In 1942 the U.S. military wrote a watch specification, the Type A-11, and Bulova was one of three companies that built to it. Pilots and aircrew wore the watches through the war, and the type picked up a name that stuck: the watch that won the war. The new A-11 Jimmy rebuilds that watch around the Jimmy Stewart biopic Jimmy, which opened in theaters November 6.
Stewart was no figurehead in uniform. He walked away from a leading man’s career, enlisted, and flew combat missions over Europe. For the film, Bulova supplied original A-11s from its own museum, and those originals are what KJ Apa wears on screen in the role.
Bulova A-11 Jimmy 96A354
37mm stainless case, double-domed sapphire · Miyota 9039 automatic with hacking seconds · Khaki nylon strap on 18mm lugs
Price: $795.00
Where to buy: Buy at Bulova
The production watch, reference 96A354, is the one built for everyone else. It reached Bulova’s store this fall, ahead of the film’s release.
The film follows Stewart from Hollywood to the war and back, and through the war years the watch on his wrist is the A-11 his own country issued and Bulova built.
Thirty-seven millimeters, grown the way the spec would have
The original A-11 case measured about 32mm. The Jimmy measures 37mm across and 44mm lug to lug, in stainless steel. Curved lugs, a coin-edge bezel, and the oversized fluted crown carry the growth, and that crown still makes sense the moment you picture the gloved hand it was designed for.
The dial keeps the original’s layout almost line for line. Matte black. White Arabic numerals. A railroad minute track with numerals every ten minutes. Luminous hands and markers stand in for the radium paint the wartime watches carried, and they read in a glance, which was the whole assignment in 1942.
Time only. Three hands. Nothing else on the dial.
Thickness is 11.2mm, slim for an automatic, and the crystal is a double-domed sapphire with anti-reflective coating. From the side, the dome does the vintage work. From the front, nothing stands between the eye and the numbers. Case finish is polished, the way the coverage photographs show it catching light, and the crown guards stay small enough to keep the 1942 profile intact.
The caseback carries the original paperwork
Flip the watch over. The caseback is etched with the military’s own spec block: TYPE A-11, SPEC. NO. 94-27834-C, a serial number, a part number, an order number, and BULOVA WATCH CO., copied from the stamps inspectors put on the wartime production. Bulova, Elgin and Waltham split the original contracts, and Bulova’s archive supplied the film’s watches. Those are the same lines a supply clerk in 1944 read off the back of an issued watch.
Khaki nylon carries strap duty, on 18mm lugs, the color original canvas straps faded to, on a three-piece wire buckle. Quick-release spring bars let it swap in seconds with no tool, the one modern convenience Bulova let in the side door.
Water resistance is 50 meters. Rain, sinks, a dunked wrist: covered. It’s a field watch, not a diver, and it never pretends otherwise.
A Miyota 9039 does the work the hack started
The A-11 spec demanded hacking seconds, so a squadron could set every watch to the same second before a mission. That single feature named the whole family: the Hack watches.
Stewart’s generation set theirs against a master clock and flew on the agreement. The Jimmy keeps the hack, more than eighty years on, inside a Miyota Caliber 9039 automatic with 24 jewels, and the seconds hand still stops dead when the crown comes out.
Self-winding or hand-wound, the 9039 beats at 28,800 vibrations an hour and runs 42 hours down. It’s also only 3.90mm tall, which is how the case holds its slim profile. No date window crowds the dial.
No day display, no fourth hand, no complication arguing with the brief. Every element that made the cut traces back to the specification sheet, and every modern temptation, the date at three, the exhibition back, the signed rotor, stayed on the cutting-room floor. The restraint reads fresh now precisely because so few watches stop where the spec stopped.
| Reference | 96A354 |
| Case | 37mm stainless steel, 11.2mm thick, 44mm lug to lug |
| Crystal | Double-domed sapphire, anti-reflective |
| Dial | Black, Arabic numerals, luminous hands and markers |
| Movement | Miyota 9039 automatic, hacking, 42-hour reserve |
| Water resistance | 50 meters (5 bar) |
| Strap | Khaki nylon, 18mm lugs, wire buckle |
| Price | $795.00 |
The earlier Hack costs less than half on Amazon
The Jimmy doesn’t sell on Amazon.
Bulova Military Hack 96A282
Automatic three-hand movement · Blue dial on a brown leather strap
Price: $371.25 $525.00 (save $153.75, 29% off)
Where to buy: Buy on Amazon
Same war. Same spec. Half the money.
At $371.25 it runs less than half the Jimmy’s price. The gap buys the faithful parts: the wartime dial layout, the domed sapphire, the etched caseback, the direct line to the film. The Hack is the same idea in a looser translation, at a price that asks far fewer questions.
Bulova A-11 Jimmy 96A354
Caseback etched with the original A-11 spec block · 50-meter water resistance
Price: $795.00
Where to buy: Buy at Bulova
Plenty of heritage reissues borrow a look and stop there. This one borrows the paperwork too, down to an order number etched in steel, then hides a slim modern automatic inside a case that could pass for 1944 at ten paces. At 37mm it fits the wrists the 32mm original would have suited, which turns out to be most of them.
