You know-those wrist watches with three little dials and tons of tiny numbers. I find it hard to imagine that a guy flying an aircraft at mach 2 has any need to a timer on his wrist. also, you can’t see most of the numbers (too small)-so are these things just ornaments?
Aren’t fighter pilots supposed to have excellent vision?
I have a photo of Chuck Yeager taken in the '50s when he was a colonel, and he’s wearing a Rolex Submariner (with the red print). Just the one dial.
The Omega Speedmaster (stemwinding, not automatic) was chosen for Nasa, and it had the three sub-dials and the tachymeter.
Not specific to fighter pilots, but one thing a chronograph has that other watches (for example, Chuck Yeager’s Rolex) don’t is a stopwatch. I’m not Instrument-rated, but a stopwatch is useful (if not required – I think you just need to see seconds on a timepiece) in IMC.
Pilots tend to have nicely-developed egos, and a big watch is often part of the costume.
Well, they might wear them, but they certainly don’t use them in flight.
Regardless of how good your vision is, it is often too bumpy in the air to read the dials and markings on a watch like that. Basically all planes have a digital clock and stopwatch on the instrument panel, and I’d imagine something as sophisticated as a fighter jet will have whatever timing capabilities the pilot needs.
Never mind the fact that most of those “chronograph” watches are mechanical, not quartz, and trusting a mechanical watch for anything important is a stupid risk. Which is why those Breitling watches are a joke.
I’m talking about today, not 60 years ago. Back then, I suppose it’s possible that people relied on mechanical watches.
Most chrongraphs are quartz. Mechanical chronographs are pretty rare; AFAIK, only Omega (Speedmaster), Rolex (Daytona) and a couple of the SWATCH Group brands make them.
It’s marketing and not utility.
Breitling, at least, has long played up the putative association:
Seems to often be a jet or a jet pilot story somewhere in their ads.
Follow up question: Do Navy SEALS really wear those giant goofy looking Luminox watches that are advertised in all the gun magazines? I understand the need for a quailty watch when diving, but really, those?
Can’t answer with certainty but they probably do. A watch is essential when diving. Being able to read the watch without having to shine a light on it is a real advantage. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if every one of them are wearing Luminox’s for practical reasons.
I don’t know any SEALs, but I have known a few SF types, and while they might favor the big 'ol fancy chronograph when out on the town in mufti, when doing training or ops the preferred watch is one that is low profile, durable, easy to read under various lighting conditions, and perhaps most importantly, not a big chunk of metal that will make an distinctive metallic rapping sound against every rock, doorframe, or hardware it touches. I suspect most SpecOps wear either a cloth or plastic resin band quartz-timed watch in the field with the face turned to the inside of the wrist. This is how professional divers wear watches and wrist-mount timers and dive computers, and for the same reason; so it is accessible and doesn’t catch or bang on anything.
Stranger
Um… actually not. Which is why I always wear my watch while acting as a pilot. And no, I’m not referring to some of the older airplanes I fly, either, which predate the digital age. I’ve flown 21st Century airplanes a month from the factory assembly line that didn’t have clocks of any sort on board, unless you count a Hobbes meter or engine tach.
Well, if you are on fire or out of fuel. I know for a fact you can fly a VOR or an ADF approach without a clock of any sort and do it about 4 times quicker than published.
Remember, in the air, it is all about time.
ETA
Point of no return.
Time to fuel exhaustion.
Max duration.
Non-precision approaches.
Time to missed approach.
How long till I get to a bathroom.
Everything in aviation is about time… 
A chronograph is not just a watch with little dials, it is specifically a watch with a stopwatch function. So a chronograph may use its main display for the stopwatch and have no little dials, and a non-chronograph may have little dials but no stopwatch function. In other words, little dials does not mean “chronograph.”
All pilots need some kind of time piece for their flying but in many cases it will be part of the aircraft instrument panel and there’s no need for it to have lots of little dials. It has kind of become part of the pilot uniform though and it’s not unusual to find pilots wearing them. On the other hand I recently went for about a year without owning or wearing a watch, I didn’t really miss it.
IFR aircraft will normally have a clock of some sort but yeah, VFR aircraft won’t necessarily have one. Many aircraft have a GPS now days and those have as accurate a clock as your likely to see anywhere (more correctly, they have an accurate time display.)
Some pilots have a circular sliderule on their watches that can be useful, I prefer to use a calculator or a larger scale circular sliderule.
Holy shit, why not? With a 100K+ worth of avionics, would it kill them to put in a damn clock? Hell, I’m pretty sure my dishwasher has a clock.
I’m pretty sure an aeroplane with a 100K+ avionics suite would have a clock, but not all new aeroplanes have expensive avionics.
In the USAF in the 80s they issued all pilots a watch. A simple mechanical self-winding Timex with a black face, luminous digits & hands, & a sweep second hand. The case was dull gray bead-blasted metal. The band was OD cloth with a dull gray buckle.
They looked like they ought to have cost about $20 at the Timex store. They didn’t keep very good time & I went through 3 of them in my first two years, before I gave up & never went back to Supply for a fourth. Can you say “cheap piece of shit?”
What most of us actually wore was a black plastic Casio of one sort or another. Some dirt-simple, some had one with the little keypad & calculator. A couple guys had fancy watches, but they were generally teased about it.
And no, at no time flying a fighter do you have time to roll down your glove, unstrap & roll up your sleeve, and look at a stupid wristwatch.
The only thing we timed using the watch was when to show up for a briefing, or be at the bar.
Well, it helps if you know I typically fly very small, very lightweight airplanes that typically don’t have a lot of avionics and where weight control is a major consideration. 
Even the “fanicer” airplanes I fly may only have $20-30K of avionics - I’m not flying airliners. For my type of flying you just don’t need a lot on the panel, so why pay for it? Flying is expensive enough. But even if I was flying an airplane with no avionics at all (and I have) I still carry a watch because keeping track of time is important for things like navigation and monitoring your fuel burn.
The watch I use is a battery-powered Timex with an analog clockface and second sweep hand. A primary concern is large numbers and ease of reading 'cause those small airplanes I like DO get bounced around a heck of a lot and, oh yeah, my eyes aren’t getting any younger. I had to replace the crystal once when it shattered (oops) but other than that it’s been quite reliable.
Useful for timing Calvinball?
If it was self winding it cost at least $50.
Sometimes their egos write checks their bodies can’t cash.
This often leads to a career flying planes full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, apparently.