In January 2009, a friend of mine wanted to show me two of his watches, 2 Blancpain Milspec with something special, a curious case number with a P and an arrow, in bold, above the same case number, and the same arrow with a P engraved on the movement. While the second Milspec came with a mismatching case number. A configuration I never saw before. 

A search on the net didn't help me that much. I found the meaning of the Arrow P, which was a good start, as it says that the watch was issued to the Pakistani Army, but that " drove " me to another mystery... Did the Pakistani Army receive a Milspec, really? 

I asked my friend, who didn't know anything about this watch, except that he found one in Germany and the second one in Italy. Period. As he had two, I tried to convince him to sell me one of these two, because it had this part of Mystery, and most of all, because the watch was beautiful. After several weeks of harassment, he let me choose between the two he had: 

I took the one with the matching number in March 2009, I started to post some photos, and went on trying to find some information about it. 

The first information I got is that the US Army Special Forces ( Green Berets ) trained with the Pakistani Army, in Pakistan during the second half of the Sixties. A friend of mine, an expert on military history... and watches, told me that, and that it was very possible that the Pakistani Soldiers asked their US colleagues where and how to buy these watches which were distributed by Allen Tornek in the USA. 

So, after a few months, I had an hypothesis... But the best was to come one year later...Someone saw my photos of the Pakistani Milspec and confirmed to me that it really existed, that he had several of them which he regretted letting go. So, suddenly, my intuition became reality... You can imagine how thrilled I was.

In 2011 or 2012, I was in a watch shop in Paris, and I met someone who had a superb vintage Fifty Fathoms on his wrist. A Milspec. I congratulated him, telling him that I was a big Fifty Fathoms Fan. He smiled and told me that his Milspec was really special, as it was a... Pakistani! He showed me the case back, and yes, there were these two matching numbers, with the famous P and the Arrow... So, that was the third one I saw, in person. Sadly, I was so moved and excited that I totally forgot to take a picture. I just remember that the case number started with 301 xxx, like the others. 

I asked him if he could get some information about his watch, he told me that he got it from a British Collector, that he did a search on the Net, and that he found some pictures in... WatchProSite.  

Now, the best is coming... In September 2024, a good friend called me to show me some pictures of a vintage Fifty Fathoms he was just offered... To my big surprise, it was a Pakistani Milspec! The 4th I could see in real life! Here again with mismatching numbers. It seems that the Militaries didn't care about engraving matching numbers, indeed. As you can see below: 

My friend bought it through another friend who is a watch dealer, who bought it from a Pakistani Officer who also sold his Omega CK 2914 Pakistani, among other Pakistani military watches... 

I asked for some information about the origin and the history of this watch, I just know that the seller is a Pakistani Officer... Too bad, as it would have been thrilling to know more about the " career " of this watch!

On the other side, we could also say that keeping a part of Mystery is good... Consolation.

Now this is a fact, these Pakistani Milspec really existed. We can also say that, all along these last 15 years of investigations, we could find only four of them. 

The assumptions are: 

- They were issued for the Pakistani Army in 1967/1968.

- They were ordered from Allen Tornek.

- Circa 50 were ordered and issued to the Pakistani Army.

- Only a very few of them survived. I was told around 12, only. 

Let's hope that time will bring us some more informations about these Pakistani Milspec! 

Best,

Nicolas