Officine Panerai

I started my panerai addiction with the PAM390.  luckily for me, this is such a great panerai that I didnt really lust for any other models.  The PAM372 is too big for my asian wrist as were the 44mm 1950 luminor cased watches.

I started with the PAM390 because I wanted a luminor cased panerai. my thinking was that it was the most panerai-ish panerai.

However, after reading james dowling article on historical military diving watches, I began to see that the radiomir is the true panerai.  something about soldering lugs onto a rolex oyster pocketwatch (as per the article referenced above) just seemed very macgyver manly to me.

That made me look at the luminor case differently, and I have questions regarding (1) the lugs and (2) the crown protecting device

First regarding the lugs, did the single block thick lugs solve an extant problem? in other words, were the lugs on the soldered radiomirs breaking off?  I mean, obviously the luminor lugs are stronger from an engineering standpoint, but was the change even necessary?

Second, regarding the crown protecting device, which came about in the 1950s, was this mechanism outdated when it was created?  I mean, by this time automatics were around with screw down crowns, i.e. the rolex submariner in 1953, which seems to me like a better solution to the "protecting the winding crown with pressure to maintain water resistance" problem than the panerai crown protecting device.  And even if hand winding movements were for some reason preferred to automatics for diving watches in 1950, the screw down crown (as in modern day radiomirs) seems like a better solution to the water resistance problem than the crown protecting device.

I think the blocky base luminor, and the more curvy elegant 1950 luminor cases are nice, but that is only until you compare it to a base radiomir like the 183, which has curves like a ferrari.

So now I think the PAM425 (or similar) or PAM183 (for smaller wrists) may be the models in panerai's current lineup that are the most panerai.  following this logic, i think the PAM232 better represents panerai than the PAM372 because the 1930s radiomir shows panerai as an innovator with the first purpose built diving watch while the 1950s luminor shows panerai as a loser in the purpose built diving watch category to the rolex submariner.

I was wondering if anyone else experienced a similar thought progression on panerai?

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