Raketa watches are not built with tourbillons, minute repeaters or flyback chronographs. The watches we build are meant to do one thing, and do it well: tell the time. We follow the Soviet design principle that the more complicated a thing is, the less reliable it will be. Thus, our watches use an exceptionally simple, yet robust mechanism, that has undergone over 60 years of incremental adjustments, simplifications and improvements.
During the Soviet period, Raketa produced watches for the army, navy and airforce: institutions that cared about reliability and toughness above all else. We catered to the elite sections of the Soviet forces, and produced watches that would be used in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, such as by the aerial bomber force, the submarine fleet, and the elite arctic troops.
During the height of the space race, the Soviet cosmonautics program needed a robust and accurate watch for cosmonauts to wear. The watches also needed special functions, such as a 24 hour movement enabling cosmonauts to distinguish day from night and such as an automatic disengage system, that protected the automatic module from wearing out in space. Thus, in the spirit of the watches that it already made for Soviet pilots, Raketa developed watches for cosmonauts employing extremely high standards of production, the legacy of which continues to this day.
The Raketa Watch Factory has always been inspired by incredible human technical achievements. It has therefore designed and manufactured a tool watch as testimony to the Lun-class Ekranoplan: a Soviet era hybrid machine - half ship, half plane - unlike anything else in the world. The insert of the Raketa “Ekranoplan” rotating bezel is made from a piece of metal from the Lun-class Ekranoplan, officially given to the Factory by the city of Derbent which is in charge of safeguarding the Ekranoplan.
In the late 1970s, Soviet submarine crews needed a watch. Staying underwater for many months, they needed a watch with a robust 24-hour movement to allow them to distinguish day from night. Additionally, it needed to be a watch with a bi-directional rotor, so that it could more efficiently wind itself in cramped conditions. Given its proximity to the sea, Raketa already had a strong history of making naval watches, and was naturally given the task of creating such a watch. To this day, Raketa continues the tradition of producing specialised watches for submariners.
The Raketa “Sonar” model is a submariner’s watch by design and functionality: it has a Raketa 24 hour automatic movement, luminescent dial and hands and a bi-directional rotor, which submarine crews badly need.
In addition to the Raketa “Sonar” model for the main collection, Raketa has launched a limited edition of 500 pieces — Raketa “Sonar Kashalot”. The bezel of this watch for submariners is made from titanium of the nuclear powered submarine K-322 “Kashalot”. The metal was obtained during the submarine’s deconstruction at the Amur Shipbuilding Plant and was officially given to the Raketa Watch Factory.
The Raketa 24-hour movement was specially developed in 1970 by the Raketa Watch Factory for the polar explorers of the 16th Soviet Antarctic expedition. Since this freezing continent is in perpetual daylight or darkness during consecutive periods of 6 months, this watch needed not only to be robust but also needed a special 24 hour movement that would allow to tell the time without knowing if it was day or night.
Following its long tradition of making watches for polar explorers, Raketa has developed a model for people who are ready to set out to conquer boundless polar spaces by land and sea. Six lines divide the perimeter of the 24-hour dial into 6 quarters (4 hours each) allowing each crewmember to keep count of his watches/shifts during polar maritime expeditions.
Each Raketa Polar watch has a certificate confirming its technical fitness for use in the harshest natural conditions of polar regions. The certificate is issued within the frame of the “Arctic voluntary certification system”.
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