THE OMEGA SPEEDY PRO Page 1

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THE OMEGA SPEEDMASTER PROFESSIONAL Cal. 321
A REVIEW BY LES ZETLEIN
(Page 1 of 4)

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CONGRATULATIONS! You decided to accept the challenge—to separate fact from fiction. Actually, I don't think you'll find it that difficult, since an awful lot has already been written about the Speedy Pro, the first (and only) watch worn on the moon. But as truth is stranger than fiction, you never know... You'll find the answers on the last page, but I'm trusting you not to cheat. Ready? Right, let's go.
I'll begin with some interesting historical events that all have some part to play in the Speedmaster story. (If you find history boring, you can skip this bit and go to the next page . But you might miss a bit of fiction...)

* * *

"...and another thing, A-L — that waterproof watch you sold me, isn't..."

39 Quai de L'Horologie, Ile de la Cité, Paris
Tues, Sept 17, 1823

OLD MAN BREGUET opened up his watchmaking premises early as usual, checked the work of his apprentices, and settled himself at his workbench. The shop was discreetly located right in the heart of the fashionable watchmaking district, and it attracted custom from the finest families in Europe. Life was now easy for the 76-year old Abraham-Louis, a watchmaking genius whose list of horological patents and inventions, including the Breguet (or 'overcoil') hairspring and the tourbillon, was unparalleled. But it hadn't always been so. For the younger A-L, concerned with social reform, had joined the Jacobins, a political group led by the journalist and revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat. He had befriended Marat, whose sister coincidentally made watch hands for Breguet. Although their political views later diverged, they remained friends throughout those turbulent times leading up to and after the Revolution.
A-L Breguet

    In April 1793, while the two men were visiting a mutual acquaintance in Paris, a royalist crowd gathered outside demanding Marat's head. He was trapped. To save his friend, Breguet dressed him up as a woman, complete with powdered face and reddened cheeks. They waited until evening and then calmly walked out arm in arm, mingling with the crowd until Marat could flee to safety. The revolutionary had the opportunity to return the favor two months later. Hearing that Breguet, because of his royalist connections, had been placed on a death list by the Revolutionary Committee, Marat urged him to leave France. He arranged for safe-conduct passes for Breguet and his son, who had returned from England, to get across the Swiss border. It was the last time that the watchmaker would see his friend. The Terror had begun.
    Marat had been elected in 1792 to the post-revolution National Convention, where he eventually caused the overthrow of the rival Girondin faction. This greatly upset a young Girondin follower, Charlotte Corday, who confronted Marat in his bath and stabbed him to death with a breadknife. (Marat suffered from eczema and spent much of his day working in a cool, soothing bath.) For this act Charlotte got the guillotine and Marat got his picture painted by Jaques-Louis David.
    Breguet spent two years in Switzerland before returning to Paris after the Terror had abated and calm was once more restored. He reclaimed his house and workshops, and built up a clientele from the newly-rich bourgeoisie and the Napoleonic aristocracy. To enable more patrons to purchase his magnificent timepieces (and boost his cash-flow) he devised a 'lay-by' system of payment for watches of a limited series: 25% down on placement of an order and the rest when the piece was completed.
    Over the next 30 years Breguet became even more respected, established and wealthy; apart from a hearing loss he remained healthy and active professionally. However, at 8:37 that morning, whilst sitting at his workbench, he died. His beloved pocket watch died with him, also stopping at exactly 8:37.

* * *

Aunt Effie's Farm, Worcester, Massachusetts
March 16, 1926

STANDING in a snow-covered field on his Aunt Effie's farm, 44 yr old Robert Goddard, a physics professor at Clark University, prepared for the launching of his latest invention—a 10ft high, liquid-fuelled rocket he affectionately called "Nell". Goddard & 'Nell'

