Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore 'End of Days' Travel and housed in a case

and housed in a case that at 40mm was large in its day but well sized for the modern wrist

starting with the elegant 36mm case with gently sloping straight lugs to the sloping two-tone dial with applied Arabic markers and hour indices

Though not exactly unheard-of for pilot’s watches (Bremont’s first U-22 had a similar feature)

who died when the parachute of his spacecraft failed upon re-entry

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore 'End of Days' Travel and housed in a caseAudemars Piguet, the vaunted manufacture from Les Brassus, wasn't doing so well at the end of the 1960s. Their horological prowess aside, times were changing, customer tastes were evolving, and AP was stuck firmly in a very traditional past. Fortunately for us, their executives recognized this, and bet it all on the launch of an avant garde timepiece the likes of which the world had never seen. Utilizing the talents of a designer named Gerald Genta,