Finding my father's MK 11

My father was an RAF navigator on a Venom jet, when he was killed in an air crash in 1956.
His IWC watch was one of the few things I had, of his possessions. How it survived the intense fire, god alone knows, but it did. They were tough watches. It worked fine, when my mother passed it to me when I was 13.
It may horrify some enthusiasts, but I was so impressed with a watch that kept time to a second or two a month, despite my bashing it against a brick wall, to impress my friends with its indestructibility. Well, I was a kid...
It got stolen. I want to trace it.
Are there any records of the serial numbers issued to individuals?
I had it restored by Charles Fox of Bournemouth, around 1988, and they changed a few bits. The glass was domed, and they replaced that with a flat, bevel-edged glass. The complicated metal strap was replaced. I was a bit disappointed about not seeing that strap again. It was what my father was wearing when he died. They said that it was more authentic, but what is more "authentic" than the watch as worn, at the time?
Then I gave it to a watch repairer in Southampton, in the early 1990s. I have never seen it again.
My fault of course. The man was dishonest. Recommended by a good friend, he had serviced many clocks for her. We were a bit desperate for cash as our business had gone bust, and sold him an 18c longcase clock. During his visit to our home, I asked him if he could see what was wrong with the IWC, as it had stopped. He took it away without a receipt being issued. I actually had no idea that it was valuable! Just a precious thing to me.
A phone call established that it "needed a new crown wheel", and he gave me a price. Unemployed, I said that I couldn't afford it just then, and could he hang on to it for a month or two? Months passed, I could not afford it, etc.
Then I went to collect the watch. He said he must have put it in storage, it might be in his loft at home, all sorts of nonsense.
In 1999, he was convicted of deception. One of the famous "Titanic" pocket watches came into his shop and he knew what it was, offered £15 for it as scrap. Went to prison.
I then realised - so stupid me, so trusting - that he had sold my dad's watch. I looked up the value of them. He was tempted again.
So, anyway, I want that watch back. The present owner will not know this story. They will have bought it fairly at auction perhaps.
How can I get the serial number? There was an arrow and a number on the back.
If there is any way of finding out the number, issued to my father, then I might be able to track down the actual watch.
I adored that IWC. My best remembrance of my father.

Dear David

You will have to go a long way to find the ID of your father`s Mk 11 and presumably it will end without a result. But I can at least provide a point to start from.

The Mk. 11 at that time was qualified by the RAF as a valuable. All valueables assigned to an individiual, which were not to be returned after each sortie, but were kept by this individual as long as he kept his post in this unit were recorded twice. On the one hand in the ledgers of the stores and on the other hand on a special form as part of his personnel file. I had a chance to make a copy of one of these form, but it is not from the midfifties; so perhaps in 1956 a form was used that looked different and/or had a another Ref. No.

Your father quite sure got several Mk. 11 assigned as after a certain period of time each watch had to be returned to the stores for service and instead your father got another Mk.11. But at the moment of the crash of course due to this system he had only one.

So you have two chances: You can check whether the UNIT of your father or the AIRFIELD his unit was based at that time have something like a small museum and kept something from those days. I'm afraid the chances are quite low, that they kept old inventories and lists, to whom was what issued in that period. The other chance is to check, whether the old personnel file of your father is still existing. Presumably the chance for that is much higher as he died on duty and therefore you and your mum will have got some kind of pension. So this personnel file was active for quite a time.

So I would start with an enquiry at the authority which paid the pension and on the other hand I would start an enquiry at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon. Don´t start with the question for the serial, but tell them you would like to have a look in his personnel file. My experience is, if you ask to precise question, they tell you they have nothing without considering before, what kind of files they have and what they perhaps comprise.

Good Luck!

Th. Koenig

Dear David,
Th. Koenig is the number one expert on the IWC Mk 11 and he has performed extensive research on the RAF Mk 11 in the U.K.war museums and library's
So anything to add here would be a kind of blasphemy.
But as you referred to the engravement/ stamps on the case back, you have to know that this will not bring you much further.
On the case back was a broad Arrow and further a stamp 6B/XXX, (X for a digit). 6B was the RAF code for navigational items.
Below that XXX/ XX, where XXX stood for the number of watches ordered by RAF in a particular year an after the slash, the year : 56 e.g.
The movement number of the MK 11 was not visible on the case back. If you knew the movement number, the excellent archives of IWC in Schaffhausen could tell you if indeed the watch had been delivered in 1956. IWC did not send the watch to RAF directly but to a wholesaler in London : Garrard Ltd.
Inquiry's at Garrard will not bring you further as was found out by several researchers before.
So, the way to proceed is to follow Th. Koenig's advice.
Kind regards,
Adrian,
(alwaysiwc).

