WOE Dispatch

Beneath The Surface: Recovering WWII Heroes In Palau

Beneath The Surface: Recovering WWII Heroes In ...

Diving For The Remains Of WWII Service Members In The Western Pacific with Project Recover

11 comments

Beneath The Surface: Recovering WWII Heroes In Palau

Diving For The Remains Of WWII Service Members In The Western Pacific with Project Recover

Read More
11 comments
Watch Industry SITREP - April 2025

Watch Industry SITREP - April 2025

Bremont Ambassador trains Chinese Pilots?, Rolex-Wearing National Security Advisor Ousted, A Legendary CIA Director's Pocket Watch Up For Auction, Rolex & US Watchmakers Respond To Tariffs, & Trump Watches Are...

5 comments

Watch Industry SITREP - April 2025

Bremont Ambassador trains Chinese Pilots?, Rolex-Wearing National Security Advisor Ousted, A Legendary CIA Director's Pocket Watch Up For Auction, Rolex & US Watchmakers Respond To Tariffs, & Trump Watches Are Finally In The Wild By Benjamin Lowry For most of the industry, the talk of the past few weeks centered...

Read More
5 comments
Hollywood Watches Of Espionage - Part III

Hollywood Watches Of Espionage - Part III

Archer’s Spy-Watch, John Travolta’s Sketchy Aerospace, A G-Shock in Speed, & The Kingsman Bremont Despite the massive delta between the on-screen antics of fictional spies and real-life intelligence officers, the...

19 comments

Hollywood Watches Of Espionage - Part III

Archer’s Spy-Watch, John Travolta’s Sketchy Aerospace, A G-Shock in Speed, & The Kingsman Bremont Despite the massive delta between the on-screen antics of fictional spies and real-life intelligence officers, the link between watches, espionage, and film is strong and only getting stronger. It is often difficult to differentiate between fiction...

Read More
19 comments
W.O.E. YouTube: Seiko Watches & Toyota - Tools Of Warfare

W.O.E. YouTube: Seiko Watches & Toyota - Tools ...

Look back at pictures of conflicts from the past six decades, and you are bound to see one thing: Seiko watches on the wrists of military personnel, often on both...

7 comments

W.O.E. YouTube: Seiko Watches & Toyota - Tools Of Warfare

Look back at pictures of conflicts from the past six decades, and you are bound to see one thing: Seiko watches on the wrists of military personnel, often on both sides. For the same reasons that the Toyota Hilux and Land Cruisers are commonly spotted in war zones—relatively low cost...

Read More
7 comments
Rolex, A Love-Hate Relationship

Rolex, A Love-Hate Relationship

I love Rolex, but after buying my first new Rolex GMT from an AD, I am not sure modern Rolex is the brand for me. The Crown’s customer experience may...

86 comments

Rolex, A Love-Hate Relationship

I love Rolex, but after buying my first new Rolex GMT from an AD, I am not sure modern Rolex is the brand for me. The Crown’s customer experience may be an existential threat. I’m a simple man. Give me an old steel Rolex—Submariner or GMT—with drilled lug holes and...

Read More
86 comments
Watches Of The Shawn Ryan Show

Watches Of The Shawn Ryan Show

Unfiltered Conversations With America’s Elite Warriors Offer Unique Insight Into Military Watch Culture The Shawn Ryan Show has exploded in popularity in recent years and grown into a media platform...

12 comments

Watches Of The Shawn Ryan Show

Unfiltered Conversations With America’s Elite Warriors Offer Unique Insight Into Military Watch Culture The Shawn Ryan Show has exploded in popularity in recent years and grown into a media platform amassing some 16M views per month. Shawn, a former SEAL and CIA GRS contractor, is known for diving deep into...

Read More
12 comments
W.O.E. YouTube: James Bond & The Omega Seamaster

W.O.E. YouTube: James Bond & The Omega Seamaster

After over three decades of wearing Rolex watches in some of history’s favorite spy films, James Bond made an unexpected leap to Omega starting in 1995’s GoldenEye. What might have...

3 comments

W.O.E. YouTube: James Bond & The Omega Seamaster

After over three decades of wearing Rolex watches in some of history’s favorite spy films, James Bond made an unexpected leap to Omega starting in 1995’s GoldenEye. What might have appeared like a genius marketing coup for Omega was actually the work of a single savvy designer helping to guide...

Read More
3 comments
Tudor Cements Its Role As Tool Watch Leader

Tudor Cements Its Role As Tool Watch Leader

As The Industry Trends Toward Luxury, Tudor Embraces Its Tool Watch Heritage With Watches and Wonders 2025 Releases Last year, we compiled a list of Watches and Wonders releases for...

22 comments

Tudor Cements Its Role As Tool Watch Leader

As The Industry Trends Toward Luxury, Tudor Embraces Its Tool Watch Heritage With Watches and Wonders 2025 Releases Last year, we compiled a list of Watches and Wonders releases for the W.O.E. community (Read Here), and we planned to do the same thing this year, but the reality is that...

Read More
22 comments
The Canteen Watch & The OSS Maritime Unit - Forefathers Of The Navy SEALS

The Canteen Watch & The OSS Maritime Unit - For...

When it comes to Watches of Espionage, dive watches reign supreme. The history of watches like the Rolex Submariner and the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms is well-known and backed by celebrated...

9 comments

The Canteen Watch & The OSS Maritime Unit - Forefathers Of The Navy SEALS

When it comes to Watches of Espionage, dive watches reign supreme. The history of watches like the Rolex Submariner and the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms is well-known and backed by celebrated connections to amphibious SpecOps, including the French Commando Hubert and the US Navy SEALs. But over a decade before these...