It didn't look much like a rocket as we know it today—more like a piece of modern sculpture supported by the frame of a child's swing. Curiously, the engine part where the gases emerged was placed not at the rear of the rocket, but at the front of it; below were suspended the tanks holding the liquid propellents and the fuel pumps. A small conical shield protected the tanks from the heat of the exhaust.
    Finally, the moment for launch came. The pumps were switched on, and an assistant lit the fuse with a blowtorch tied onto a long stick. For 20 seconds or so the rocket burned without moving; suddenly (perhaps when the fuel load had lightened enough) it leapt into the air to an altitude of 41ft, then arced over and dived into a frozen cabbage patch 184ft away at an average speed of 60mph. The whole flight had lasted 2½ seconds, but Goddard was delighted; after years of failure, this was the first flight for a liquid-fuelled rocket and history had been made.
    Ever since he had been inspired by H G Wells' War of the Worlds as a small child, Goddard had dreamed of building rockets not just for earthly travel, but perhaps one day to go to Mars. While others ridiculed him for such fancies (he learned to keep close-mouthed about what he was doing), he never lost sight of his ultimate objective—interplanetary travel.
    After the success of Nell he built more and bigger rockets but eventually was forced to leave Worcester because of the curiosity of its residents. To protect his privacy (and to escape the mocking Press), and supported by some research grants (particularly from the Guggenheim Foundation), in 1930 he took an opportunity to relocate to Roswell, New Mexico. (Roswell? Wasn't that where those aliens were supposed to have landed... Ah, I begin to see a connection!) There amongst the wide, open spaces he built rockets up to 18ft long and achieved altitudes up to 9000ft (1.7 miles or 2.7km). He had many firsts: his rockets exceeded the speed of sound; he developed fin-stabilised steering, gyroscopic control and multi-stage rockets; he was the first to launch a scientific payload (a barometer and a camera). His work inspired many, including a teenager named Jim Lovell who would later become an astronaut. Even the reticent Charles Lindbergh went to see him.
    Now that the mocking had died down in the face of his tangible achievements, Goddard freely published most of his work and claimed many patents. However, he found it disturbing that of all the countries that showed an interest in rocketry, Germany showed the most. He occasionally received requests from German engineers and scientists for technical information, which he casually answered. But as 1939 approached the Germans suddenly fell silent, and Goddard was sufficiently worried to attempt to persuade the American military of the possible uses of, and danger from, rockets by showing them films of some of his launches. "We could slant it a little," he said, "and do some damage." However, they weren't on his wavelength and instead when war came, put him to use designing experimental airplane engines for the Navy. Five years later German V-2 rockets, incorporating many of Goddard's ideas, rained down upon London. After the war Goddard was keen to get hold of a captured V-2. When he finally did get to see one he was dejected to find it could have passed as one of his own.
    Goddard himself produced no more rockets for he died of throat cancer in 1945. However, the story doesn't end there. American scientists, working with émigré German scientists, incorporated Goddard's innovations into the V-2, turning it into the Redstone rocket which put the first Americans into space. The Redstone led directly to the Saturn moon rockets, and indirectly to virtually every other rocket the U.S. has ever flown.
    There are 214 patents in Goddard's name, 131 of which were filed after his death. In June 1960 Mrs Goddard and the Guggenheim Foundation were given a $1 million patent settlement by the US Government—at that time the largest patent settlement the Government had ever given. Robert Goddard, justly dubbed "the Father of Modern Rocketry", was finally rewarded for his brilliance and persistence.
    Just before he died he said: "I feel we are going to enter a new era, it is just a matter of imagination how far we can go with rockets. I think it is fair to say: 'You haven't seen anything yet.'" How right he was.

* * *

Joint Session of Congress, Washington DC
May, 1961

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY was a man who needed a 'win'. The Soviets were winning the Cold War, and just one month earlier, in April, they had become the first nation on earth to send a man into space. OK, Yuri Gagarin had only done one orbit of earth but it was enough—it was in the record books. Soviet technology had triumphed and that hurt the American psyche, which had always thought its own technology invincible. And to make matters worse there followed the Bay of Pigs fiasco. No wonder the Administration was racking its collective brains trying to come up with something to distract attention from its failures. Finally, Kennedy got it. Something to capture the public's imagination. Something to give them hope and pride in their country's achievements. He looked around the chamber and then said in that distinctive nasal Boston twang:

