This E. Howard inscribed pocketwatch is currently for sale on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...geName=STRK:MEWAX:IT http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...geName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

The watch and case appear original, and the serial number would track to 1913 or 1914. But the inscription on the watch appears to me to have been added much later, perhaps to enhance the watch's historical value. It reads:

“Presented to/ O.E. Nolan, Lt (JG) USN/ From:- Crew/ Aircraft Handling/ Division/ Fleet Air Wing Two”

If this inscription is original, and contemporary to the period of the watch's manufacture, LT. Nolan would have been among the US Navy's very earliest aviation pioneers. According to official US Navy historical data at http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org4-3.htm http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org4-3.htm
the Navy acquired its first three airplanes in 1911, and in 1914 owned only a handful.
“Early in 1911 Lieut. John Rodgers, United States Navy; Lieut. John Towers,
United States Navy; and Ensign V. D. Herbster, United States Navy, were ordered to the
Curtiss and Wright Cos. for instruction in the art of flying. Two Curtiss planes and one
Wright plane were purchased, and in the summer of 1911 the first naval aviation unit was
organized “ A HISTORY OF U.S. NAVAL AVIATION BY CAPT. W. H. SITZ, USMC

In 1914 the Navy's only aviation unit was moved from Annapolis, MD to Pensacola, Florida. Prior to the US entry into World War I, in October of 1917, there were only 38 commissioned officers, all aviators, in the Navy (Sitz, data from April 1917). The US Navy had no aircraft carriers in WW I and naval aviators operated From French or British airfields. I can find no mention of any “Fleet Air Wing” in US Navy history until World War II. “Fleet Air Wing 2” was first established in Hawaii in 1942.

I am not a genealogist, and have no subscriptions to ancestry nor census data bases, but I have not found any reference to a LT (j.g.) O.E. Nolan in the 1914 time frame. Since the name is engraved on both the watch and the knife he is most likely a real person, but perhaps both the knife and the watch's inscription were added long after the watch's manufacture.
If anybody can shed any more light on this historical detective story please share it with us.

Ken Spink
Summerville, SC

Kenneth,
My personal feeling is that the watch was possibly older when engraved. I would check records in a later time period. It could be that one of the presenters owned the watch and "donated it to the cause" so to speak to be engraved as a gift.
I owned a Keystone Howard some years ago and in 1990 I along with a small group of guys I was working with had it engraved and gave it to a retiring LAPD sergeant as a retirement gift.

Ray: That's an angle I hadn't considered - that perhaps in WWII or later this Navy Lieutenant's crew might have presented and had engraved a pocket watch that was made in 1912-1914. There are pretty good online records for WWII and later vets. I'll check them.

Thanks,

Ken Spink
Summerville, SC