Yema Flygraf 1970: an instrument panel for the wrist
In 1970, Yema introduced the Flygraf as an “instrument de bord” — a cockpit instrument. With a mechanical chronograph, logarithmic calculation scales and one of the most distinctive dials of the period, it was a pilot’s watch in the most literal sense.
There are watches whose purpose becomes obvious the moment you look at them. The Yema Flygraf is not one of them. Its dial is surrounded by numbers, scales and colours; three registers sit inside a curious metallic structure; another scale occupies the edge of the dial; and beyond that lies a two-part blue-and-white bezel. What initially looks like exuberant 1970s design becomes much more logical once you understand what Yema was trying to build.
A surviving French advertisement from 1970 provides the best introduction. Yema did not simply call its new Flygraf a chronograph for pilots. Across the page it described the watch as “un instrument de bord”: a cockpit instrument. The advertisement addressed pilots, radio operators and mechanics, and explained that the logarithmic scales around the watch formed a genuine calculation rule. It even gave the reference — 92.103 P — and a retail price of 550 francs.
That changes the way the watch should be seen. The Flygraf was not designed to look as though it belonged in an aircraft. It was designed to do some of the work that an aviation instrument could do.
Yema and the age of specialised tool watches
By the time the Flygraf appeared, Yema had already spent much of the 1960s developing watches around particular activities rather than simply producing variations on the same sports watch. The company says that between 1965 and 1968 it was selling around 400,000 watches annually across more than 55 countries. During the same period came models such as the Yachtingraf, with its regatta timing function, the Superman with its patented bezel-locking system, and the Rallye family associated with motor racing.
The Flygraf fits neatly into that philosophy. Sailing required a countdown. Diving required a bezel that could not be moved accidentally. Motorsport created a natural home for chronographs and speed scales. Aviation presented Yema with a more complicated problem: a pilot might need not only to measure time, but also to calculate with it.
Yema dates the first Flygraf aviation chronograph to 1970 and records that it was presented at the Micronora trade fair in Besançon, where its unusual two-part calculation bezel received recognition. The contemporary advertising preserved by Le Club Yema independently places the Flygraf 92.103 P in 1970, removing much of the ambiguity that often surrounds the dating of vintage watches.
The result was one of Yema’s most ambitious tool watches.
A slide rule around the dial
The chronograph is only half of what makes the Yema Flygraf interesting.
The outer scales operate on the principle of a circular slide rule. Two logarithmic scales are moved relative to one another, allowing multiplication and division to be performed through the relationship between their positions. It is the same mathematical principle used by conventional straight slide rules, compressed into concentric circles around a wristwatch.
In aviation, that principle becomes particularly useful because many routine problems are relationships between quantities: distance, time, speed and fuel consumption. Yema’s modern explanation of the Flygraf system lists calculations such as average speed and fuel consumption, together with conversions between nautical miles, statute miles and kilometres.
The watch therefore contains two complementary ideas. The chronograph measures an interval of time. The calculation scales help transform numbers into useful information.
That distinction also explains why the Flygraf is more interesting than a chronograph with an aviation name attached to it. A tachymeter can calculate an average rate when time is measured over a known distance. The Flygraf surrounds that conventional timing function with a much more flexible analogue calculator. The person wearing it is expected to participate: align the scales, understand the relationship between the numbers and read the answer.
Today a telephone performs the same arithmetic without requiring any understanding of logarithms. In 1970, being able to put such a calculating device around the circumference of a mechanical watch was genuinely useful.
Why the dial looks like a cockpit
Once the Flygraf’s purpose is understood, its unusual dial starts to make sense.
The black centre carries three subsidiary registers, but Yema visually binds them together with a pale metallic structure that resembles the arrangement of gauges on an aircraft instrument panel. The running seconds at nine and 30-minute chronograph register at three become two round instruments, while the register at six is given its own striking red, yellow and black treatment.
That lower counter is particularly characteristic of the first Flygraf. Together with the blue-and-white outer calculation bezel and warm-toned tachymeter scale, it turns what might otherwise have been a monochromatic instrument into something unmistakably from the beginning of the 1970s.
There is a useful tension here. Aviation watches are often praised for simplicity and immediate legibility, yet the Flygraf deliberately contains a great deal of information. It is not trying to make every function readable in a single glance. Instead, different parts of the watch become relevant at different moments.
The time can be read conventionally. The chronograph can be started when an interval needs measuring. The surrounding scales only demand attention when a calculation is required.
In that sense, the complexity is organised rather than decorative.
The Valjoux 7736 beneath it
Behind all of those scales is a comparatively straightforward piece of chronograph engineering: the Valjoux 7736.
It is a manually wound, 17-jewel chronograph movement running at 18,000 vibrations per hour, with approximately 45 hours of power reserve. Its chronograph architecture provides central elapsed seconds, a 30-minute recorder and a 12-hour recorder.
One technical distinction is important. The Valjoux 7736 is cam operated, not column-wheel controlled. WatchBase describes it explicitly as a hand-wound, cam-operated chronograph, and period examples from other manufacturers using the same calibre are documented with the same construction.
That is not a criticism of the movement. Column wheels and cams are simply different methods of coordinating the start, stop and reset operations of a mechanical chronograph. The cam system allowed chronographs such as the 7736 to be manufactured robustly and in considerable numbers without the more elaborate column-wheel architecture used in some earlier movements.
