Many, many people out there view the ubiquitous Rolex Submariner as the forefather of all amphibious timepieces. And they’re dead wrong. In fact, the first truly fit-for-purpose dive watch was made by one of the oldest Swiss watchmakers in the game – Blancpain. The story of the world’s first dive watch is an interesting one, and it all started with a man nicknamed “The French James Bond”. Captain Robert “Bob” Maloubier was a French national who, at the beginning of 1940, enlisted in Winston Churchill’s secretive Special Operations Executive. SOE was an organisation that focused on espionage and unorthodox combat tactics in occupied Europe during the Second World War. Maloubier would become one of the firm’s foremost spies and, after parachuting into occupied France, he was responsible for spying on and sabotaging the Nazi war machine as well as supporting the French Resistance. At the close of WW2, Maloubier would enlist in the Marine Nationale (French Navy), and it was during his time at “Le Royale” that he and fellow compatriot, Lieutenant Claude Riffaud, would establish the French military’s combat diving corps, more commonly known as the “French Frogmen”. In the course of their training and clandestine missions, it became…
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