Read More
9 comments
W.O.E. YouTube: Blackwater Breitling Emergency

W.O.E. YouTube: Blackwater Breitling Emergency

At the intersection of W.O.E. and Breitling watches is Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL turned CEO of Blackwater, history’s most notorious military contractor. After losing members of his team...

1 comment

W.O.E. YouTube: Blackwater Breitling Emergency

At the intersection of W.O.E. and Breitling watches is Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL turned CEO of Blackwater, history’s most notorious military contractor. After losing members of his team in a plane crash in Afghanistan, Prince commissioned a custom Breitling Emergency with Blackwater’s logo on the dial. More than...

Read More
1 comment
Watch Industry SITREP - March 2025

Watch Industry SITREP - March 2025

Signal Chats Gone Wild, Stranded Astronauts Return To Earth, FBI Deputy Director Has Expensive Watch Taste, Kristi Noem LARPs Wearing A Daytona, & Jonny Kim Wears A Rolex To Space...

10 comments

Watch Industry SITREP - March 2025

Signal Chats Gone Wild, Stranded Astronauts Return To Earth, FBI Deputy Director Has Expensive Watch Taste, Kristi Noem LARPs Wearing A Daytona, & Jonny Kim Wears A Rolex To Space (Maybe) By Benjamin Lowry Let’s face it, no matter what side of the aisle you land on, the regular news...

Read More
10 comments
How I Would Steal The Watches & Wonders Releases From Rolex

How I Would Steal The Watches & Wonders Release...

A Former CIA Case Officer Dissects How To Penetrate Rolex SA We are now one week out from Watches and Wonders, the annual trade show in Geneva, Switzerland, where many...

12 comments

How I Would Steal The Watches & Wonders Releases From Rolex

A Former CIA Case Officer Dissects How To Penetrate Rolex SA We are now one week out from Watches and Wonders, the annual trade show in Geneva, Switzerland, where many of the premier luxury watch brands debut their latest designs. W&W is a masterclass in marketing, with weeks of blogs...

Read More
12 comments
The State Of American Watchmaking In 2025

The State Of American Watchmaking In 2025

Formerly A Watchmaking Powerhouse, The United States Is Still Home To Serious Watchmakers If You Know Where To Look By Benjamin Lowry In the United States, it means something to...

24 comments

The State Of American Watchmaking In 2025

Formerly A Watchmaking Powerhouse, The United States Is Still Home To Serious Watchmakers If You Know Where To Look By Benjamin Lowry In the United States, it means something to be “American-made”, especially within the W.O.E. community. However, the realities behind “Made in the USA” have led to challenges for...

Read More
24 comments
Spy Scandal Rocks LVMH Luxury Brand - The Anatomy Of Private Intelligence

Spy Scandal Rocks LVMH Luxury Brand - The Anato...

Former French Spy Chief found guilty of using public intelligence resources to aid LVMH and France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault. Nothing gets the blood flowing like a little corporate espionage....

6 comments

Spy Scandal Rocks LVMH Luxury Brand - The Anatomy Of Private Intelligence

Former French Spy Chief found guilty of using public intelligence resources to aid LVMH and France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault. Nothing gets the blood flowing like a little corporate espionage. On 7 March, Bernard Squarcini, the former chief of France’s domestic intelligence service, was convicted of using public resources to...

Read More
6 comments
W.O.E. YouTube: Best Military Watches For Land, Sea, & Air

W.O.E. YouTube: Best Military Watches For Land,...

While many modern service members trust Digital Tool Watches (D.T.W.) in the performance of their duties, there is a growing subset of the military, SpecOps, and the Intelligence Community leaning...

2 comments

W.O.E. YouTube: Best Military Watches For Land, Sea, & Air

While many modern service members trust Digital Tool Watches (D.T.W.) in the performance of their duties, there is a growing subset of the military, SpecOps, and the Intelligence Community leaning into the combination of utility and mechanical intrigue presented by analog watches. There’s a lot of marketing B.S. out there,...

Read More
2 comments
Is It Safe To Keep Your Rolex In A Hotel Safe?

Is It Safe To Keep Your Rolex In A Hotel Safe?

Using Hotel Safes As A CIA Case Officer & In Daily Life During my second tour as a CIA Case Officer, I received a short message from a HQS office...

22 comments

Is It Safe To Keep Your Rolex In A Hotel Safe?

Using Hotel Safes As A CIA Case Officer & In Daily Life During my second tour as a CIA Case Officer, I received a short message from a HQS office I had never heard of. The individual inquired about an upcoming vacation (R&R) I planned to take with Mrs. W.O.E....

Read More
22 comments
Diving With The Mk II Fulcrum 39

Diving With The Mk II Fulcrum 39

At Watches of Espionage, we don’t generally do watch reviews. The fact is that other platforms are better suited for this type of content. We will never become yet another...

17 comments

Diving With The Mk II Fulcrum 39

At Watches of Espionage, we don’t generally do watch reviews. The fact is that other platforms are better suited for this type of content. We will never become yet another outlet copying and pasting watch specifications and marketing language, but certain brands and models feel closer to our community than...

Read More
17 comments
W.O.E. YouTube: Omega “Unit Watches” Of Navy SEALs & SpecOps - The Real Story

W.O.E. YouTube: Omega “Unit Watches” Of Navy SE...

Backed by a significant history of producing military watches dating back to the First World War, Omega quietly continues to produce customized “Unit Watches” for select government organizations and military...

2 comments

W.O.E. YouTube: Omega “Unit Watches” Of Navy SEALs & SpecOps - The Real Story

Backed by a significant history of producing military watches dating back to the First World War, Omega quietly continues to produce customized “Unit Watches” for select government organizations and military units including the US Navy SEALs, US Secret Service, Danish Frogman Corps, and more. Intriguingly, despite being one of the...

Read More
2 comments