The 7736 belongs to the Valjoux 7730 family, whose roots lead back to the Venus 188. The redesigned family produced several closely related calibres: the 7733 as the basic two-register chronograph, the 7734 with a date, the 7736 with an additional hour recorder and the 7737 with a regatta countdown.
For the Flygraf, the 7736 was particularly appropriate. The third counter gave Yema the full instrument-panel layout its design required while keeping the watch entirely mechanical and manually wound.
Aviation credentials without inventing a military story
The Flygraf has enough genuine aviation history that it does not need a military story added to it.
Yema’s own archive states that the first Flygraf was launched as an aviation chronograph in 1970. More importantly, the contemporary advertisement speaks directly to pilots, radio operators and mechanics. This is primary evidence of who Yema expected to use the watch and how it positioned the model when it was new.
That should be distinguished from military issue.
Yema certainly has authentic connections with the French armed forces, but the company’s own history attributes the important 1970 French Air Force selection to the Superman, which was supplied to aviation Search and Rescue swimmers. Yema also states that its modern official partnership with the French armed forces began decades later; its own account describes 2021 as the first time the company became an official partner of the French Navy.
No source found during this research establishes that the original 1970 Flygraf 92.103 P was officially issued to French Air Force pilots or to the French Navy.
That distinction makes the history stronger, not weaker. The Flygraf was conceived specifically for aviation, advertised to aviation professionals and equipped with a genuine calculation system useful in that environment. Those are documented credentials. There is no reason to replace them with an unsupported military association.
The reference hidden in plain sight
Vintage Yema reference numbers are an area where repetition on the internet can quickly become mistaken for proof.
For the original Flygraf shown in the 1970 advertising, the evidence is unusually clear. The contemporary advertisement prints “Réf. 92 103 P”, and Le Club Yema’s period advertising archive separately catalogues the same model as Flygraf 92.103 P. Independent collector documentation also consistently associates the first-generation Flygraf and Valjoux 7736 with reference 92.103 or 92.103 P.
The number 93012 requires more care. Specialist Yema research describes 93012 as a case type associated with Daytona and certain Yachtingraf models. Modern sales databases meanwhile place Rallygraf, Yachtingraf and occasionally Flygraf watches under the same number, which demonstrates how easily model and case references can become mixed online.
For that reason, the historically defensible model reference for the original 1970 Flygraf configuration is 92.103 P. If 93012 is stamped somewhere on an individual watch, it should be recorded as such and understood in its proper context rather than automatically treated as the Flygraf model reference.
The final authority for an individual vintage watch remains the watch itself: case markings, movement and any surviving documentation should always be checked before a reference is stated without qualification.
A calculator from another way of flying
The Flygraf appeared at an interesting technological moment.
Its entire method of working assumes that the person using it understands numbers as relationships. Measure an interval. Align a scale. Convert one quantity into another. Read the result. There is no processor between the pilot and the answer.
That manner of working was already beginning to face competition from increasingly sophisticated electronic instruments. The following decades would make digital calculation faster, cheaper and eventually almost invisible.
The Flygraf therefore preserves more than a particular watchmaking design. It preserves a method.
This also explains why its visual complexity has aged so well. Remove the purpose and the watch looks eccentric. Restore the purpose and virtually every ring of information earns its place. The busy dial is not an attempt to attract attention; it is the physical consequence of giving one mechanical object several different jobs.
About this watch
The ChronoMasters example has the defining visual characteristics of the first-generation Yema Flygraf: a black three-register dial, the pale instrument-panel structure around the subsidiary dials, the distinctive coloured recorder at six o’clock, a warm-toned tachymeter scale and the two-part blue-and-white calculation bezel. Its stainless-steel cushion case gives the watch the broad, low-slung profile associated with this early configuration.
The supplied photographs show genuine vintage wear, particularly to the outer calculation bezel, where areas of the blue surface have been lost with use. Rather than obscuring the design, the remaining scale is still clearly recognisable and gives the watch the visual character of an instrument that has lived for more than half a century. The dial itself presents strongly in the available photographs, while the caseback carries Yema’s historic crest. A black leather strap is currently fitted.
ChronoMasters records the movement as a Valjoux 7736, the correct hand-wound, cam-operated three-register chronograph calibre associated with this generation of Flygraf. The available image does not allow every detail of the hands, luminous material or movement markings to be independently authenticated, so those elements should only be described as original once they have been physically checked. No box, papers or period military provenance have been supplied, and none are claimed.
Period Yema documentation identifies this first Flygraf configuration as reference 92.103 P. The present product listing’s use of 93012 should therefore be checked against the physical case markings before the catalogue is amended permanently; until then, 92.103 P is the reference directly supported by Yema’s 1970 advertising.
Yema called the Flygraf an instrument de bord in 1970. Looking at this worn blue-and-white calculating bezel more than half a century later, the phrase still feels more accurate than simply calling it a pilot’s watch: the Flygraf is a small piece of cockpit logic that happens to live on the wrist.
See the watch featured in this story
The Yema Flygraf featured in this article is currently available at ChronoMasters. View the watch, its condition, photographs and full product details.
View this Yema Flygraf
