Way down at the bottom of this blog, possibly in the first post, there is a picture of a Heuer 1550 SG I once owned. I don't know about you, but I have a pretty firm No Repeats rule, which keeps me from buying the same watch twice. If I didn't like it enough to keep it the first time, why would I buy it again? I loved that Heuer Bund but I used it in trade for an equally fantastic military-issued chronograph, which had been a grail for a long time too. Although I missed the Heuer, the Lemania I traded it for was a simply fantastic watch, and I convinced myself it was a good move. Not a mistake, exactly, but it definitely felt like future unfinished business.

1. The Bundeswehr chronographs were a general Issue chronograph for a number of military forces which included the German Federal Defense Force throughout the 1960s and 70s. Trying to identify and categorize Heuer Bunds is quite a difficult task. Long story short, there are well over two-dozen dial variations to account for.
2. The Heuer Bundeswehr Flyback Chronograph was made for the Germany Army between the ’60s and the ’70s and it is one of the most famous issued chronographs out there. There were several variants of the ‘Bund’ with the rarest example you see here- the ‘Sternzeit Reguliert’.
3. Jun 05, 2018 The date and referenced serial numbers are not published or available online. Reports suggest that emailed requests were never responded to. There are two numbers on the caseback of your watch.

TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Anniversary, Hexadecimal Color: #000000 TAG Heuer Carrera 160 Years Anniversary, Hexadecimal Color: #009de2 $5,950.00. The gathering of serial numbers is critical for research into these old Heuer Autavia chronographs. Watch manufacturers tended to use batches of serial numbers for each reference, and on many occasions dials were batched too. Sadly Heuer lost this info in the 1985 sale and so it is important we carry out this task for the future.

My Heuer was an instant favorite and accompanied me on a lot of adventures. If you haven't owned one of these because the 43 mm case size put you off, let me attempt to change your mind. It is a 43 mm case, that's true, but they are thin and flat, and the lugs are perfectly proportioned. The result is a very close-fitting and comfortable watch. Not a wrist tank at all. Here is a picture of mine that I took on one of many trips to northern Michigan on which it was the perfect traveling companion.

And some pictures I took of it in a light box one time for fun.

Long after the watch and I parted ways, I learned that it most likely was put back into service in the Bundeswehr with the service dial and hands that it originally came to me with, those pictured above. But before I knew this, and out of a genuine but unnecessary sense of returning my Heuer to a more 'original' state, I sourced a tritium dial for it in Germany and had it installed on the watch. From then on, it looked like this:

In this iteration of the watch, the warm tritium dial didn't match the cooler color of the service hands, but this isn't uncommon with Heuer Bunds because of their military service history and it didn't really bother me. But, ironically, the modification made me less happy with the watch as a whole, not more happy. I had to admit that although I had started out with the best of intentions, what I had done didn't add value. So when the opportunity to make a trade for a totally original Lemania 6BB came up, one that allowed me to recoup my overall investment in the Heuer, I decided to wash my hands of it and start fresh.

But I always knew I’d come back to the Heuer Bund and I resolved to make a better decision the second time around. So I started doing my Heuer homework again, and after copious amounts of research and review, I was left feeling something less than excited and optimistic; depressed and confused were more like it. The Heuer-dialed watches are a minefield of frankens, put-togethers, outright fakes, and falsely modified dials (e.g., the non-genuine addition of the circle-3H to a plain dial by an unscrupulous seller). But my research also led me to learn more about the Sinn-dialed Bundeswehr watches, more than I had ever known before.

Heuer Bundeswehr Serial Numbers Lookup

Now, it’s widely known that Sinn had the contract to service these watches for the Bundeswehr in the 1980’s. The point was to keep the watches in use; no one was thinking about the watch as a future collectible. At some point in the 1990’s many Heuer 1550 SG watches were sold to the public directly by Sinn. No one appears to know how many or what dials these watches had, however, and a search of your favorite forum will produce multiple threads on the topic.

From what I have gathered, the small T dial was the original. The dials were then officially modified with the addition of the circle-3H to make the occupational hazard of tritium more readily apparent to people handling the watches, and at some point many of the watches were redialed altogether with service dials that used no tritium, so they had no small T and no circle-3H. All told, there are perhaps thirty different dial variations seen on these watches.

In addition to enthusiast discussion on the forums, the bigger blogs have all picked up on the Heuer Bund recently, and the collective voice is busy sorting out what exactly constitutes a genuine Heuer Bund. To make matters even more confusing, for reasons no one really seems to understand the market for these watches appears to prize New-Old-Stockness, and eschews the normal wear and tear you might expect on a 40-50 year old watch that has seen military service. This motivates the market in a certain way, not always good.