Thank you, gentlemen, for your help.
As I am now living in France, looking after my mother, I will not be getting to Hendon for a while, but I can ask if a file is kept.
If several watches were issued, I am not sure how to proceed. The personnel file would presumably list them all, if they are actually listed. The years would be between 1956, when my father died, back to about 1952, when he became a navigator. But would the file list the movement numbers, as a unique identifier, or just the batch numbers from the case back? The stores would not have been able to identify the watch precisely, without opening the back, so maybe they just went by the batch number?
Would the file also note which watches were returned to stores, helping me to identify the one that was not? Interesting. Of course, they should all have been returned - one should not have been given to my mother with the personal effects. I expect they were quite valuable even back then, as top-quality pieces of kit.

My next thought is about the method of selling it on.
I can assume that he has sold it. Probably within a year or two after I left it with him. This is well before the days of internet auctions.
As a little man, a watch & clock repairer, he may not have known private collectors of such watches.
Was there an obvious point of sale, a specialist auction house, that he would have gone to?

Dear David

(a) The movement No. won't help for your research. It helps only in case you try to find out, when the watch was sold from IWC to Goldsmiths & Silversmiths (Garrards not involved in deliveries to the RAF).
(b)As Adrian indicated, the back of every RAF Mk. 11 has stamped in three lines: In the upper line the Broad Arrow (some people use the expression Pheon, but all mean the same). In the middle you find 6B/346, the Store Ref. No. for all Mk. 11. In the bottom line numbers are given following the scheme xxx/xx; the first figures (not neccessarily three digit) are the RAF-ID for the individiual watch from this contract year followed after the slash the by the year of the contract under which this specific watch was procured. So you have to look for the last entry in the personell file and which "xxx/xx" number is given. The movement No. is not recorded in the store ledgers nor the personnell file (and awfully often movements were swapped during service from one case in another as the movement No. within the RAF inventory system was of no importance).
(c)) The store ledgers as well as the personell file do not only show the issue, but as well the return of the watch to your father (if kept according to the standing orders).
(d) The latest issue should not go back more than two years from the crash of your father as each Mk. 11 had to be returned for a service if a certain deviation was observed (damage) or were called in for a service after a certain period of time ("time expired").
(e) It will be hard to track down a watch starting with a catalogue of an auction house. On the one hand presumably this guy didn't sell your father's watch via an auction house so making it public, that he offered this watch for sale. He simply would have sold it on a watch fair or to a customer or a dealer. On the other hand I dare to say that no auction house still keeps records on watches sold 25 years ago. Maybe they do for very precious watches calling for some hundredthousand Pounds, but the Mk. 11 doesn't belong to that class.

Regards

Koenig

Thank you, so much, for your expert help, Mr Koenig and Adrian.
I am so glad that I have found this forum. Hopefully I will not bore you too much!
So, as I understand it, my father would not have had several watches allocated to him. He would have handed one in for service and got a different one from the stores, each time. The last one is the one. And if there are records, I get the year. The last line on the back would say, maybe 231/55, meaning batch of 231 watches supplied in 1955?
But, these watches were being resupplied after servicing and checking. So, the RAF would not need to order that many new ones. I am wondering - if I had the year, how many watches might that involve?

You are right, there were not that many. All versions included no more than about 8,000. We don't know how many survived.

Regards

Koenig

I read somewhere that many of them were sold off, with the marks removed from the back. I guess that most were handed back in to stores to be replaced by the Mark XII.

Maybe someone on the forum will remember buying it?
The seller was Kim-John Webb, based at Middle Street, Southampton at the time - 1992 onwards.
He became a Director of the British Horological Institute in January 1999, but resigned in September of that year, due to his conviction for deception. He saw a valuable pocket watch come in for repair and offered £15 for scrap. It was one of a pair of "Titanic" watches, and he knew that the other one had recently sold for many thousands.
Does anyone remember buying a Mark XI from this man?

Seriously, good luck. Sounds like a really tough task. Will be great if you succeed.

Another question for you helpful people.
Re-reading this thread, I am confused about the case numbering.
Referring to the bottom line, one of you has suggested that the first number is an individual one for the watch, another that it is the same on all watches from that year.
So, to make up an example, say, 257/52.
Would that mean, this is watch number 257 from the 1952 order, or, there were 257 watches in the 1952 order?

Oh, and...
I am wondering if more than one watch might have been issued, at one time?
When my father's plane crashed, it burned for about 3 hours before the fire crews could get close. What they call a "magnesium fire".
Would the watch have survived that, and still be in perfect working order?
And even if it did survive, would the RAF have taken it from his body, cleaned it up and given it to my mother with his personal effects?
I suspect that they would have just cleared out his quarters and that would be what she got.
It had a Bonclip strap, which I was told was not standard issue.

The number 257/52 is the number allocated to the specific watch not an indication of the number issued in a particular year. The Mark 11 is a tough watch but would be unlikely to survive a magnesium fire. It's going to be a long hard search for a Mark 11 that was sold on. They are sought after but not particularly rare and there are many fakes out there too. Good luck.