Collection: Citizen Blue Angels and Snowbirds Watches

Citizen’s Blue Angels and Snowbirds watches

Citizen makes special editions of its Promaster pilot’s watches in honour of two flight demonstration teams: the Blue Angels of the U.S. Navy and the Snowbirds of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Each wears the team’s colours on the dial and bezel and its insignia on the caseback, and all of them run on Eco-Drive, so they charge from light and never need a battery.

The Blue Angels editions

Citizen has worked with the Blue Angels for more than 25 years. The first watch to come of it was the Blue Angels Navihawk. In 2002 the Skyhawk Blue Angels brought in Eco-Drive, a later version moved to a Super Titanium case, and in 2009 the line gained radio-controlled timekeeping. Two current editions are here:

• The Promaster Navihawk CA4667-53L is a 40 mm steel chronograph with a blue dial, black and white accents and a slide-rule scale on its blue bidirectional bezel for flight calculations. The Eco-Drive B620 movement times to a fifth of a second for up to 60 minutes and shows 12/24-hour time.
• The Promaster Skyhawk A-T JY8125-54L is the full-featured version: 46 mm, a blue ion-plated bezel with a yellow inner ring, and the U680 movement, which sets itself from atomic time signals, keeps the time for 43 cities and adds a second time zone, UTC, two alarms, a countdown timer and a chronograph to a hundredth of a second.

Citizen’s Blue Angels family also takes in versions of the Nighthawk and the World Chronograph A-T.

The Snowbirds editions

The Snowbirds are the Royal Canadian Air Force’s aerobatic flight demonstration team, and red runs through all of Citizen’s Snowbirds watches. The Skyhawk A-T JY8129-53H has a grey ion-plated steel case and bracelet with a black dial and red accents. The JY8071-51L is silver-tone steel with a red-accented blue dial and a rotating slide-rule bezel. Both are 46 mm and use the same U680 movement as the Blue Angels Skyhawk. The Promaster Navihawk CA4668-51X is the 40 mm Snowbirds chronograph, with a red dial and a blue and red bezel.

Navihawk or Skyhawk A-T

The choice comes down to size and how much you want the watch to do. The Navihawk is 40 mm and 12.5 mm thick, a compact analog chronograph that suits a smaller wrist. The Skyhawk A-T is 46 mm and about 14.5 mm thick, with digital displays beside the hands, a perpetual calendar and atomic timekeeping, so the time and date correct themselves. All of these editions are water resistant to 200 m, fine for swimming and snorkelling, and all have sapphire crystals. To compare them with the rest of Citizen’s pilot’s watches, see the Skyhawk, Nighthawk and Navihawk page. We’ve been an authorized Citizen dealer since 2004, and every one comes with the full manufacturer warranty.

Questions

What is the slide-rule bezel for? It’s a circular calculator. Turning it lines up two scales so a pilot can work out flight time, ground speed, distance and fuel use, or convert statute miles to nautical miles and kilometres.

Do they need a battery? No. Eco-Drive turns any light into power and stores it in a rechargeable cell. Our guide to how Eco-Drive works explains how long a charge lasts.