1965 Benrus Military Field Watch DTU-2A/P 'MIL-W-3818B'

The New York City-based Benrus watches was started by three brothers in 1921 in the heart of the Big Apple's jewelry district. Benrus began importing Swiss-made movements for their watches being assembled in the US and steadily grew throughout the early 20th century. While Benrus produced a wide array of wristwatches including alarms, calendars, chronographs, and dive watches, Benrus today is most well-known for the battle-hardened military watches they produced throughout the 60s and 70s. 

At the top of that list is this, the MIL-W-3818B DTU-2A/P military field watch. If it looks familiar, it's because countless manufacturers—from Hamilton to Timex, Marathon, and others—have since co-opted the design. Truly – the name may be a mouthful but the influence and iconicity of this watch cannot be understated. 

The backstory goes like this: in 1964, Benrus won the US military's MIL-W-3818B contract to make a field watch for soldiers fighting in Vietnam. As a result, it needed to be highly legible and built to withstand all manner of confrontation. The DTU is the result of that effort.

The Benrus DTU was only made between 1964 and 1969 and features a one-piece case design and the Benrus Cal. DR 2F2—a hand-wound 17 jewel movement based on the ETA Cal. 2370—working away on the inside. But it's that now-legendary dial design that makes the watch so iconic – clean white hands and hour markers, 12- and 24-hour Arabic numerals, and triangular lume plots on the dial. It's been copied, homaged, and re-issued numerous times since then, but there really is no substitute for the original.