Review: IWC Pilot “Tribute To 3705” Replica
Located on the border between Switzerland and Germany, in the city of Schaffhausen, the International Watch Company has been producing dedicated pilot watches for nearly a century, the latest being the “Tribute to 3705” pilot watch. This is how it never would have happened were it not for three passionate rowers, an airport in Croydon, England and a desperate attempt to avoid insolvency. It's a topic that comes up very often in conversations about Swiss watches, but not one that you would expect to replica watches see here: diving. It is a well-told yarn that the affordability and practicality of the newly invented SCUBA apparatus gave 1950s watchmakers something new to aspire to. Not only have professionals braved the depths, but hobbyists have also often considered the game-changer that launched Rolex into the stratosphere.
What you don't hear so much about is flying. A thriving mode of transportation in the early 20th century, the advance of aviation technology during World War I ensured that the aircraft became a permanent fixture of the modern world. The role of a professional pilot, once just the fantasy of science fiction, was, in the 1930s, a very real thing. And so was aviation as a pastime. Admittedly, there weren't many who were afforded the privilege of doing so, but nevertheless, the British private pilot license was instituted in 1933. One of the few able to capitalize on such a thing was Ernst Jakob Homberger, who found himself hauling around a grassy airfield at Croydon just outside London the same year in a de Havilland DH.60 Moth.