Look what's arrived...

[Hi-roller]

I've always fancied a Hercules and recently this one's come into my possession. Quite an impressive watch I must say. Really solid feel and, I hope you agree, a beautiful white dial (apologies for the iPad photo). I don't think many were made and, at the time, I think these were Breitlings biggest model coming in at 45.5mm diameter. I'm not that familiar with chronos and I'd be grateful if anyone could explain the lower middle sub dial which, unusually, has what looks like a minute hand and an hour hand. Also, when the re-set button is pushed the left subdial (24hr?) doesn't seem to zero, I wonder if it is supposed to. The main hand set consists of the usual second, minute and hours hand but there's a fourth hand with a small red arrow that seems to track the minute hand but I'm not sure of it's function. Any enlightenment will be much appreciated.

[Ken B]

cool looking piece, I've never seen it before. That bottom dial looks like the minutes and hours for the Chrono and the left dial is a GMT dial

[Urosfan]

Nice

[Psmith]

Congrats!

[1William]

Nice.

[sea-dweller]

Congrats!

[Matt93]

Sweet!

[vitalsignsrn]

Congratulations. Looks good. :-)

[Gasguzlr]

The Hercules is a unique and awesome piece. The function of the dials are part of its uniqueness.

The second main dial red-tipped hand you are wondering about records the minutes when you activate the chronograph. The other hand records the seconds like a regular chronograph. This gives you a quick look at the recorded time, up to one hour, without having to peek at a smaller subdial. Like you, I find that mine don't always zero exactly when you hit "reset". Sometimes hitting start and stop after a few seconds and then resetting will zero them exactly.

The bottom subdial is a small 12-hour counter for the chronograph, with two hands... one for minutes and the other for hours. It's sort of redundant for the main dial timer, but it allows you to track up to 12 hours and read the elapsed time like a regular watch dial.

The dial at 9 o'clock is a 24 hour indicator, which basically just allows you to see if you are in the first or second 12-hour interval of a day. Sort of useless, unless you are underground or up in Alaska in the winter. But there it is!

Cheers and enjoy your wonderful piece. You rarely see the white dial version.

Ross

[Hi-roller]

Many thanks for that info Ross.

[arizonaboy]

Nice!

[hawkeye43]

Congrats!!