Breitling’s Navitimer B09 Pays Tribute to Miles Davis in a 500-Piece Edition

Miles Davis didn’t need a watch partnership to make a Navitimer look like part of his uniform.

In the 1960s, the jazz innovator was often seen wearing a gold-plated Breitling Navitimer Ref. 806 Mk5, a pilot’s chronograph that somehow felt completely at home alongside sharp tailoring, sports cars and Davis’s famously uncompromising presence.

Breitling is now revisiting that connection with the Navitimer B09 Chronograph 41 Tribute to Miles Davis, a 500-piece limited edition that nods to the musician’s own watch without turning into a strict vintage copy.

At a glance

A jazz legend’s unlikely pilot’s watch

The Navitimer was born in the early 1950s as a professional instrument for aviators, created around a circular slide rule that could help calculate speed, fuel use and flight timing.

Its name came from its intended purpose, combining navigation and timer in a single cockpit-ready chronograph.

By the time Davis was wearing his Ref. 806 Mk5, the Navitimer had moved well beyond the flight deck.

Drivers, actors and style-conscious collectors had already adopted it, helped by the watch’s larger wrist presence, technical dial and distinctive rotating bezel.

On Davis, though, the Navitimer became something different.

It wasn’t just a practical chronograph or a design object, but part of the broader visual language around one of the most restless musicians of the 20th century.

Davis moved through bebop, modal jazz and fusion with the same refusal to stand still that shaped his clothes, cars and public persona.

The Navitimer’s complexity suited him because it wasn’t polite or understated in the conventional mid-century sense.

The Ref. 806 Mk5 details behind the tribute

The Davis-associated watch was a gold-plated Navitimer Ref. 806 Mk5, a version that helped define the model’s late-1960s character.

Its reverse-panda dial placed pale subdials against a black ground, giving the chronograph a sharper visual contrast than the earlier all-black executions.

The Mk5 also carried Breitling’s Twin Jet logo and moved away from the earlier beaded bezel in favour of a serrated edge with a more modern feel.

Davis wore his on a leather Bund strap, often with tailoring that made the large, information-heavy watch feel unexpectedly natural.

The new Navitimer B09 Chronograph 41 Tribute to Miles Davis keeps the broad spirit of that watch intact.

Its 41mm stainless steel case matches the historically rooted sizing, while the dial returns to the reverse-panda layout with cream-coloured Super-LumiNova on the hands and markers.

The Twin Jet logo reinforces the period connection without making the watch feel like a museum exercise.

The biggest departure is material.

Rather than recreating Davis’s gold-plated case, Breitling has chosen stainless steel, a more versatile choice for daily wear and a cleaner fit with the current Navitimer line.

Manual-wound mechanics and modern wearability

Breitling’s use of the manufacture Caliber B09 is one of the more considered decisions here.

The original pre-1969 Navitimer chronographs were manually wound, and this movement keeps that tactile relationship between wearer and watch.

It also gives the tribute a more convincing connection to Davis’s era than an automatic movement would have done.

Buyers can choose between a classic brown calf leather strap and a stainless steel Air Racer bracelet with a vented, rally-style design inspired by the 1960s.

The strap leans closer to Davis’s own styling, while the bracelet gives the watch a sportier, more mechanical edge.

Either way, the appeal is fairly specific.

This isn’t just a watch for jazz fans, nor is it only for Navitimer completists.

It sits at the meeting point of watch history, music culture and mid-century style, where an instrument watch can carry a story beyond its original function.

Details & Specifications

The Miles Davis Navitimer works because it doesn’t flatten a complicated cultural figure into a logo exercise.

Instead, it revisits a watch Davis actually made his own, then gives it enough contemporary Breitling polish to stand on the wrist today.