JFK addresses Congress

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

It was breathtaking in its simplicity, and in its audacity. It was only 34 years previously that the Atlantic had been flown for the first time—by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 in the Spirit of St Louis. And yet here was Kennedy throwing out a challenge to the scientific and engineering community to do the impossible—to identify and overcome the myriad of obstacles, many of them unknown at that time, involved in designing a rocket capable of reaching the moon, landing on it and then returning safely, together with all the life support systems its passengers would need to function effectively whilst on board and whilst on the moon itself. And it all had to be done within nine years! Many knowledgeable people shook their heads and said it couldn't be done. Others were fired up, just as Kennedy had hoped the nation would be. He didn't live to see it, but his vision was realised after a massive and magnificent effort by NASA personnel, engineers, scientists, doctors, together with hundreds of thousands of workers employed by contractors. (It has been estimated that at one stage, there were 500,000 people employed on the space program.) And they did it in eight years, not nine.

* * *

Corrigans Jewelery Store, Houston, Texas
August 14, 1961

TONY CARRETTA, NASA's flight equipment buyer, gratefully wiped his brow with his handkerchief as he entered the cool, airconditioned showroom. It sure was hot outside, and his government-issue car didn't have an airconditioner. He looked around and then made his way over to the brightly-lit watch counter. He stared at the rows of watches for a few minutes before a smartly-dressed, pleasant-looking young man approached him from behind the counter. The young man switched on a smile and said, "Hi, I'm Leon Davis, store manager—can I help you?"
     "Yes," said Carretta, "I'm looking for a high-quality, accurate but sturdy chronograph that can time events up to 12 hours."
     "Hmmmm. Manual wind or automatic?"
     "Doesn't matter, as long as it can be wound by hand as well."
     "May I ask what sort of things you'll be timing? Long distance motor races?"
     "Yeah, something like that."
     "Well, we have several here, but you can't go wrong with the Omega Speedmaster. Manual wind 17 jewel Swiss movement, stainless steel case, easy-to-read dial with hours, minutes and seconds read-out, and legendary Swiss quality. Specially designed with motor races such as Le Mans and the Indy 500 in mind. Only thing is, it's a little expensive."
     "How expensive?"
     The manager pursed his lips, thinking. "I can let you have it for just under $100. That's a good price for a quality timepiece like that."
     Carretta appeared to consider this for a while. "OK, you've convinced me. I'll take it."
     The young man smiled even more, and then busied himself transferring the Speedmaster into its red box before carefully wrapping it. He attended to the paperwork, handed the package to Carretta and was about to see him off the premises when he said, "Oh, I forgot to mention, did you notice the scale round the outside of the dial?" Carretta nodded. "Well, that's called a tachymetre scale. You use that to work out your speed over a measured mile. It reads up to 500 miles per hour, but I guess you won't be going that fast!"
     Carretta just smiled and walked out of the store and into the blast furnace outside. He would have loved to have seen the smile get wiped off the manager's face if he told him the Speedmaster would likely be travelling at 17,500 miles per hour, not just a mere 500, but the thought of the trouble he could get into because of that little indiscretion quickly removed the temptation. He felt the sweat trickling down his spine. God, it was hot. And he had another four chronographs to buy that afternoon.

* * *

Saturn V - from 0.5 mph to 17,500 mph

Cape Kennedy, Florida
December 20, 1968 (Launch -1 day)

Apollo 8 and its massive Saturn V rocket sit patiently in all their white- and black-painted glory, surrounded by gantries on the launchpad. There are no wisps of escaping gases yet—the liquid fuel won't be pumped aboard until about five hours before launch. When ignited in Saturn's five engines, the fuel will produce a combined thrust of 7.5 million lbs, equivalent to 160 million horsepower. But that will happen tomorrow. For now, the giant rocket is inanimate.
     Inside the Space Centre the Apollo 8 crew of Commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders are quietly preparing to have lunch. As usual their talk is mostly about technical matters. There is some nervousness, as Apollo 8 will be the first ever spaceflight to go away from earth and into orbit around the moon. Unexpectedly, guests arrive for lunch. Normally guests are forbidden to mix with flight crew for several days before a flight because of the risk of spreading infection, but these guests are very special—none other than pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne, a celebrated aviatrix and novelist in her own right. Lindbergh at 66 years of age is tall, tanned and surprisingly fit. He tells the others about his meeting in the 1930s with rocket experimenter Robert Goddard, the same Goddard that had so fired the imagination of a young Jim Lovell. Lindbergh tells them that Goddard had conceived of flights to the Moon, but had been daunted by the vast cost. "It might cost a million dollars" Goddard had mused. At that the room explodes into laughter.
     Lindbergh continues talking over lunch, quietly but inspirationally. He tells them how before his historic solo Atlantic crossing, he and a friend went to a public library and using a piece of string on a globe of the world, measured the distance between New York and Paris. From this rather crude measurement he had calculated the amount of fuel needed for the trip. Lindbergh then asks how much fuel the Saturn V will use during its climb into space: one of the astronauts does a quick calculation and answers, "Twenty tons per second."
     Lindbergh smiles. "In the first second of your flight tomorrow," he says, "You'll burn ten times more fuel than I did all the way to Paris."

