Panzera Flieger 47

I bought my first mechanical watch back when we were living in Australia for those couple of years. It was a Flieger 47 from the Australian brand Panzera, and it sparked my love of pilot watches.

I’m not sure how I found out about Panzera, but I suppose it was an ad on social media, most likely Instagram. They’re based in Sydney—which is where I was—and design their own watches using Swiss movements. The Flieger 47 was an homage to the WW2 pilot watches made for the Luftwaffe and Allied air forces by brands like IWC.

It has all the hallmarks of a Big Pilot, with an oversized onion crown and a large, clear display. From a reasonable distance, it looked very similar to an IWC Big Pilot and coffee shop watch nerds commented on it more than once.

I bought one in a sale for around AUD $400 and loved it. That was until the crystal mysteriously cracked during some very hot weather, and it’s been in a drawer ever since.

I really must send it back to Panzera for repair, although I suspect that will cost me more than what I paid for the watch when I bought it.