In Italian, ‘Palombaro’ means diver – and Italian-Swiss watch firm Squale, originally founded in 1950 – is proud to introduce the latest in a long line of dive watches: the Squale Master for the divers of the Comsubin, an elite department of the Italian Navy specialised in complex underwater operations.
This underlines Squale’s position at the forefront of dive watch technology, with one of the company’s most famous watches being the Squale Master, first launched back in the 1960s and recently revived as the Master Marina Militare in 2022.
Now Squale launches the new Master x Palombari del Comsubin, produced in a limited edition of 500 pieces. Only 420 are available to the public, as the first 80 are reserved for operational use by the Comsubin divers themselves.
As expected from the ultimate underwater tool watch, this is an exceptional timepiece featuring technical characteristics that guarantee excellent performance even in extreme conditions, having been designed in collaboration with professional divers.
This is the very first Squale watch made entirely of Grade 5 titanium, featuring a helium escape valve with an incredible water resistance of 1200 metres (120 ATM).
Every detail of the watch has been designed in close collaboration with this elite Italian military unit, whose logo features at six o’clock on the deep blue dial and ceramic bezel. This stunning colourway, emblematic of Squale, also reflects the tones of the Palombari del Comsubin’s uniform, which is designed to blend in with the sea. These colours are also echoed in the additional operational camouflage-coated Comsubin leather strap that is supplied with the watch, which comes on a durable black rubber tropic strap as standard: ready for underwater work. This is truly a diver’s watch created by divers for divers.
Yet it’s far from the first time that Squale has embarked on a similar collaboration. The partnership
with the Italian Navy dates back to the 1980s when Squale first became a supplier of professional dive watches to the military diving corps based in the port of La Spezia.
The Palombari del Comsubin division is renowned worldwide for its underwater capabilities and ability to collaborate with other national and international bodies at the vanguard of diving excellence. The Comsubin diving school is also a training ground for divers from other armed forces or departments, frequently taking part in international exercises alongside other equivalent units from around the world.
Not only is the Palombari del Comsubin a crack squad of divers certified for underwater operations to a depth of 300 metres, but they are also licensed parachutists, with airdrop and heli-airdrop capabilities to rescue submarines damaged at sea. These extreme demands formed the basis of the brief for an incredibly high performance dive watch.
As a result, 40 years after their first historic collaboration, Squale and the Italian Navy Comsubin divers now renew their partnership. Over the years, the technical demands have increased, and the result is this latest watch of uncompromising quality, which meets the specific requests of the diving unit for a product that is perfectly suited to their extreme underwater environment.
With the all-titanium limited-edition Master x Palombari del Comsubin, Squale has created an elite watch for a truly exceptional organisation that operates at the frontiers of military endurance.