VERTEX X REVOLUTION X DALUCA THE RETURN OF A BRITISH LEGEND

Thanks to the efforts of Don Cochrane, few watch lovers could have missed the name Vertex popping up everywhere over the past year. An unexpected by-product is that, in its wake, said enthusiasts have been absorbing a little about the British military watches dubbed the “Dirty Dozen,” the 12 companies that provided timepieces made to the specifications of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD).

Commissioned in 1944, about 4,000 Vertex watches were delivered by December that year and others throughout 1945, meaning that some certainly saw service during the Second World War, a factor that has helped the “W.W.W.s” to gain traction among military collectors. For Cochrane, this connection further excited his passion for his family’s legacy.

“I’ve always liked watches. My great-grandfather, Claude Lyons, started Vertex around 1916 and then my grandfather and my uncle John worked for the company, too. Although it closed in the 1970s – two months after I was born – there was always an undercurrent about it…

“In May 2016, my grandmother died, aged 99½. It was her father who founded Vertex and her husband who worked there. One day, I was sitting at work thinking about her and decided I’d Google ‘Vertex’. It is weird that I had never done it before. There was a lot about it online, including the Dirty Dozen story, which I wasn’t aware of.”

Cochrane’s first task was to find out if his family