Auricoste
chrono XIIIe Dragons Paratrooper Regiment - commandos

Auricoste 7156-80 military chronograph, a watch used by officers of the 13th RDP (dragon paratrooper regiment), the intelligence backbone of the french army. A watch produced in 1979 in 250 copies, numbered AF XXX for 'Armée Française' XXX. A rare watch with the Dodane 4534-13 was made in minimal quantities to equip the officers and radio operators of the thirteenth parachute dragoon regiment in the early 1980s.

Watch with a steel case of forty-one millimetres in diameter with a screwed back. The chronograph has two counters, small seconds on the left and a thirty-minute totalizer indexed by minutes at the top of the dial. The watch is of the stop-&-go type, and the orange central second-hand is enslaved to the chronograph. A tachymeter surrounds the dial, protected by tempered anti-reflective mineral glass. The dial has a grey background, and the totalizers have a black background with inscriptions and railroad painted white.

The movement of this mechanical watch is manually wound. This movement is the Valjoux calibre 7765, a seventeen-jewel movement equipped with an Incabloc anti-shock device to withstand shocks and vibrations better. This movement functions at eighteen thousand vibrations per hour and has a power reserve after a complete winding of thirty-eight hours of autonomy.

In terms of use, this military chronograph, robust and very readable, is one of the finest productions of the late 1970s from the watch brand Auricoste. (the watchmaker of the French Navy) The case of this unique build was made of steel with a gauge of forty-one millimetres, which for the time was a size well above the usual scope of watches manufactured. Remarkably readable, the dial is very discreet, easy to interpret, and complete(with a tachymeter under the anti-reflective glass). Similar to the Omega Speedmaster Mark III model, the waterproof case has a screwed bottom. The bottom bears its military endowment markings in the French army. The chronographic measurement is of the stop-&-go type. (namely that it operates by pressing the top pusher to start or stop the time measurement. The bottom pusher activates the reset of the chronograph when it is stopped)

Regarding collection, this military watch from the French special forces is one of the rarest watches from the Auricoste brand. Produced in two hundred and fifty copies only and a single batch, it is also an exceptional piece in a collection of military watches. As the Thirteenth Parachute Dragoon Regiment is a unit with a reputation for excellence in the intelligence world, this Auricoste 120-03 is considered one of the nuggets of the brand.