The Blancpain Fifty Fathoms ‘Nageurs de Combat’ was introduced in 2019 as a limited edition of 2019. It serves as a tribute to the French Combat Swimmers unit (Nageurs de Combat) who were one of the first to test the original 1953 Fifty Fathoms dive watch.Supporting this initiative, the French army authorized Blancpain to engrave the Combat Diver Qualification Badge – featuring a central anchor, dedicated to sailors and flanked by two winged seahorses representing the underwater world as well as parachutists – on the caseback of the new model. The dial discreetly displays a second emblem – the number 7. As oxygen becomes toxic when its partial pressure reaches 1.7 bar, the maximum depth that commando frogmen can reach when using pure oxygen is seven metres, a number that has thus become a symbolic figure in this milieu.
