The Paneristi have the Ethiopian Crisis of
the mid-1930s to thank for the birth of their
baby. That flareup led directly to the development
of the Panerai watch. In a nutshell, here’s
what happened.
Tensions between Italy, Ethiopia and
Ethiopia’s League of Nations backers, Britain
and France, mounted in the 1930s, and led to
an Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Britain
responded by sending the Home Fleet into the
Mediterranean Sea in a show of force against
Italy. Italy’s sea power was piddling compared
to that of the British Navy, so Italian Naval
Command planned what its official history
refers to as “insidious means of attack” in
the event hostilities broke out. It created
a team of underwater commandos
trained to stage secret attacks.
The commandos, known
as the Gamma Group, required
a rugged waterproof watch to
wear on their missions and the
1st Submarine Group asked Naval
Command to find one.
Guido Panerai & Figlio, as the firm was
called then, was the natural choice. (The firm
later changed its name to Officine Panerai; officine
means “workshop” in Italian.) Panerai
had been supplying precision instruments to
the Italian Navy since before World War I,
things like mechanical calculators for firing torpedoes,
compasses, and timing devices for
mines. Moreover, it specialized in producing
instruments that glowed in the dark thanks to
a compound called Radiomir that Panerai developed
and patented. Radiomir was a powder
consisting of phosphorescent zinc sulphide, radium
bromide and mesothorium. Panerai enclosed
Radiomir in tiny hermetically sealed
glass tubes, which were then inserted into, say,
a sighting mechanism, enabling the device to
be used at night.
