Air Command

The Air Command was born in the mid-1950s as Blancpain's response to a possible US military contract: a pilot's chronograph designed to meet technical requirements comparable to those of the French "Type 20" specification, which was already the basis for several military chronographs of the era. The project went through Allen V. Tornek, the American distributor who at that same time also handled relations between Blancpain and the United States Navy for the supply of the Fifty Fathoms.

Despite its technical qualities, the Air Command was never officially adopted by the US Air Force and remains an almost unknown chapter in the brand's history: the examples made, probably for evaluation purposes and never in genuine series production, are extremely few. For decades the model practically disappeared from view, known only to a small circle of collectors and specialists; surviving original examples are today extremely rare and, when they appear on the collector's market, reach very high prices precisely because of their scarcity.

In 2019 Blancpain brought the model back to life with a reissue faithful in spirit to the original but updated in its mechanics: a 42.5 mm case, a column-wheel chronograph with flyback function and a bidirectional countdown bezel, made in a limited edition of 500 pieces. The critical and collector success that followed led Blancpain to keep the Air Command as a stable catalogue collection in subsequent years, establishing it as one of the most appreciated pilot's chronographs among vintage-inspired watchmaking enthusiasts.