Pilot’s Navigator Stainless Steel NGM - Nylon Defstan Strap

The brand Marathon might be new to some, but not for Canadians, Americans, and especially military watch fanatics like us. The moniker is better known to watch collectors be among the few that, until today, officially offers no-frills timepieces to the military. Those regimes include the United States and Canadian army since circa 70 years ago.

Let’s dive a little deeper. The company that was to become Marathon Watch was founded in 1904 as Weinsturm Watch, later to be named Wein Brothers. In 1939, Morris Wein founded Marathon Watch, supplying fine precision timepieces throughout North America. Since 1941, Marathon has been manufacturing timing instruments for the Allied Forces, and today the fourth generation of the family continues the tradition with a wide range of tools measuring time, temperature, and distance. Marathon watches combine military durability with Swiss engineering and craftsmanship to ensure the highest level of quality and precision. All these traits unveiled on their take of the 1960s MIL-PRF-46374G military watch.


Entering the navigator watch realm, Marathon has based on the MIL-PRF-46374G specifications and manufactured for the US army ill today with several revisions, lending them to be the longest-running specifications required by the US government. This particular model follows the type III / class 1 variation and summarising what it is all about; it needed to have a rotating bezel equipped with elapsed time ring, and electrical quartz movement that able to maintain long life that able to withstand magnetically, water and corrosion resistance along with high altitude. Further, the watch needs to have a nylon strap attached to it and to use tritium for its luminous hands and markers that have to glow for 8 hours or more in total darkness. The unique asymmetrical case with the military 24-hour dial indication proved to be the military issued watches back in the 1970s. All these traits seen on MIL-W-50717 mil-spec watches for the US military, and Marathon keeps all there in check.