* * *

Apollo 11 breakfast — eggs, bacon, sausage and nerves

Buzz Aldrin takes one small step - click to enlarge

"Hey Neil - you sure this stuff's OK to walk on?"

"Now you see it—now you don't!"

Apollo 11 - Tranquillity Base
Sunday, 20 July, 1969 - 9:56pm Houston time

     Armstrong "tests the water" with his boot

Neil Armstrong, after gingerly testing his footing in the grey powdery surface, lets go of the handrail of the steps of the lunar lander and becomes the first human to walk on the Moon. He is not wearing his standard issue Omega Speedmaster wristwatch, as he has deliberately left it behind in the lander as a replacement for a control panel timer which has failed. Fourteen minutes later, at 10:10pm Houston time, Buzz Aldrin joins him. Aldrin is wearing his Speedmaster, which thus becomes the first watch to be worn on the Moon. Years later Aldrin sends his Speedmaster along with other personal belongings to the Smithsonian Institute so they can be displayed for posterity. The watch never arrives—lost (or stolen) in transit. As Aldrin later put it: "...it turned up missing."
     [Update: Maybe Buzz's watch isn't missing after all. Stephen Morley, a retired sales clerk from Long Beach, California, claims to have bought an Omega Speedmaster for $175 in the early 1990s from a college student. The student claims his father found it on the beach near Santa Barbara in the 1970s. Inscribed inside the caseback is a microscopic "43"—the number believed to have been assigned to Aldrin's watch. The watch is now the subject of a legal wrangle between Morley, Aldrin and NASA, with each party claiming ownership. If genuine, it could be worth $2-4 million. See The San Diego Union-Tribune for further information.]
     [Further update: NASA has now declared the watch is definitely NOT the one that was issued to Aldrin, so Morley can keep it. The downside for Mr Morley is its value has plummeted back to $1000 or so. See The San Diego Union-Tribune for details.]

* * *

"The mailbox" - adapted carbon dioxide filter

Apollo 13 - 200,000 nautical miles from Earth
Monday April 13, 1970 - 10:06 pm Houston time (56 hours Mission Elapsed Time - MET)

After a few minor and easily-correctable mishaps at the beginning of the mission, Apollo 13 had settled down to what was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. So much so that at 46 hours 43 minutes MET, the CapCom (capsule communicator) on duty, Joe Kerwin, had radioed: "The spacecraft is in real good shape as far as we are concerned. We're bored to tears down here." That was soon to change.
     Commander Jim Lovell was floating half-way between the command module (CM) and the lunar module (LM), wrestling with TV wires and a camera, when he heard "a rather large bang" and felt a vibration. This had happened before, when Fred Haise had to actuate a valve which normally gave the same sound, so Lovell didn't get concerned. He looked up at Fred in the LM as if to say, 'there you go again', then noted "Fred had that expression like it wasn't his fault. We suddenly realized that something else had occurred ... but exactly what we didn't know."
     Up in the CM Jack Swigert, sitting in the left-hand or pilot's seat, had just carried out a routine instruction from Houston to stir the 'cryogenics' (liquid oxygen supplies) by activating the fans built into their respective tanks. A minute and a half later he heard the bang. Next thing he knew a master alarm was sounding and the main Bus 'B' undervolt (loss of electrical power) warning light came on. Then more warning lights came on, indicating the loss of two of Apollo 13's three fuel cells, the prime source of the craft's electricity. The needle of the pressure gauge for one oxygen tank was near zero, and that of the other one was going down. Without oxygen, the third fuel cell would also die. There was a backup battery-powered electric supply in the Command and Service Module (CSM) with a lifetime of up to 10 hours, but at that point, Apollo 13 was 87 hours from home. The three men in the craft and the team on the ground in Mission Control desperately tried to understand what had happened, and what the implications were.
     Thirteen minutes after the explosion Lovell happened to look out of the left-hand window. "We are venting something out into the - into space," he reported. "It's a gas of some sort." It was oxygen escaping at a high rate from the second, and last oxygen tank. It was at about this point that Lovell's thinking went from "I wonder what this is going to do to the landing" to "I wonder if we can get back home again." He realised they were in serious trouble, and his life-long dream of walking on the moon was vanishing along with the trail of gas bubbles and debris outside the spacecraft.

