Breitling Avenger B01 Chronograph 44 Night Mission
Breitling recently jumped into the top 10 of Swiss watch brands based on turnover, accord-ing to a Morgan Stanley report. It has done so partly because it has started making more watches, and partly because it has started making watches for different customers. There are now Breitling ranges aimed at everyone from classic car enthusiasts and endurance athletes to surfers. But it hasn’t abandoned its roots. Breitling’s DNA is in aviation — in the Navitimer, with its info-packed dial, it can stake a claim to the definitive pilot’s watch. There is also its Avenger range, recognisable by its muscular case, something the brand describes as having a “sophisticated roughness”, which is aimed at adventurers both up in the sky and down on the ground.
This winter, Breitling has assembled some new Avengers, in the form of the Breitling Avenger B01 Chronograph 44 Night Mission , featuring the brand’s newest in-house automatic-chronograph movement, and available with a black, blue, green or sand-coloured dial. There’s also the Breitling Avenger B01 Chronograph 44 Night Mission, a stealthy version kitted out in a black ceramic case and released with a yellow or black forged-carbon-fibre dial. A GMT edition, allowing wearers to plot two time zones at once, comes in black or blue. Finally, there is the most compact and discreet version of all — the Automatic 42, with a choice of black, blue or green dials and a 42mm diameter —proving there is an Avenger, to quote Captain America, for whatever it takes.
One day ahead of the global launch of the revamped Breitling Avenger, Georges Kern, Breitling’s CEO since 2017, appeared on my smartphone screen to talk about the new watches. The first question I had for him was the simplest of the lot: which new Avenger model are you wearing today? Well, he didn’t have to answer that one because when the CEO moved his left arm, the black-dialed Navitimer on his wrist was clearly visible. Never mind; more questions were ready to go. I could still find out about his favorite new Avenger of the collection, which includes plenty of Breitling Avenger B01 Chronograph 44 Night Mission models, two stealthy Night Mission chronographs, a 44mm GMT, and a slightly smaller 42mm Automatic model.
The Breitling Avenger B01 Chronograph 44 Night Mission has been around for more than 20 years. It always looked like it meant business. Rough business, that is. Well, it was built for fighter pilots, so the Avenger was designed to deal with extreme conditions in mind. Extreme resilience and optimum readability were key elements in the creation of the original Avenger. The new collection shows sophisticated evolution without losing the original fighter-pilot spirit. It’s that same connection to flying military men and women that led to me talking to Georges Kern on the phone instead of on the flight deck of the USS Intrepid. That Essex-class aircraft carrier built during World War II is now a museum ship floating in the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan. The Intrepid Museum was the original location for this launch, but in light of recent global events, a former warship didn’t feel like the appropriate setting.
