Teddy Baldassarre
Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical Review
Is there a contemporary field watch as beloved and versatile as the Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical? At this point the illustrious military history of the Khaki Field watch has been thoroughly explored (and if you’re not familiar with it, our resident historian Mark Bernardo has written an encyclopedic guide here). In short, Hamilton produced over a million watches for the United States military during World War II with its field watch in specific garnering praise for its universally consistent quality. This predecessor to the Khaki Field was a 34mm-wide field watch done in a chrome-plated metal case with radium lume dials and a manual-wind Caliber 987 movement. The modern Hamilton Watch Company was bought by the Swatch Group in 1974 with much of the production already having moved to Switzerland in 1969. The brand’s reassertion as a bonafide, authentic maker of military tool watches with historical provenance proliferated as an entire collection under the “Khaki” umbrella. While it was still producing watches for actual military units in the 1980s and ‘90s, Hamilton had done well by marketing to civilians once again in the wake of the Vietnam War. These early post-war civilian Hamilton Khaki watches were co-branded with retailers like Brookstone, Orvis, and L.L. Bean. This was also the time during which the “Khaki” logo began popping up on their dials. In 2018, Hamilton released the Khaki Field Mechanical which has gone on to be one of the most popular and b...