What in fact had happened was set in train two years previously, and should have been completely preventable. The no. 2 oxygen tank used in Apollo 13 had originally been installed in Apollo 10. It was removed from Apollo 10 for modification and during the extraction was dropped 2", slightly jarring and probably damaging an internal fill line. The internal fill line was not known to be damaged, and the tank was subsequently installed in Apollo 13.
     The oxygen tanks were originally designed to run off the 28 volt DC power of the command and service modules, but were later redesigned to also run off the 65 volt DC ground power at Kennedy Space Center. All components were upgraded to accept 65 volts except the heater thermostatic switches, which were overlooked. During pre-flight testing the tank would not empty correctly, and it was decided to "boil off" the excess oxygen. This required 8 hours of heating using the 65 volt power, with the probable result that damage occurred to the thermostatically controlled switches on the heater, which were designed for only 28 volts. The switches may have welded shut, allowing the temperature within the tank to rise to over 1000°F, damaging the teflon insulation on the electrical wires to the power fans within the tank. When Swigert turned on the fans to stir the oxygen the exposed wires shorted and the teflon insulation caught fire. This fire spread along the wires to the electrical conduit in the side of the tank, which weakened and ruptured, causing the no. 2 oxygen tank to explode. This in turn damaged the no. 1 tank and parts of the interior of the service module and blew off bay no. 4 cover, exposing the internals to the hazards of space.

Lovell and his crew were now faced with the following problems:

a dead Service Module, including its main propulsion engine
little battery power, meaning consumption had to be drastically reduced
insufficient water
an incorrect course to allow a 'free return' to Earth
an unknown amount of damage to the SM, with possible damage to the heat shield on the CM
a potentially deadly build-up of carbon dioxide.

Paradoxically, oxygen for breathing was not a problem, as there were alternative sources of supply in the Lunar Module.

To conserve water the crew cut down to six ounces per day, a fifth of the normal intake, and used fruit juices. They became dehydrated and lost a total of 31.5 lbs, nearly 50% more than any other crew. Lovell alone lost 14 lbs.
The reduced battery power, and the need to have enough voltage remaining to power the Command Module for re-entry, was the major hurdle. Every non-essential electrical item was shut down, including the CM computer. Without the internal systems operating, the temperature in the CM dropped to 38°F and condensation dripped from the walls. The crew retreated to the Lunar Module where it was slightly warmer (although still very cold) but this caused another problem: the LM was designed to support 2 men for 2 days, not 3 men for nearly 4 days. Before long the carbon dioxide overload warning light came on. There were plenty of lithium hydroxide canisters (which remove carbon dioxide exhaled by the crew) on board, but the square canisters from the CM were not compatible with the round openings in the LM. Eventually Houston managed to come up with instructions on how to make an adapter using plastic bags, cardboard and duct tape—all materials carried on board. The carbon dioxide levels soon dropped to normal.

