Cyma dirty dozen british military forces
army tank brigade

British military watch dirty-dozen cyma, a watch produced during the second world war in approximately 20,000 copies for the British ministry of defence (MoD), then distributed with the twelve other famous watches of the series ordered by Churchill at the entrance of war by Great Britain.

Cyma will manufacture these watches at the start of the war. For this, it will use a robust movement, the calibre Cyma 234 equipped with 15 jewels, which functions at the speed of eighteen thousand vibrations per hour with a power reserve of forty-four hours after a complete winding. This watch of Swiss origin has a screwed back and withstands dust-laden environments without damage to its mechanical operation (dustproof), and a non-magnetic bell protects its movement. Its 37 mm diameter makes it the most imposing model of all the military watches in the dirty-dozen series.

The back of the case bears inside and outside the codification P, which indicates the Cyma brand for maintenance services, followed by the serial number specific to the example of the watch. Below is the Cyma serial number of the watch. The whole is surmounted by the broad arrow, which marks the watch belonging to the British crown and below the wide hand is struck the triptych W.W.W. which designates the British dirty-dozen watch market.

The hands are sword-shaped and were initially enriched with tritium to obtain better watch longevity compared to the use of radium originally planned. This will allow these watches to remain in the British army until the mid-1950s. The watch is of the hack-watch type (synchronizable). The dial with a black background features a circular hour railroad indexed in minutes with larger tritium dots every five minutes. Finally, twelve-hour numerals adorn the dial and are painted white. The broad arrow sits centrally above the luminescent hands. A small second counter is located at six o'clock.

The bracelet fixing bars (pumps) are fixed and welded to the case in the image of British military watches. The watch is equipped with a leather pilot-type strap with a shock-absorbing leather band (a model used by pilots and also very popular with tank crews and vehicles of the mechanized ground forces.

Many war archive photos illustrate this watch during Operation Lightfoot, which allowed the British tanks to reconquer Egypt against the Afrika-Korps of Rommel and the Italian forces. During this operation, General Mongomery will have more than a thousand tanks, including Matildas, and above all, models supplied by the Americans, such as the M4 Shermans and powerful and well-armed grant tanks.