Sometimes I’m a little late in the game reviewing new releases, and some other times I purposely review models that came out a few months or a couple of years ago because they are as interesting at the date of writing the articles as they were when these watches first came out, and for they help weave together more comprehensive stories about the brands. But in today’s case, I am 46 years late, though I have the best of excuses: I was only 3 years old when CWC came out with the iconic G10 field watch! Yes, this article today constitutes a rarity on Mainspring since we’re going to talk about a model that has been in almost continuous production since 1980—as far as my research could tell, the G10 was made for the British Ministry of Defense from 1980 through 2006 save for a few years, and exclusively for it for roughly the first two decades of its existence whilst CWC started making civilian-stock G10s in the late 1990s when it was acquired by Silvermans, a UK military surplus and clothing supplier. 

For an online watch publication that mostly focuses on microbrands that have been around for the past decade mostly, writing about CWC feels either refreshing or seriously off-course, but here we are and here we remain. And the quick 411 about the CWC is as follows: the Cabot Watch Company was founded in 1972 by Ray Mellor, a former Merchant Navy serviceman who served during World War II aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth that transported American troops to Europe, and then as Managing Director of Hamilton UK, and is named after Italian navigator and explorer Giovanni Caboto (or John Cabot in English) who opened the UK to Transatlantic trade. From the start, CWC’s mission was to supply Her Majesty’s Armed Forces with reliable, legible, and robust tool watches, and it did so through divers, pilot watches, chronographs, and of course field watches, the most iconic of which is the G10. The latter is named after the British Army requisition and store forms used to request and sign out the timepieces, the G1098. 

Specifications 

There is something beautifully simple listing a field’s watch specifications since these timepieces are amongst the simplest ones to have ever existed from a technical standpoint since the history of wristworn timepieces, roughly at the beginning of the 20th century, give or take. However, this is a bit odd when you think about it since field watches took the tallest step on the podium of military-issued tool watches before divers, chronographs, and pilot watches, not necessarily from a chronological point of view but from a historical one. For example, whenever we watch a period military long-feature films or read stories about the world’s armed force–as far as they relate to our nerdy hobby of horology–these happenings mostly refer to field watches, and when we speak about the watch that won the war, we speak about a semi-pilot, semi-field watch (the A-11 Type 44), and when we discuss the most iconic field watches on the planet, we chat about the Dirty Dozen that were issued in 1945, after the end of World War II. 

In other words, field watches are amongst the most popular and iconic genre of timepieces and we love to riff on them here on Mainspring—as we’ve studied a few good samples of those, the Benrus DTU-2A/P 34mm, Marathon 36mm Officer’s Mechanical, and the Timor W.W.W. All military-inspired and issued which is even better, akin to putting a large scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of another scoop of vanilla ice cream atop a warm slice of tarte tatin. (Google it.) And what all of these three aforementioned field watches have in common in their smaller dimensions compared to other models in this category designed in the 21st century—respectively 34, 36, and 36.5mm in diameter. Thus, as you could imagine, the CWC G10 doesn’t break from that tradition given that it first came out in the early 1980s when it was still ok to make smaller-than-now field watches—or, as I like to say, appropriately-sized ones. The G10, in its most original form and as studied here, measures 36.5mm in diameter, 42.1mm lug-to-lug, and 10.4mm thick. 

As you can imagine, on my average 6.50”/16.5cm European wrist, the G10 wears superbly on account of these dimensions as well as the tech inside which brings its total weight to 52 on the supplied Admiralty Grey NATO-style nylon strap (of good quality I would add.) And when it comes to the movement that beats inside, CWC has used several calibers over the years and the one I have seems to be equipped with an ETA F06.402 high-torque quartz movement that comes with a three-year battery life, an end-of-life indicator (the seconds hand ticks every 4 seconds when running out of juice,) and estimated ± 10 seconds monthly accuracy. (I gleaned this information from the world wild web based on the case-back engraving indicating that my sample was manufactured in 2020.) Amongst other noteworthy specifications we find a domed hesalite crystal, 50 meters of water resistance by way of a 4.7mm push/pull crown, good applications of SuperLuminova C3 on the hour/minute hands and half of the printed markers, and 19mm fixed lug bars*.

*Some reviews indicate that the lug width is 18.5mm but I measured 19mm with my calipers and the nylon strap that comes with the G10 is 18mm, go figure.

