Tough, Tactical, And Terrific: The DTU-2A/P Field Watch And Type 2 Mil Spec, From Benrus
Two blasts from the medium-distant past.
Having drunk deeply from the well of luxury and fine watchmaking during the aftermath of LVMH Watch Week, I’d like to take the opportunity now to spend a little time with two watches which represent what used to be not only a well established niche in mechanical horology, but an essential one as well: the field watch, and the diver’s watch, as represented by the Benrus DTU-2A/P field watch, and the Type 2 Mil Spec Diver.
Benrus was at one point one of the most well-known American watch companies, having gotten its start in 1921 when the company was established by three Romanian-America brothers – Benjamin, Oscar, and Ralph; the name Benrus is a portmanteau of Benjamin Lazarus. Benrus became a true giant of American watchmaking and although the company started out relatively modestly, by importing Swiss calibers and casing them in the USA, by the 1960s they were making, according to Robin Swithinbank’s story for The New York Times from April of last year, making “about a million watches a year” and the company had, among other things, made the clock that kept time at the original, tragically demolished (in an unforgivable act of cultural vandalism) Pennsylvania Station. The original Penn Station was designed by McKim, Mead & White, and it was, alas, replaced in the 1960s with the characterless monstrosity, a sordid edifice that Sauron the Dark Lord would have admired, which currently and ignominiously bears the name.
To many vintage watch enthusiasts, Benrus is perhaps best known for the watches which it made to military specifications. The company after quite a lot of post-Quartz Crisis ups and downs, was relaunched in 2025 at Time To Watches, thanks to an investment group founded for the purpose, which acquired the rights to the brand in 2017 under the direction of chairman Michael Sweeney. If you think you’ve seen Benrus watches from the current collection prior to 2025, you’re partly right; the company got its feet wet with limited editions modeled after historical models, including a Type 1 Mil Spec LE. As with Benrus’ historical production, the new watches have Swiss made movements, with other components like the case, dial, and hands produced in Switzerland as well.
The Type 2, to take what I suspect will be the most popular of the two first, is a reproduction of a watch originally made by Benrus in the 1970s according to MIL-W-50717, and was specifically designed for combat diver units like UDT (underwater demolition teams) and the US Navy SEALs. (The UDTs were originally founded during the Second World War, and their primary briefs were conducting reconnaissance of landing sites for amphibious assault, as well as clearing obstacles and guiding landing craft. Of the origin of such units, the Navy SEAL Museum website has this to say:
“Amphibious Scouts and Raiders (Joint) were created specifically to reconnoiter prospective landing beaches and to lead assault forces to the correct beaches under cover of darkness. The unit was led by U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Lloyd Peddicord as commanding officer, and Navy Ensign John Bell as executive officer. Navy chief petty officers and sailors came from the boat pool at ATB, Solomons, Maryland and Army Raider personnel came from the 3rd and 9th Infantry Divisions. They trained at Little Creek until embarking for the North Africa campaign the following November. Operation TORCH was launched in November 1942 off the Atlantic coast of French Morocco in North Africa. One mission, under Army 1st Lieutenant Willard G. Duckworth, involved the launching of kayaks from the submarine USS Barb (SS-220). This was the first U.S. submarine hosted operation of World War II involving specially trained reconnaissance personnel.”
The beach reconnaissance units originally were simply individual swimmers with masks and goggles (which earned them the slightly Spartan moniker, “The Naked Warriors”) or small groups of men in rubber boats, but the first US combat diver to use an aqualung, was William Giannotti, who used one to dive on the wreck of USS Pledge, a minesweeper sunk when she struck a mine in October of 1950, during the Korean War. The first SEAL teams were established in 1962 and have been active ever since.
The specification MIL-W-50717 was created in 1972 (with an update in 1977) and was at the time, the most demanding spec for a US government-contract military watch ever created. The spec goes from the mundane “the watch shall have three hands” and “the strap shall be black” to the more technical; “Isochronism: In the dial up position at 23 [degrees]C, +/- 10C, the difference in rate (see 6.2.2) in a 24 hour period, between the first four hours and the last four hours, shall not exceed 5 (five) seconds.” (I have always thought that the use of the phrase, “THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK” which can be found in many technical documents, military and otherwise, has a certain lead-footed bureacratic charm, from the days when documents were physical, cigarettes “opened the lungs” and watches, mechanical).
The Type 2 Mil Spec is about as basic as it gets; it is as notable for what’s absent as for what’s present. The exterior has no aesthetics per se that I can detect, except maybe for the beveling on the transition between the case flank and the upper and lower surfaces of the case, which is arguably function as well, since a 90º edge would be prone to damage and probably uncomfortable to wear for extended periods as well. There are no shiny or reflective surfaces, full stop; the dial is matte; the bezel insert is matte (aluminum) and the case has a bead-blasted (matte) finish. When the Mark 1 reissue came out, Hodinkee was a retail partner and Logan Baker (now at Phillips) wrote something very apropos:
“High-fidelity modern remakes of classic watches with cult followings are a real minefield and, on a certain level, a no-win situation. Inevitably, you’re going to have two extremes of criticism: folks who think you’re just showing lack of imagination on the one hand, and folks who think you’re not showing enough lack of imagination on the other.”
