sound barrier and live to tell the tale, at any rate (although there are still tales told of another US Air Force pilot who broke the barrier a couple of days before Yeager, but that’s the stuff of apocrypha…).
Yeager, a decorated Second World War hero, had flown a North American Aviation P-51 Mustang on escort missions, shadowing heavy bombers flying from bases in East Anglia on perilous operations deep over Germany. An ace — someone who’d shot down more than five enemy aircraft — Yeager was himself shot down, bailed out, and then spent several months on the run, living and working with the French Resistance along the way. Making his way back to the UK, he returned to operations and continued to fly and fight in the wartime skies above Europe.
You’d think that would be enough living for one life, but not for Yeager. Rated as one of the best pilots in the US Army Air Force (it only became an independent US Air Force later), Yeager was sent to the high and dusty deserts of east California, to Edwards Air Force Base, the home of the test pilot.
This was the most dangerous task that anyone could take on — flying unproven, experimental aircraft just hard enough. Fly them any softer and you’d not know what they were capable of. Fly just a fraction harder, and you’d likely end up a pile of smoking wreckage on the desert floor.
Yeager took to all this like a duck to a millpond and strapped himself into the tiny, bright orange, bullet-shaped Bell Aircraft X-1, a rocket-powered research ‘plane, designed to be the first to break the sound barrier.
Yeager, ever gung-ho, actually broke a rib falling from a horse the night before his historic supersonic flight, but got an off-base doctor to tape him up and give him painkillers, using a sawn-off piece of broom handle to give him the extra leverage to close the hatch on the X-1. Dropped at high altitude from a B-50 four-engined bomber, Yeager punched open all four rocket chambers on the X-1, and soared up, up, away, and past Mach One — the speed of sound.
And yes, my friend — Jack, a pilot and native Californian himself — knew Yeager, and even went fishing with him a couple of times. Apparently, he was nowhere near as handsome as actor Sam Shepherd, who portrayed Yeager in the 1983 film, The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe’s epochal book of the same name, which burnished Yeager’s legend as the greatest stick-and-rudder man of them all.
I devoured Yeager’s own autobiography as a child and, sure, it’s probably at least 50 per cent bullshit, but it’s damned entertaining bullshit all the same. Read in it concert with Tom Wolfe’s book and you’ll still be left in awe at all that Yeager, and the other pilots he flew with, accomplished.
None of this is why I feel an oddly personal connection to this, the Avi-8 Bell X-1 “Glamorous Glennis” Automatic Limited Edition watch
. It’s the latest of Avi-8’s highly-regarded series of aviation-inspired watches, which have taken inspiration from flying subjects as diverse as the Hawker Hurricane, the Spitfire, the Dambusters, the ‘Tuskegee Airmen’, and the Capcom video game ‘1942.’
I’ll come back to the personal connection in a minute, but first, let’s consider the watch, because it’s lovely.
It uses a substantial 41mm case made, in this version, of bright stainless steel (brass and PVD black finishes are also available). This model, called the ‘Buffalo Blue’ version, is the more subtle model, with a three-layered blue dial. Other versions mix in more bright orange or green, but this one complements the blue with little bright orange highlights (mimicking the colour of Yeager’s X-1) and delightful details, such as the Bell Aircraft logo at the eight-o’clock position and a tiny, orange X-1 silhouette on the sweep second hand. The main hands are large, clear sword-style items, and there are oversized 0 and 6 markers at the top and bottom of the dial. Five-minute and second interval markers are on the smallest and lowest-set section of the dial, and everything gets a bright blue lume for reading at night.
The watch comes fitted with a stainless steel strap with a folding clasp, and there’s a spare blue-and-orange leather strap, with a tang-type fitting, for swapping out when you feel like it. Peer into the gorgeous bright orange presentation box, and there are also collector’s cards, a neat little user manual, and, best of all, a teeny, tiny model of the Bell X-1 complete with a chunky stand so that it sits neatly on your desk.
The Glamorous Glennis — the name Yeager gave his X-1 ‘plane, after his gorgeous wife — uses a Seiko NH35 automatic movement, which is a tough, reliable, and accurate movement. You can manually wind it, or, of course, it winds itself from the movements of your arm. Turn the watch around and peer into the see-through caseback, and there’s another delightful detail — the movement’s bright orange rotor, the weight that does the winding, has been designed to look like the Bell X-1’s rocket motor housing. There’s also scratch-resistant sapphire glass, a date window at the three o’clock position, and the watch is water-resistant to 50 metres.
The quality of Avi-8’s work is really very good, especially when you remember that this is a watch that costs a very reasonable £424 (if you can get one — at the time of writing, all 600 were perilously close to selling out). The metal strap feels a little rough-edged to your fingers in places, but it wears very comfortably on the wrist. Although quite a large watch, at 41mm across, it wears a little smaller, thanks to the chamfering that Avi-8 has done on the edges of the case, as well as the tapering of the strap. Certainly, it looks and feels sleeker and more comfortable than many other similarly-sized watches.
What was the deep personal connection? Well, in spite of my Yeager fanboy status (later political opinions notwithstanding), it’s nothing to do with him, and nothing to do with The Right Stuff, even given my general obsession with all things aviation.
No, the connection between this watch and me is much simpler and more direct, with no need for working out degrees of separation. Yeager took his historic, supersonic, broken-rib flight on October 14th, 1947. An auspicious day for many reasons. It was Roger Moore’s 20th birthday, for instance.
Of far greater import to me, 14th October 1947 was the day my father was born. My dad passed away two years ago this month, one of the many who were taken from us by the scourge that was Covid. But every time I strap this watch on, my thoughts fly straight past Yeager, the speed of sound, Tom Wolfe, and the Bell X-1. It mostly makes me think of my dad. That’s a connection that money can’t buy.
