General Service - Quartz

Much of this section is the work of Ed875 on MWR who has been painstakingly cataloguing these watches, and reproduced with his kind permission.

The quartz "G10"  was the first quartz watch supplied to the British military, with the name coming from the G1098 store that issued them (see my blog post here).  It is by far the most common issued CWC watch - with around 165,000  watches supplied to the MoD between 1980 and 2006.  All the branches of the British military are represented, although the RAF only ordered watches in 1983, and the 0555 Royal Navy code was only used in 1995.  The NSN for this watch was 6645-99-5415317. 

For those who like lists, this is the full list of G10s: by year, Service, and then lowest and highest serial number seen to date.  If you don't like lists, I suggest you avert your eyes now.

1980 - no Service stated - 027 to 12710

1981 - 0552 - 12765 to 13049

1982 - W10 - 005 to 9498 and then 14605 to 16998 (intervening numbers used by Precista W10)

1982 - 0552 - 17027 to 17360

1983 - W10 - 17043 to 22492

1983 - 6BB - 22529 to 23494

1983 - 0552 - 23529 to 23729

1983 - W10 - 23818 to 26237

1984 - W10 - 26402 to 28767 and then 30569 to 32944 (intervening numbers used by Precista 6BB)

1984 - 0552 - 33056 to 33811

1984 - W10 - 34017 to 38437

1985 - 0552 - 031 to 15599

1987 - 0552 - 15792 to 23737

1988 - 0552 - 23958 to 27828

1989 - 0552 - 27903 to 52092

1990 - 0552 - 52093 to 74093

1991 - W10 - 74125 to 82076

1995 - 0555 - 0021 to 4898

1997 - W10 - 0126 to 5537

1998 - W10 - 0003 to 7497

2004 - W10 - 003 to 2969

2005 - W10 - 0093 to 6000

2006 - W10 - 0021 to 9394

In 1999 Pulsar was contracted to supply a new General Service watch with NSN 6645-99-6052627; these were manufactured from 1999 through to 2004, and from 2007 the MoD switched supply entirely to Pulsar for general service watches. 

A few other points of note:

• The 1980 to 1982 watches are often referred to as 'fatboy' due to the depth of case needed to accommodate the ESA 536.121 movement.  The 1983 and first batch of 1984 watches are often referred to as 'medium fatboy' due to the slightly reduced depth of case needed to accommodate the change to the ESA 947.111 movement.  From 30614/84 onwards, a thinner case was used as the movement changed to the ETA 555 series, and in 1987 a thinner case back was added.   From 1988 onwards, the movement changes to the ETA 955 series.
• The location of the battery hatches also moved as the movement changed: the fatboy had a large battery hatch at 12 o'clock; on the medium fatboy that moved to 1 o'clock; and then moved back to 12 o'clock on the thinner case, reducing in diameter from 34017/84 onwards.
• There are multiple small changes in dial print across the different batches, although the dial format remains essentially the same; the two major changes are the switch from the old to the new logo in 1982 and the change from SWISS at the bottom of the dial to SWISS MADE in 1989.
• In 2004, case backs began to have the water resistance details in both ATM and feet stamped at the bottom of the backplate, which later changed to a smaller font and ATM measurement only.

From 1980 to 1991, the MoD ordered an average 11,500 G10 watches a year from CWC, in every year except 1986.  During the 90s, the orders slackened.  For the next 15 years, orders were placed in only 6 of the years, for an average of 6,000 watches.  As Silvermans took over the business in 1997, these smaller orders were often fulfilled from civilian stock that they had on hand, with military numbers engraved on the case backs rather than factory stamped, and with far more variability in the engravings and markings.  This practice continued until the final two contracts in 2005 and 2006, both of which came direct from the factory.

The gallery below illustrates some of the interesting watches and variations, but this thread on MWR has pictures of almost all the case backs for your delight and delectation.  And this thread is generally updated as new information comes to light.