This year, IWC celebrates 90 years of Pilot’s Watches — a journey that began in 1936 with the Special Pilot’s Watch (Ref. IW436) and continued with iconic designs like the Mark 11 and the Big Pilot. Over the decades, the formula for the Pilot’s Watch has been nothing if not consistent.

IWC Pilot Vertical Venturer Drive

Clear dials, large numerals, prominent crowns. Precision and legibility are the name of the game. The latest Pilot’s Watch from IWC, the Venturer Vertical Drive, represents a radical rethinking of the genre. Gone are the Arabic numerals, gone is the familiar triangle at 12. Even the crown is gone.

IWC Pilot Vertical Venturer Drive

There is, however, a good reason for this reshuffle. The cutting edge of aviation in the 21st century isn’t within the bounds of Earth’s gravity — it’s space. The Venturer Vertical Drive has been created, from the ground up, to meet the needs of extraterrestrial aviation. To achieve this next-gen Pilot’s Watch, IWC has partnered with VAST, a private space company working to create the first commercial space station, to engineer a watch specifically for the needs of human spaceflight, a process which goes far beyond a logo on the dial.

The biggest shift in this design is the lack of a crown. The crown was identified as a possible risk in micro-gravity environments, where even small tears or snags in a spacesuit could be dangerous.

IWC’s solution was to remove the crown altogether and replace it with the brand’s patent-pending bezel rotation system that we’ve seen on the Timezoner, along with a rocker-like mode selector on the left-hand side that allows the wearer to set or wind the Venturer Vertical Drive by turning the bezel.  Not only is this a more secure solution, but it is also easier to manipulate while wearing bulky gloves.

IWC Pilot Vertical Venturer Drive

The 44mm case is made of space-age materials, too. The white ceramic case with black Ceratanium bezel is suitably hard-wearing, and the matching white rubber strap keeps things comfortable. Of course, there’s plenty of functionality too. The skeleton white hands are easily seen against the black dial, and display both mission time (on a 24-hour time scale) and local time. The movement is the IWC-manufactured Caliber 32722, an automatic movement that will wind with the wearer, even in micro-gravity.

IWC Pilot Vertical Venturer Drive

Tech Specs: IWC Pilot’s Vertical Venturer Drive

Reference IW328601
Movement IWC-manufactured self-winding Caliber 32722; 120-hour power reserve
Functions Hours, minutes and seconds; date; second time display; Vertical Drive winding system
Case 44.4mm × 16.7mm; white ceramic with Ceratanium bezel and caseback; water resistant to 100m
Dial Black
Strap White rubber; Ceratanium pin buckle
Price USD 28,200 (excl. taxes)