Introducing the Ball Engineer Hydrocarbon Submarine Warfare (With Special Pre-Order Pricing)

Ball’s latest overbuilt tool watch is the Engineer Hydrocarbon Submarine Warfare. This ominously-named dive watch is available in two sizes (40 and 42 millimeters), two dial (black and blue) and bezel (steel and blue) configurations,  and, of course, comes equipped with Ball’s famous glowing tritium tubes for that even, overnight glow.

The Submarine Warfare’s case is rendered in lightweight titanium, and both sizes measure 16.5 millimeters thick. As mentioned, all versions of the watch feature tritium gas tubes on the dial, hands, and bezel (16 tubes in total). The blue bezel option additionally features Super-LumiNova markings along with the tritium pip at 12, while the steel bezel only has the aforementioned pip. All bezels are unidirectional.

Additional specs include: anti-reflective sapphire glass, 300 meters of water resistance,  80,000A/m of resistance to magnetism, and patented crown and anti-shock protection systems. You can learn more about the latter here.

This isn’t Ball’s most elegant dial design, but neither is it Ball’s most confounding. The markers are large and immediately legible, and there’s no chance you’ll miss those hands. The positioning of the day/date is certainly a bit of  head-scratcher, but Ball has a habit of being adventurous with the their calendar complications. To be perfectly frank, I’d prefer a calendar-free dial.

Power the watch is the automatic BALL RR1102-C caliber. Despite the proprietary-seeming nomenclature, it’s essentially a rebadged ETA 2836-2, but it has the added benefit of being COSC-certified, which is a pretty neat value add.

The Submarine Warfare has several strap/bracelet options. You can opt for a fitted rubber strap or a steel/titanium bracelet, and Ball is offering branded mil-straps at a slight surcharge. Ball claims that the bracelet’s buckle can withstand a whopping 1,400 newtons of force, which is, once again, overkill, but it’s also undeniably cool.The Engineer Hydrocarbon Submarine Warfare is limited to 1,000 units each, and is currently available for pre-order. And with that you get some pretty steep savings here. The pre-order price is $1,649 (strap) and $1,749 (bracelet), and that will jump to $2,449 and $2,649, respectively, at full retail. The pre-order ends October 10 and watches will ship in January/February. Ball