Is your Laco
a real Flieger?

Laco is one of the five companies that actually built B-Uhr observation watches for the Luftwaffe, and one of only two of those still making watches that look like them. That genuine lineage is surrounded by an enormous number of generic Fliegers that borrow the design and claim the history.

Last reviewed July 2026 · Independent guide · Not affiliated with Laco

What a B-Uhr actually was

The Beobachtungsuhr — observation watch — was a navigational instrument issued to Luftwaffe navigators, and it was built to a specification rather than to a style. The cases were around 55 millimetres across, far too large to be worn as ordinary watches, and the long strap was designed to be worn over a flight jacket sleeve. Five companies supplied them: Laco, Stowa, A. Lange & Söhne, Wempe and the Swiss firm IWC.

Every visual quirk that now reads as style solved a problem. The triangle at twelve with two flanking dots let a navigator establish orientation instantly in darkness. The oversized onion crown could be operated wearing thick gloves. The dial contrast was extreme because it had to be readable at a glance under cockpit lighting while doing something else.

Of the original five, only Laco and Stowa still offer watches designed to look like the originals. That is the historical claim underpinning the brand, and it is genuine. It is also the claim that a large number of generic Fliegers borrow by implication without ever quite stating.

Type A and Type B, and why both are correct

The single most common confusion about Fliegers is between the two dial layouts, and it is worth being precise because both are authentic. Type A, introduced first, has a single hour ring reading 1 to 11 with the triangle at twelve, and a prominent minute track. Type B, which followed, moves the minutes to the outer ring and places the hours in a smaller inner ring, because navigators were reading minutes far more often than hours.

Neither is a fake or a variant of the other. They are two successive specifications, and a genuine Laco reproduction may be either. What cannot exist is a dial that mixes the conventions — hours on the outer ring with minutes inboard, for example, or a Type B inner ring without the corresponding outer minute scale. Those are invented layouts and they are a reliable sign that whoever designed the dial did not understand what they were copying.

This makes dial layout the cheapest possible first check, because it can be run on a listing photograph before any correspondence with a seller. Get the layout wrong and nothing else about the watch needs assessing.

Which Laco are you buying?

Laco produces at very different price points and the difference is mechanical. Its historical reproductions use the ETA 6497 family: a hand-wound, pocket-watch-derived calibre running at 18,000 vibrations per hour with roughly 46 hours of reserve, whose large slow-beating balance is part of the appeal. Its more affordable automatic models use the Laco 21, based on a Miyota calibre.

Both are genuine Laco watches. Neither is a fake. But they are separated by a considerable amount of money, and the most frequent way buyers lose out on this brand is not counterfeiting but paying reproduction prices for an automatic model, or assuming that any Laco carries the historically faithful hand-wound movement.

The check is trivial: a hand-wound watch has no rotor. If a watch sold as a hand-wound historical reproduction winds itself when you move it, or shows a rotor through a display back, it is a different model in the range. Ask which reference and which calibre before agreeing a price, and treat vagueness on that point as meaningful.

Generic Fliegers and the borrowed-history problem

The Flieger design is not protected, and a very large number of companies produce watches using it. Many are perfectly honest products sold on their own merits. Others lean heavily on the aesthetic while implying a historical connection that does not exist, and the implication is usually made through atmosphere rather than through any specific false claim.

The practical consequence is that you cannot authenticate a Laco by recognising a Flieger, because Fliegers are everywhere. You authenticate it by finding Laco’s own markings, confirming the movement matches a Laco specification, and checking that the case engraving is crisp and correctly executed rather than shallow or misaligned.

Where a watch carries no maker marking at all, it is not an unbranded Laco. Laco marks its watches. An unmarked Flieger is a generic watch, which may be a fine object but is not the thing whose history is being invoked — and should not command the price of one.