Design 

There is also something beautifully simple typing too many words about the design of field watches since, by their very own nature, they are ultra simple and straightforward: three hands, a full stack of Arabic numerals, and some dial literature printed on either side of the pinion. But as it is the case with everything that looks straightforward and purposefull, there was a lot of work that went into sketching out a field’s watch dial we now take for granted—and a codified design language set in stone somewhere right before World War II and which continues to shine today for its utter perfectness. Frankly, reviewing field watches is a true passion of mine whether they were made 60 years ago or yesterday, for each variation brands came up with reprises what has made and continues to make field watches so compelling as timekeeping devices and as objects of military equipment: they are the ultimate horological expression of form-follows-function and ultra-purposefulness. (Just quoting myself from a few reviews already.) 

More specifically, it is mesmerizing to see that several brands—not many, but some—managed to concoct their own unique visual recipe for field watches whilst starting from set-in-stone dial layout formats—i.e. the aforementioned three-hand + full stack of Arabic numerals + light dial litterature combo. As far as I can tell, CWC baked the original G10 as we know it today, homaged and re-interpreted multiple times by multiple brands since 1980, itself nit following a particular mil-spec as it is generally the case for military timepieces, but coming up with a design language pretty much of its own. And that is the pure beauty that makes the G10 so iconic: pencil-style and bead-blasted hour/minute hands where the hour one widens towards the edges of the dial; a simple white-painted needle-shaped seconds hand; a full stack of legible Arabic numerals for the hour markers complemented by lumed batons and dots sitting inside and across the minute track; a matte black dial from which all elements pop; minimal dial literature. 

The latter includes the brand’s unchanged-since-1972 logo and “L” marker for “SuperLuminova” above the pinion and the word “Quartz” below it. And the “pretty much” part about the design bit refers to a common phenomenon in horology: a great majority of brands find inspiration in what came before and adapt it to their own watchmaking goals. For instance, the dial of the CWC G10 has something of the first Hamilton Pioneer from 1973** which itself has something of the Dirty Dozen and so-on. But where the magic of the G10 further shows through is the case to which it combined the ultra-legible and timeless dial: a fully bead-blasted stainless-steel body endowed with a flat profile, flat-bottomed angular lugs complemented by straight-cut ends and which further step down from the mid-case towards the wrist by way of sharp down cuts. The icing on the cake for me being the gentle slope that comes down from the domed hesalite crystal towards both lugs, which we also found in the Marathon Officer’s Mechanical from the mid-1980s. 

**I’m kinda of fucking with you: CWC made this watch in 1972 and it is the model it got started with. You see how this works, right? 

The Heart of the Matter

Even though I’m 46 years late reviewing the CWC G10 field watch, it seems as thought it was necessary for me to take so long to get to this one so that I had the opportunity to not only learn how to think, write, and type, but also to get my nerdy hands on many field watches in the past few years in order to be able to put this icon of British military horology in perspective compared to the numerous similarly-souled timepieces made for numerous countries’ armed forces. The CWC G10 truly is an icon and I think it is so on several accounts: first, because it has been in almost continuous production since it debuted in 1980, which is not something many brands can claim to have accomplished, not even Hamilton with the Pioneer or Benrus with the DTU-2A/P; second because it was the first quartz-powered field watch issued to the British Ministry of Defense, something I didn’t mention earlier but that ought to be mentioned at some point in this review; third, and as a consequence of the previous two points, that roughly 200,000 G10s have been produced since 1980 which means there are boat loads of them in circulation, and that many issued units can be purchased for meager sums of money. 

In other words, CWC created its own perfect storm: a timeless dial layout, a nimble case, a reliable quartz caliber whose battery can easily be replaced by way of the hatch placed on the case-back, solid overall specifications and an attainable price tag: £249.17 or roughly $329 USD which is competitive today looking at what many other brands deprived of heritage are offering, and which places the G10 at the reach of us enthusiasts. By the way, I don’t understand the numerous complaints people actually have about the G10’s MSRP, as if we should be paying half of that for a historical field watch that is as handsome as it is purpose-driven as it is robust. Anyway, beyond all of this, and in addition to all of what we’ve discussed today, it is clear that the G10 is indeed the field watch of a military zeitgeist for it best exemplifies where military horology was headed towards with the advent of quartz technology at the end of the 1970s, and what the military were still asking for from a proper field watch: to be legible and straightforward, robust and reliable, simple and highly standardized—just like we like them. 

Conclusion 

Even though CWC still proposes the G10 in its 1980 original format (ref. 80034) as we saw today, it also made it evolve throughout the years by adding a date (ref. 74131) and then increasing the case size to fit an automatic movement (ref. 73827) and by also creating a version with a sapphire crystal and screw-down crown for more water resistance (ref. 33075) along with many other variations displaying different dial colors and case dimensions. There are indeed many faces to the G10 and they are all fairly priced according to yours truly, not only given their good specifications and purposeful design, but also their legacy as the de facto field watch of the British military, as well as their iconic status for many enthusiasts for more than 40 years. 

Thanks for reading.