Given that there was no longer a need for the MP45 it was relegated to archives and presumably forgotten. The unconditional surrender of the Axis powers shortly thereafter marked the official end of the bloody conflict and Vertex returned its focus to civilian watches. If you look closely at this watch, you’ll immediately notice the resemblance with some old Lemania Military Monopusher watches…Ī prototype was made but the watch never saw production, in part due to the heavy rationing in place towards the end of the War that limited the number of movements that could be brought into the UK.
According to Vertex, the company was commissioned by the MoD to make an ordnance timing watch, in conjunction with Swiss manufacturer Lemania (another member of the Dirty Dozen), using the latter’s in-house movement. The Vertex MP45Īs you may have already deduced, the Vertex MP45 is not directly related to the Dirty Dozen (that’s the M100, which we will also get hands-on with in a separate article.) It does, however, originate from that same era. We will revisit the Dirty Dozen in more detail in a later article, so stay tuned for that if you would like more information. In total, around 150,000 W.W.W’s were supplied to the British military by the Dirty Dozen between May 1945 to December 1945, of which Vertex contributed approximately 15,000 pieces. Rugged case, capable of diminishing shocksįollowing this commission, Vertex, working with four Swiss factories, began producing the Cal 59 Nav watch in 1944.Precision movements that had to be regulated to chronometer criteria in a variety of conditions.Movements with 15 jewels, 11.75 to 13 ligne in diameter.
Producing watches for both military and civilian use, Vertex was based in Hatton Garden, London’s well-known watch and jewellery enclave, for almost five decades.
Established in London in 1916 by Claude Lyons as Vertex Watches Ltd, the company is arguably best known for being the only British member of the Dirty Dozen. Here’s what we thought.Īs you may already know, Vertex is not a new brand, at least not in the traditional sense. We were lucky enough to get our hands on one for a few days. The company’s latest release is the MP45. British watch brand Vertex falls very much into this last category. And you have a myriad of small – some even micro – brands, making legitimately cool and intriguing watches. You have Seiko doing some interesting things out of Japan. You have the Swiss and German giants behaving even more conservatively than usual (with some obvious exceptions, like the four-armed Patek Philippe Ref 5520P). The luxury watch industry is somewhat of a confusing and unpredictable place at the moment.