In April of 2014, aBlogtoWatch gave-away a UNIQ P-47 Chronograph watch. The lucky winner was Keith S. from Colorado and he was nice enough to follow-up with these pictures of the P-47 Chronograph watch on his wrist, along with an aBlogtoWatch watch winner review:
I was obviously pretty thrilled to find out I was the winner of the UNIQ P-47 Thunderbolt watch giveaway a few weeks back. I never win anything! Ironically, my wife, daughter and I had just returned Memorial Day weekend from a wonderful vacation in Hawaii to find a package waiting from Tblisi, Georgia. In Hawaii we made time to see the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Past its solemn and patriotic tone, on display are a number of incredibly detailed murals depicting many famous air and naval battles fought in the Pacific. These included heavy use of the P-47 Thunderbolt which directly inspired this watch.
On top of that, although not a pilot, my father is an Air Force veteran and instilled a love of all things aircraft in my brother and I from a young age. We’d attend countless air shows, visit air museums on vacations and would be quizzed on aircraft flying overhead, challenged to identify them by profile alone. So, how cool was it to win this watch? The next question you’re asking is why did this aircraft inspire a timepiece from a Georgian watchmaker? Zviad Tsikolia is the heart and soul behind UNIQ Watches, and is establishing himself primarily by designing a number of extremely limited run “vehicular” themed watches for lack of a better term. UNIQ is also the maker of a watch model supplied to the Georgian Armed Forces. Quite cool.
Well, it turns out the P-47 was the most famous contribution of legendary aircraft designer Alexander Kartveli, a Georgian immigrant to the United States. Enter the P-47 Thunderbolt pilot’s chronograph, a fitting tribute to the heaviest, most well armed and fastest fighter of WWII, as well as celebrating Tsikolia’s Georgian heritage. Big ol’ WWII bird of prey…meet big ol’ pilot’s chrono!
Upon opening the parcel I found one of the most unique (no pun intended) boxes I’ve ever seen, which resembles a military ammunition crate. Included with the watch is a small booklet giving the history of Kartveli, his other design contributions past the P-47 and loads of detail about the actual airplane. The watch comes on a very nice leather strap with contrasting stitching, an engraved clasp and some cool grommets to further reinforce the military feel. Also included is a black nylon Zulu strap with stainless steel keepers for when you want to mix it up and go a bit more “tactical”. You know, perhaps running around in the dark in your neighborhood.
The watch itself is a monster quite honestly, every bit a large pilot’s watch. At 47mm it is not for the faint of wrist…and that is, unfortunately, me included with my 6.5 inch wrist. I can barely pull this sucker off, and it’s only because my relatively tall height that it works overall. Looking at the watch on my wrist alone, it borders on dinner plate size at the right angle. But, after many days of nonstop wear I have found it wears incredibly nicely. The case is brushed 316L stainless, water resistant to 5ATM. The highly polished crown at 3:00 is emblazoned with a “U” for the brand’s namesake. On the 9:00 side is a small engraved plate with watch number, in my case, 59 out of 100 total. The caseback has an incredibly cool engraving of the P-47 itself, and I find myself showing it off quite often to friends while feigning military jargon with lots of “niners” and “tangos” thrown in.
Under an AR coated sapphire crystal, the dial comes in three colors. I opted for the black, but it is also available in navy blue and a killer olive drab (with matching nylon straps to boot). Now, we dive a bit deeper into the dial. Tsikolia has done a truly magnificent job matching the appearance of the actual P-47 control panel clock, a Waltham 8 Days. The fonts are a dead match, as well as the sword-style hands. All are generously adorned with Superluminova; I can basically read a book by this beast at night.
The three subdials are the running seconds at 2:30, 1/10th second chrono at 6:00 and 30 minute chrono counter at 9:30. The latter has an intentional angulation to further match the feel of the P-47 altimeter. All three subdials are conjoined and have an intentional bolt-on plate appearance to seal the deal on the aircraft vibe. At 4:00 is a color matched date wheel window. Thank you UNIQ, it’s the little details like this that we obsess over.
The movement is a Swiss Ronda 5040, a tried-and-true quartz movement that can do both cumulative and split chronograph timing. One of my favorite things to do is start the chronograph and watch the 1/10th seconds hand spin madly. I immediately start making airplane engine and machine gun sound effects ala Snoopy (I know, wrong war…what you gonna do). This goes over especially particularly well at work.
My constructive comments are minimal at best and oddly all strap related . Because of the stature of the watch, the leather strap is matched in scale and I need to have a couple more holes (carefully!) punched so it can fit my wrist properly. All I can figure is Tsikolia must be a bruiser in person. The first keeper on the leather strap is also quite difficult to get the mating side to fit through, as it’s permanently affixed quite close to where the pin engages. This may break in nicely with time though. Finally, the nylon strap is a hair on the thin side compared to other NATO and nylon straps I’ve seen. It could a bit thicker to approximate the leather strap and match the stature of the watch. Overall though the P-47 is a pleasure to read with everything bold and uncluttered. One more time, with its size, it’s not a watch that likes to fit under a cuff. But mind you, this is isn’t a watch with which you discuss mergers and acquisitions over cocktails. This…is a watch that you jam the control stick forward into a steep dive with all eight 50 caliber guns wide open.
Now, according to the UNIQ website there are only a small handful of these left out of the very limited 100 piece run. If this sounds like your cup of tea I would act pretty quickly and visit www.uniqwatches.com. As I’m not quite yet in the financial position to expand the mechanical portion of my collection very quickly, this is an incredibly cool addition I, of course, wasn’t expecting. If a watch is gonna be quartz it either must be insanely useful or very collectible for me. Yep. I geek out knowing I’ll probably never run into anyone else in my life with this on their wrist too. That’s pretty cool if you ask me. And at $470 it’s a very reasonable asking price for what you get in collectibility and functionality. UNIQ will ship it to your doorstep to boot.
A very, very hearty thank you to Ariel Adams and aBlogtoWatch, and of course Zviad Tsikolia and all at UNIQ watches for a truly awesome timepiece. Now. I think I have another strafing run to attend to (starts chronograph).