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Tudor has signed a sponsorship deal with The Flying Bulls, the Austrian display team that flies restored historic aircraft at air shows around the world.
One of the pilots now linked to the partnership is Ciara McGurk, who has recently joined the team to fly its North American B-25 Mitchell, a second world war-era bomber.
McGurk has spent 33 years flying everything from survey aircraft to business jets. She has mapped entire countries from the sky, including Kazakhstan, Vanuatu and Finland; taken part in electronic warfare training at the controls of Dassault Falcon 20 jets; and captained Learjet and Gulfstream aircraft.
The B-25 is a different proposition. The polished aircraft is one of the best surviving examples of the medium bomber that entered service in 1941, with nearly 10,000 produced before the last were retired from military use more than three decades later.
McGurk joined The Flying Bulls after being approached by its chief executive, Eskil Amdal, at the International Council of Air Shows exhibition in Las Vegas. Amdal had heard that she had already been flying a B-25 for three years as part of the Delaware Aviation Museum’s flight training programme, which offers FAA-approved courses for pilots seeking experience in a second world war-era bomber.
“Most of the Flying Bulls pilots have other jobs, usually in the business jet or commercial sides of the industry,” says McGurk, who is understood to be the only woman in Europe qualified to fly the B-25 Mitchell. In her current “other job”, she flies an ultra-long-range Bombardier Global 6000, which can cover more than 11,000km before needing to refuel.
The Flying Bulls traces its origins to the late 1980s, when Tyrolean Airways pilot and historic aircraft enthusiast Sigi Angerer found a North American T-28B and took it home to Austria for restoration.
After adding a Grumman G44 Widgeon and a Chance Vought F4U-4 Corsair, Angerer met Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, who went on to establish The Flying Bulls as part of the energy drink company’s wider brand world.
As sales of Red Bull grew, so did the Flying Bulls fleet. That led to the creation of Hangar-7, a steel and glass building beside Salzburg airport that serves as a home for the aircraft, as well as an art gallery and events space.
Tudor was announced last month as the official timing partner of The Flying Bulls. Christophe Chevalier, the brand’s head of PR, says the deal is intended to connect Tudor’s Black Bay 58 GMT with aviation, vintage machinery and the restoration culture around historic aircraft. “GMT watches are closely associated with the world of aviation and this particular model has a similar vintage feel to the aircraft used by The Flying Bulls,” he says. “It’s different from partnering with a conventional sports team because there is no other organisation doing this sort of thing with a collector’s mindset.”
Tudor branding will appear on pilots’ flying suits rather than on the aircraft themselves. The brand also plans to use the partnership for client events at Hangar-7 and selected air shows.
The Tudor deal means McGurk is likely to return to wearing a watch — though not the kind she gave up more than a year ago, when her smartwatch fell to the floor and smashed. “I was pleased in a way,” she says. “I felt it had been taking over my life, monitoring my health and sending me alerts all the time.”
“It’s obligatory to have two crew in it because it is extremely busy to fly,” McGurk says of the B-25. “Having been built in the 1940s with 1930s technology, it is simple inasmuch as it doesn’t have all the electronic devices found on a modern aircraft. “But that also means that there are a lot more levers, dials and flaps to deal with and, while it will pitch instantly, it really takes some muscle to roll it — and ground movement takes a lot of mastering because it’s not possible to steer the nose wheel. It just works like a wheel on a shopping trolley.”
Although a mechanical wristwatch may seem superfluous to a 21st-century commercial pilot, McGurk says a GMT can still have practical uses in her work.
“Unlike pilots who work for airlines, people who fly ultra-high-net-worth clients have to take care of all the peripheral aspects of a journey, such as synchronising with security details, vehicle collections, arrivals and pick-ups,” she says.
Air displays, too, depend on precise timing. For McGurk, there is also a fit between a traditional watch and the analogue nature of the B-25 cockpit.
