Lewis Pullman wears an IWC Pilot's Watches

In the close-up still held as evidence, a hand grips the webbing of a flight harness and the watch above it fills the frame: dark round case, black pilot's dial washed in sun glare, a single crown, no chronograph pushers, on a worn fabric strap. The hand belongs to Lewis Pullman's Robert Floyd, the back seat of the only two-person crew in Top Gun: Maverick. Bob is a Weapon Systems Officer, the man behind Lieutenant Natasha 'Phoenix' Trace in her F/A-18F Super Hornet, and when the climactic strike finally launches, Phoenix and Bob fly the buddy-lasing jet that follows Maverick into the canyon. He wears glasses, says little, and absorbs the squad's teasing; Hangman claims, perhaps in jest, that the call sign Bob stands for Baby On Board.

The watch is the IWC Pilot's Watch Mark XVIII Edition Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor, reference IW324705, one of two ceramic editions IWC reserves for graduates of the Navy Fighter Weapons School's SFTI course. The public cannot buy either one; each carries the school's patch at nine o'clock on the dial, and IWC has partnered with the real TOPGUN since 2007. Monochrome Watches names Bob among the three young aviators wearing SFTI pieces in the film, alongside Rooster and Phoenix, without assigning models, and the close-up settles which edition is his: one crown and no pushers means the three-hand Mark XVIII rather than the chronograph.

That makes the watch a crew matter. Phoenix, the pilot Bob rides behind, wears the same reference in the same film, so the one jet flown by two people carries two of the same watch, while Rooster wears the louder chronograph edition. A three-hander that only tells the time is a reasonable amount of watch for the man whose job is the targeting screens, but that is a reading; whether the costume department engineered the crew pairing or the SFTI program logic produced it on its own, nobody from the production has said.