Heuer Bundeswehr Serial Numbers 222

It was all of this that was swirling around in my head when I decided to look into buying another Heuer Bund, and this time I formulated a new strategy. Rather than looking for an “original” Heuer watch, an elusive concept at best, I decided to find a Sinn. Yes, a Sinn. Although the Sinn-dialed watches are certainly less sought after by Heuer collectors and probably military watch collectors in general, they have a definite appeal to Sinn collectors.

What's more, in my view the Sinn dial sidesteps the whole originality issue. Of course it's not original. Anyone of any level of expertise can tell that a Heuer watch that says Sinn on the dial is not original. What it is, however, is a beautifully built watch that may or may not have seen actual military service in its current form, but certainly did in a past form. And in the case of my particular specimen anyway, it is freshly serviced by a master watchmaker at Sinn, the only remaining master watchmaker at Sinn who originally worked on these watches back when Sinn serviced them for the Bundeswehr. And interestingly, the case on my watch does in fact appear to be completely original. It has a low serial number and appears to have never been refinished or even polished. Ironic, considering I had decided not to get too hung up on this in my purchase criteria. The case on my Sinn is so original, you can still see the machining marks left over from the press that I presume stamped it out. The bezel has a pleasing amount of wear from its time in service, and the dial's lume is aging in a charming way and matches that of the hands exactly.

Perhaps nicest of all, I know the provenance of the watch back to the pilot who owned and used it in Germany. It doesn't get much cooler than that. On to some pictures.

Here we see the side of the unpolished, unrestored case:

Serial Numbers Cracks

The NSN indicating the watch was originally issued as a kit with a Bundeswehr strap:

Fantastic dial details and lume that is even and equally aged with the hands:

Case reference 1550 SG is typically lightly engraved:

I am always happy to meet other enthusiasts. If I have something factually incorrect above, please feel free to contact me. Thanks for reading!

There are military watches, and then there are military watches. The Heuer Bundeswehr Flyback Chronograph is the latter. Rolex Milsub, Omega SM300, they’re great and all, but smart money is on the German military issued wrist-tank with a legitimate complication. This pilot chronograph issued to the Luftwaffe in the late 1960s and 70s has become one of the most iconic military watches on the market.

Trying to identify and categorize legitimate Heuer Bunds is quite the difficult task. Long story short, there are well over two-dozen dial variations to account for. To the untrained eye, many of the dials seem to be the same, but as it goes with collecting vintage watches in general, the devil is in the details. The most recognizable variants to collectors feature an encircled “3H” stamped on the dial, which is an abbreviation for hydrogen-3, a luminous material many of us know as tritium. As you go down the line of dial variations, the majority of the differences come down to logo and marking sizes – all this adds up to is a tricky market for the less experienced collectors.

Powering the Heuer Bund is a hand-wound flyback chronograph; the Valjoux 22, 222, or 230 had all been used depending on the time period it was produced or serviced. This leads to a peculiarity of the Bund. The case construction is such that the movement loads in through the front, and the screwed-in caseback attaches the bezel, which simultaneously secures the crystal. It’s likely that this design makes exchanges of movements, bezels and crystals quick and easy for the military contracted watchmakers – an important capability for watches taking on the rough daily life as a military pilot’s accessory.

The look of the Heuer Bund is that of utility. A clean, easy-to-read dial and a clearly marked 60 minute bezel are the most obvious characteristics. Upon going in for a closer look, one will note the PVD coated bezel provides excellent grip with its thick ridges. Combine that with pushers featuring long stems, and operating the Bund wearing gloves poses no issue. Tying it all together is the Bund strap. It’s essentially a two-piece strap with an extra flap of leather that attaches to the backside of the watch. The additional leather protects the pilot’s bare skin from temperature changes conducted through the watch case. The Bund is an awesome watch, but not so awesome you’d want the caseback serial number burned into your arm.

Cutting through all the details, what is it that makes the Bund worthy of the W4L Hall of Fame? It’s the legacy it has left behind. If it weren’t for the Heuer Bund, we may not have the Sinn we know today, or Kobold Watches, or Bell & Ross. These three brands have a direct lineage tracing back to the Bund. Sinn took over post-production servicing of Heuer Bunds for the German military, which led to the Sinn 156, the Bund’s Lemania 5100-powered successor. From there, Kobold and Bell & Ross received jumpstarts through the tutelage of Helmut Sinn.

Successful bloodlines such as the Bund’s don’t happen without good reason. The Heuer Bundeswehr Flyback Chronograph holds the DNA of what a military watch should be: robust and reliable, legible and functional. And for us, this equates to possessing the DNA of a Wound For Life Hall of Fame timepiece.

For a more detailed breakdown of the dial variations, check out this research project done by Walter Manning.