The Benrus Sky Chief Is Back
The cult-classic Benrus Sky Chief finally gets a worthy remake
Since its relaunch around 2020, Benrus has been good at giving watch fans what they'd most certainly want from the storied American brand: reissues of its greatest hits. Those include crowd-pleasers such as military field and dive watches from its extensive archives, but anyone familiar with Benrus's history would have guessed that it was only a matter of time before it did the same for a certain chronograph classic.
The time has finally come for the Sky Chief’s proper comeback, and vintage enthusiasts will approve of its fairly faithful rendering — and appropriately retro 36mm diameter. Like historical versions, it comes in traditional black and silver dial variants at launch and, a few months back, we had the chance to briefly see a prototype of the black-dial version.
20th-century pilots' chronographs tend to garner legendary status among collectors. Think of the icons of that genre — the best remembered models mostly debuted starting in the 1950s. The likes of Hanhart in Germany had been making chronographs for the airforce since the late 1930s, but the Benrus Sky Chief was still an early example when it was released in 1940. Commercial aviation was young at that point, but the Sky Chief would be adopted by the industry and advertised as the “Official Watch of Famous Airlines.”
The Sky Chief also became a collector darling because of Benrus's story. One of the biggest names among American watchmakers, it was selling as many as a million watches a year by the 1950s. Based in Manhattan but producing its watches in Switzerland, the business model feels familiar to our modern ears and indeed the company takes the same approach today: it has facilities in La Chaux-de-Fonds with offices at the same Manhattan address it occupied back in the day even though the original building, the Hippodrome on 6th Avenue, is gone.
As is to be expected of reissues, the new watches combine Swiss construction and modern materials with the historic design. Small for a chronograph, though typical for its day, the original Sky Chief measured only 35mm wide. For a time, this helped keep it somewhat under-the-radar on the vintage market, but it fits well for tastes in the 2020s. The new model stays pretty close to that but adds a millimeter. With the thickness typical of chronographs we found that it wears quite well at this size, and it's water resistant to 100m.
Side by side with a vintage model, other differences you might notice include the subdial layout. Powered by a COSC-certified ETA 2894 automatic movement, the running seconds is found at 3 o'clock while the 30-minute chronograph totalizer is at 9 o'clock — the opposite layout of the original. At 6 o'clock is the chronograph's 12-hour totalizer, which was unusual when the Sky Chief was introduced. Its functions and scales look pretty standard today, but the original was apparently also valued for the emphasized four-minute hashmarks on its 30-minute subdial. They were specifically useful for arial navigation and other calculations important for pilots.
Then, of course, you've got the other typical contemporary touches such as sapphire crystal replacing the original acrylic but maintaining its raised shape that the brand says created "a porthole-like effect that enhanced dial legibility." Unlike any vintage watch, you can see the movement with its black rotor through a caseback display window — and of course, the original would have been manually wound, as automatic chronographs were still nearly three decades away.
Benrus has recently redoubled its quality efforts, moving to exclusively use Swiss movements and earn the Swiss Made label for all its watches going forward. We can attest that the build quality is solid and the details are worthy of collectors' standards at this price level. If the brand's prior approach to its collections is any indication, this historically sized model will be followed by more modern sizes and perhaps creative iterations. In the meantime, fans of golden-age American watchmaking and pilot watch badassery should have a worthy remake to get excited about. The Benrus Sky Chief comes on a leather strap with a price tag of $3,950.
To learn more, visit Benrus, here.