The next problem to overcome was how to get Apollo 13 back on to a course which would allow it orbit the moon and then head back to Earth. Normally this course correction would be achieved by means of a timed "burn" of the SPS (service propulsion system) engine; this time they had to use the LM's descent engine, which was designed for a different purpose altogether. Houston ran the numbers through the computers and simulators on the ground, instructed the crew and waited; the engine fired, the manoeuvre was successfully executed, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Another burn lasting 263.4 seconds took place two hours after rounding the far side of the Moon. A third burn of 15 seconds at 10% throttle was carried out to get the spacecraft more towards the centre of the re-entry corridor. But it was the fourth and final burn, to correct the re-entry angle, that was possibly the most critical.
When a spacecraft returns to Earth, travelling at a speed of 25,000 mph, its angle of re-entry is paramount; the zone of safety is a cone 2° wide, from 5.5° to 7.5°. Too shallow an angle and the spacecraft will bounce off the atmosphere and continue out into infinity; too steep an angle and it will burn up like a breadcrumb caught in a toaster. By way of illustration, if the Earth were the same size as a basketball, getting the correct angle is like trying to hit the edge of a thin sheet of cardboard balanced on top of it. The three cold and fatigued astronauts knew their lives depended on getting the angle just right, and they had to do it manually without the normal battery-powered navigational and timing aids. Houston calculated the length of the burn to be 22.4 seconds—not a second more, not a second less. During the burn Fred Haise looked after the pitch angle of the ungainly craft (SM plus LM plus CM all joined together); Jim Lovell controlled the roll angle and pushed the buttons to start and stop the engine; and Jack Swigert used his Omega Speedmaster to call out the start and stop times. If ever there was a time to have faith in the reliability of one's watch, this was it. The three of them did such a good job that the re-entry angle ended up at 6.49°—smack in the middle of the 'zone of safety'.

The damaged Service Module

Happy mission controllers - click to enlarge

A successful failure

By now Earth was looming large in the spaceship's windows and the crew were getting a bit anxious about the new re-entry procedures, which Houston was frantically writing because of the need to keep total current to no more than 20 amps. Eventually the procedures were completed, and the crew took nearly two hours to write them all down. This in itself caused a mini-crisis when they feared they would run out of paper to write on.

Four and a half hours before re-entry the SM was jettisoned, giving the crew an opportunity to see the damage the explosion had caused. They could scarcely believe their eyes. A whole panel of the SM housing, 12 feet high by 5½ feet wide, had been blown off, damaging the high-gain antenna and allowing all sorts of equipment to be exposed; bits were hanging out everywhere, breaking off and drifting along with the module.

Finally, it was time to leave the LM and power up the CM for re-entry. The CM was cold and clammy. The walls, ceiling, floor, wire harnesses and panels were all covered with droplets of water. The fear of short-circuits occurring was a real one, but thanks to the safeguards built into the CM after the disastrous Apollo 1 fire in January 1967, when Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee were asphyxiated and burned to death during a launch pad test, the crew's fears proved groundless. The droplets did however provide the crew with a novel sensation as they decelerated in the atmosphere: it rained inside the CM.

At Mission Control in Houston there was concern the CM's heat shield may have been damaged, and the CM (named Odyssey) would burn up on its passage through the atmosphere. However, there was nothing they could do except wait. Almost exactly at the predicted second, Odyssey entered the communication blackout period, which normally lasted for two and a half minutes. The tension was high at Mission Control as the controllers strained to hear word from the spacecraft. The two and a half minutes came and went. Three minutes. Three and a half minutes. Things weren't looking good. Four minutes. No craft had taken this long and returned successfully. Everyone was hushed and motionless apart from the CapCom who had been calling over and over, "Odyssey, this is Houston—do you read me? Odyssey, Houston—do you read me?"

Worried mission controllers - click to enlarge

"Odyssey, this is Houston — do you read me?"

[It's a little-known fact that in the movie 'Apollo 13', the part of CapCom2 was played by Ned Vaughn, an avid watch collector and proud owner of a mint condition 1967 Speedy Pro. Furthermore, Ned is a cousin several times removed of Kevin Bacon, who played Jack Swigert in the movie.]

Suddenly there was a burst of static in the loudspeakers and Lovell's voice came loud and clear, "Hallo Houston, this is Odyssey—it's good to see you again." The room exploded into noisy activity as the controllers shouted their relief, slapped each other on the back and shook hands or high-five'd. A few minutes later Odyssey splashed down gently in the Pacific ocean near Samoa, only 4 miles from the rescue ship USS Iwo Jima, making it the most accurate landing in the history of space flight.

Splashdown - a beautiful sight

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