Pubbie wrote:MKTheVintageBloke wrote:The only actually palatable (to me, at least) watch from the current Pilot collection is the 40mm time-only one in steel.
Ah, but per the current zeitgeist that one (at only 40mm across 47mm lug to lug and 12.9mm thick, i.e. as big asa 5-digit Submariner) is for women, per Zenith. Generously-ankled Swiss women with chunkier limbs than me, presumably

Bleriot's watch was a bit small by today's standards. I bet he felt really ghey, crossing the Channel like that:

I thought they quit calling it a ladies’ watch, but then again, I’ll need to check if they did.
Ghey or not, Bleriot couldn’t have worn this watch during his flight. Sure, he could have owned this particular watch, but unless he had a DeLorean-based time machine and jumped to 1928 to buy it, and then back in order to wear it on his flight across the Channel, no, he didn’t wear it then.
This dial font was not around until mid to late 1920s, and the watch itself is one of the countless ”1928 pattern” pilot watches. The marketing story around it was rather meticulously constructed- nowhere does Zenith imply, that this particular piece was worn by Bleriot on his flight across the Channel. The story got obviously disfigured by the blogs regurgitating the marketing claptrap, which blogs didn’t have a clue about how to paraphrase a story correctly.