Felix Scholz
Image via GQ.Last night we wrote a piece on Robert Downey Jnr's watch collection, and we cast some aspersions on his Breitling Pathfinder'. Our initial thoughts were that is was a fake (like his Speedy), because it said Pathfinder' in suspicious red letters and had an unusual logo on the dial. But then we wondered, to cover all possible bases, could this have been a movie prop piece? Or perhaps a prototype of some kind? After all, celebs get given all kinds of crazy things us mortals could only ever dream of.The plot thickened when a gentleman in the British Army messaged us saying that the Pathfinder Group was an elite group (of 28 men) in the 16th Air Assault Brigade.Turns out that they're a reconnaissance group who are responsible for marking and clearing parachute drop zones and helicopter landing zones. The logo on the watches dial is likely the insignia of the one of the British Parachute Regiments. If you want to see how tough they are, check this out.A Breitling Seawolf with an HMS Ark Royal custom dial. Image via breitling-museum Armed with this knowledge, the watch makes more sense. Breitling has a long history of making small batches of custom dials for military units, so, while we can't find any information on an Avenger Seawolf made for this unit, it's certainly possible. Or it could still have been a prop watch, but a quick peruse of RDJ's filmography doesn't suggest any roles where it was plausible he would have worn such a watch. Either way, there's a plausible alternative to it being a replica, so we'd like to apologise for (half of) the shade thrown at RDJ.Which leads to the intriguing question how did Robert Downey Jr. get his hands on a watch made for an elite British military unit? Now that's a story we'd like to hear .
13.05.16