The new Type 2 is 39.5mm x 14.4mm, and as much as any watch I’ve ever seen, this watch is reduced almost to nothing but the specs; maybe there’s some residue of mid-century whimsy in the diamond tipped seconds hand but that is as far as it goes. Water resistance in case you’re wondering is well in excess of the statutory 100M required by the international dive watch standard, ISO 6425, at 365M or about 1200 feet. The watch doesn’t even trouble itself with a serif here and there, and the dial in keeping with the originals is sterile. The movement is an ETA 2892-A2, with a 46 hour reserve, and the crystal is double AR-coated synthetic sapphire.
Walt Odets once wrote that the IWC Mark XII was so pragmatic that it transcended its own pragmatism to achieve an aesthetic of its own, but I struggle to go even that far with the Mark 2. It is about as purpose built as you can get; it has the blunt authority of a sledgehammer or a hand grenade or an ammunition belt. I find its total commitment to utility briskly refreshing (maybe because I’ve been on a diet of very haute, haute horlogerie lately) and boy oh boy, if you ever wanted a watch that makes the Seiko SKX007 Diver look like Brancusi’s Bird In Space by comparison, you can stop looking.
The second watch that came along for the ride is the DTU Field Watch, which is built around the MIL-W-3818B spec, from 1962 (which was itself an update to MIL-W_3818B, originally published in 1956). To give it its proper name, this is the DTU-2A/P, which first saw he light of day in 1962 in response to the updated milspec, and the new watch follows the spec as well.
While the Mark 2 is absolutely and resolutely devoid of frills and flourishes, the DTU (the letters look like an acronym but are not; they’re just a standard military specification code, as far as I have been able to determine) has a very slight nod to design in the beige lume, but only slightly, although the downside to the use of this color is that it’s slightly less luminous that blue-green emission Super-LumiNova. The use of what used to get called “fauxtina” lume has become sufficiently well established as a design trope in vintage inspired watches that nobody bothers much with the term anymore – if you really wanted to drag a military spec modern version of a vintage milspec watch I suppose you could say that it is an attempt to dress in stolen glory but such a criticism strikes me nowadays as at best, overkill.
The spec, as the watch was not intended for use by any specialized customer, but rather, as a general purpose field watch, is less stringent than the MIL-W-50717 requirements but it still makes interesting reading if you are historically inclined – not just for its relationship to this particular watch, but also for what is says about the larger context of mechanical watch expectations in the early 1960s. 1962 was a year in which active research was going on, in the field of quartz watches, but they were still almost eight years off, although there were signs in the air that the mechanical watch might some day be superseded by electronic watches – in 1962 we had already had had Accutron watches for two years, and battery powered watches with magnetically impulsed balances so change was in the wind.
MIL–W-3818B like MIL-W-50717, is painstakingly thorough in detailing the asks. The document specifies tritium lume (which has long since been largely replaced by SLN, as tritium has a fairly short half life and begins to dim noticeably after just a few years) and the watch is required to have 17 jewels, a “solid, monometallic nonmagnetic balance wheel,” a Nivarox-type balance spring, and a power reserve of 36 hours. Notably, the requirements specify that the watch should have “endstone jewels secured in a manner which will facilitate cleaning and oiling” so these were not meant to be throwaway watches. The spec also specifies a stop seconds hand, and has isochronism requirements similar to MIL-W_50717.
The modern version runs an ETA 2671 caliber, which is a little bit of a legacy movement at this point, having been produced since 1971 but I feel it suits the character of the watch. It’s a smaller movement, at 17.2mm in diameter (with a 38 hour power reserve) and only its mother would call it “fine” but then again, this is a watch designed for pretty hard daily use, not for drawing squeals of admiration for its aesthetics. It also suits the fact that this is a smaller watch, in keeping with the by-modern-standards diminutive size of the original – the new watch is 34mm x 10.90mm, and it is water resistant to 100M and you get a domed sapphire crystal as well (and a sterile dial).Benrus notes that the cal. 2671 is a native no-date caliber, so there’s no ghost position for the crown, which is a small but satisfying detail.
The original DTU-2A/P saw a lot of service during the Vietnam War and seems a bit more specific to its time period than the Mark 2, which I think is intentional. If you really want to lean into the ’60s feel I would recommend the Bund strap, which is one of two options (the other is a green NATO-style strap).
These are if you have a taste for this sort of thing, both hugely attractive watches with a connection to hard use in the real world. I can never quite look at watches designed specifically for military units without wondering about our relationship to war; people of good will universally deplore it and yet, it exerts a strong fascination across the length of human history, defining human culture in many ways – from the Iliad and the Odyssey, to Saving Private Ryan. That such watches were called to service and worn by those who served is part of their fascination – an anchor of pragmatic authenticity in a watch world whose discourse is increasingly dominated by the two headed monster of rising cost and calculated scarcity.
The Benrus Type 2 Mil Spec, is $1795; the DTU-2A/P, $990. For more, including current pricing and availability, visit Benrus.com.