A company that’s been constructing military-grade watches for the U.S., Canada and other nations since World War II has added an arctic version of a premier search and rescue watch to its inventory.
Company owner Mitchell Wein’s grandfather had the good fortune of housing his watchmaking business in the same building as the Canadian Army’s procurement office as the nation entered the WWII.
It had only been a few years since the Marathon Watch founder had broken off from the family watch business to design his own product.
Those first watches went on the wrists of soldiers headed to fight in Italy. The company eventually delivered an estimated 160,000 watches during WWII, Wein said, and has remained in the military watch game nearly ever since.
“Combining military-grade durability with precise engineering, the Original Search and Rescue with Date, or OSAR-D, builds on Marathon Watch’s legacy of the original 41mm SAR, which set the standard for Search and Rescue timepieces in the early 2000s,” according to a company release.
The expanded OSAR-D family of watches maintains the enhanced features introduced last year with the launch of the 41mm OSAR-D with black dial.
Those include the improved MaraGlo illumination, larger indices and increased clarity on the cyclops date window.
The company also added the Arctic white dial, which is designed to improve legibility in bright conditions, offering unparalleled readability in extreme environments.
All the company’s timepieces are powered by Marathon x Sellita automatic movements. The SW-200 movement drives 36mm and 41mm sizes.
The 46mm jumbo edition is equipped with the new SW600 movement, which includes a 62-hour power reserve, now the largest power reserve Marathon has to date.
Each OSAR-D model is also fitted with an Incabloc shock absorber to reinforce its durability.
The 41mm size watches are available for preorder, with shipments slated for mid-May, company officials said. Prices start at $1,500 with the 3-piece rubber strap kit. The stainless steel bracelet option costs $1,800.
The 36mm and 46mm sizes will be available in late 2025, with prices ranging from $1,000 to $2,500.
The company built its general-purpose mechanical watch in 1976 for the U.S. military and started building chronometers for ships in the early 1980s, Wein said.
“We didn’t really make money on the government watches,” Wein said, adding that they would get orders of 7,000 or 11,000 watches and make between $3.50 and $5 per watch.
One of the reasons mechanical watches remain part of military inventory in an age of their smart counterparts is that mechanical timekeeping remains impervious to electromagnetic pulse tactics that could blow out any electronics in range. They also do not emit a signal that can be detected by electromagnetic warfare tools.
And then there’s the battery, or lack thereof, which adds to their long-lasting durability. The watch can operate for 30 years, as compared to a traditional quartz watch that usually requires a new battery every six years.
Special, synthetic oil blends keep the watch going. Those only need replacement every 15 years or so, Wein said. Tritium gas tubes that provide glow in the dark features stay bright for 12 to 25 years.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
