Vostok Amphibia Operation Desert Shield

The Vostok Amphibia Operation Desert Shield has an interesting story behind it. There also seem to be a lot of variations of this watch, Komandirskies, Generalskies and Amphibias, some are real and some are frankens. I think mine is the real deal, an Amphibia 420 case with a manual 2414A movement. I came across quite a few different models whilst reading up about this watch and I have collected some links at the end of this post to the various types that I have found so far.

The rumours go that this was a joint Russian / USA venture, a watch produced by Vostok under instruction from the Pentagon for issue to allied soldiers in commemoration of Operation Desert Shield –  The Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991) was codenamed Operation Desert Shield. The USSR and the USA were briefly allies in 1991, the first time since WWII, when the USSR backed a US-led UN expedition to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Today it seems quite unthinkable that the USSR and USA were working so closely together but I guess this watch symbolises, rather prematurely, their nascent relationship and a strange period in time and international relations.

The truth is that this was a simple business venture between Vostok and Timepeace Russian Watches Inc. This was a company set up by Bruce Erikson, W. Edgar Cornish and Bruce Corwin to capitalise on the patriotic fervour surrounding the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Around the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Russian things were cool, thing logos, red stars, flags, hammer and sickles etc. etc. From Bizapedia,

Timepeace Russian Watches, Inc. is a Massachusetts Domestic Profit Corporation filed on August 13, 1990. The company’s File Number is listed as 043104544. The company’s principal address is 886 Hale St. Beverly Farms, MA 01915. The company has 3 principals on record. The principals are Bruce Corwin from Hamilton MA, Bruce Erikson from Farms MA, and Robb Erikson from Farms MA.

They also trademarked a watch brand called Vremir, meaning “time” in Russian, presumably set up to sell Russian watches in the US. If you look in this thread, you’ll see the Vremir watches are basically Vostoks with an own brand logo consisting of three towers. I have never seen one in the flesh.

Apparently there were some 10,000 limited edition Vostok Operation Desert Shield watches made with some 300 being presented to military personel including President George Bush Sr. and US Senator John Kerry. Other sources I have seen say there were 200,000 watches ordered. The watches were advertised in Stars & Stripes magazine at the time, around 1992, and sold at base stores for the princely sum of $149 for civilians and $99 for military personel. There is a discussion of these and an original newspaper clipping at this thread at Watchuseek F10 (the Russian Watch Forum). Another article says there were 2000 sold to military personel and 500 sold in the USA. So it seems to be a bit of a muddle. Basically, the long and the short of it is that they weren’t ordered by the Pentagon nor were they issued (in any numbers) to military personel.

Vostok Amphibia Operation Desert Shield

My watch is housed inside a classic Vostok Amphibia 420 case. It measures 39mm (excluding crown) x 46mm with a lug width of 18mm. The bezel is the old, classic, style Vostok Amphibia bezel and I have not made any mods to this watch apart from swap out the strap it came on (I think it was a plain black leather strap) when I purchased it on Ebay. I am not a massive fan of Nato straps but a sand-coloured Nato seems rather appropriate in this case. The movement is the manual Vostok 2414A.

The most interesting thing about this watch is the dial of course. It is white dial, the outer portion has 60 one second markings and inside this is a clean looking set of black arabic numerals. There is a palm tree below the 12, two crossed swords at 6 (which look like some sort of middle Easter scimitar sword), a small B type Bostok logo between 4 and 5 and the words Operation Desert Shield, in a circular pattern, in the same colour green as the swords, palm and logo. There is also a centrally located American flag, which is very faded on my watch dial, which I think look pretty funky. A date window sits at 3 o’clock and it has black hour and minutes hands and a red seconds hand. It is very usnusual to see any English writing on Vostok dials apart from the words Vostok and Amphibia, this has “Made in USSR” at the bottom of the dial.

I think Vostok Amphibia Operation Desert Shield is a great looking watch, it looks great on a Nato. Sometimes I think the Vostok Amphibia 420 case looks a little bit small on my wrist, I normally prefer the Vostok Ministry 710 or Vostok tonneau 090 cases. And I love the dial, which is what this watch is all about really isn’t it?

Vostok Amphibia Operation Desert Shield Variants

Amphibia 710 “Ministry” Case

With “Ashtray” Bezel

Vremir Komandirskie crown at 2 o’clock

This post shows the following – 1. 2416b Amphibian 2. 2409 Komandirskie 3. 2416b Generalskie 4. 2414a Amphibian 5. 2409 Juniors 6. 2409 Junior

Comparison of two types of Amphibia cases

Vostok Juniors – the Vostok Juniors say Desert Storm rather than Desert Shield

Please let me know if you have any more links to any other examples of the Vostok Amphibia Operation Desert Shield and I will add them to this post.