Tudor have a long tradition of creating dive watches designed for professional use in and around the water. Just look back at some of their early Submariner models or the hugely popular Black Bay and military spec Pelagos. However, the newest addition to the Pelagos line has left the water behind in a collaboration with Aéronautique Navale (French Naval Aviation) to become a pilot’s watch for the first time with the addition of a GMT complication. It’s called the Tudor Pelagos FXD GMT “Zulu Time”.
Starting with the case it measures 42mm in diameter in grade 2 titanium, making it very light thanks to the metal’s innate strength to weight ratio. The dark grey colour also helps to create a cool military aesthetic. What solidifies this as a pilot’s watch rather than a diver is the bi-directional rotating bezel with 24-hour scale, with out a dive immersion timer it cannot pass ISO standards for dive watches.
The 24-hour scale though does mean that in conjunction with the central, orange GMT hand the watch is capable of displaying three time-zones simultaneously. You have local time, as displayed by the regular snowflake hands, Zulu Time (the military term for UTC Universal Time Coordinated) when the bezel is in the neutral position and a tertiary time zone when the bezel is rotated. Ideal for naval pilots who need to coordinate with their units across long distances and multiple time zones.
A nice touch for legibility is that the 24-hour scale and 24-hour GMT hand are both coated with green lume, showing they work in conjunction with each other. Meanwhile the regular hands and standard hour markers have blue lume, preventing any confusion in low light conditions. I know I said that this is not a dive watch but with indexes and hands this legible plus a 200m water resistance rating, it’s not exactly ill-suited to the water either.
Looking at the Tudor Pelagos FXD GMT “Zulu Time”’s caseback reveals an engraving commemorating the collaboration with the French Navy. There’s an inscription celebrating both the Marine Nationale and the aforementioned Aéronautique Navale. The same is true of the logo found on the single piece fabric strap in flight suit green.
Housed inside the titanium case is the calibre MT5652-U, a METAS certified master chronometer movement with automatic winding and a 65-hour power reserve. This means it has passed both COSC and METAS levels of accuracy ensuring an incredible level of precision and reliability. After Tudor first introduced their METAS movements it’s nice to see them adopt them more frequently and to expand them to include new complications like the GMT seen here.
In terms of price, the Tudor Pelagos FXD GMT “Zulu Time” is a clean £4,000. That seems like really solid value for a master chronometer movement in titanium. I also really love the novelty of a Pelagos pilot’s watch, it makes for a cool change to Tudor’s normal comfort zone. I have no doubt in my mind that this will prove incredibly popular. After all, we know from watches like the Longines Spirit Zulu Time that there is a huge appetite for neo-retro, military pilot’s watches.
Price and Specs:
More details at Tudor.
This might be the first watch I’ve seen with beige lume where it doesn’t look like an attempt at fauxtina, but a good design choice to intentionally reduce visibility of the piece. I really like it
Yeah, it’s super smart and militaristic. I also like the contrasting lume. I wonder how it wears on that fabric strap.