Accutron and the A-12

The Accutron is both a watch and a technology, and when the first Accutron tuning fork watches were first released to the public in 1960 they were seen as nothing short of revolutionary. Quartz watches were still a decade away, and while the Accutron wasn’t the first electric watch – that honor goes to the Hamilton Electric 500, which debuted in 1957 to much fanfare-it was the first to achieve widespread success. Unfortunately for Hamilton their watch was rushed into production and exhibited significant initial teething problems, and when the Accutron came along, the Hamilton Electric 500 was doomed. 

As with the A-12, the Accutron was eventually superseded by more practical technology – first lower cost quartz watches, which appeared for the first time in 1969-1970, and then by ubiquitous, atomic-clock -controlled time signals served to cell phones. However both remain amazing examples of the peak of a certain kind of technological innovation, and the A-12 at least has not been forgotten by the CIA; in 2007 one of the remaining A-12 fuselages was mounted in front of CIA headquarters. A CIA article on the subject says, “The A-12 arrived at CIA Headquarters aboard five wide-load trucks, and it required two enormous cranes to lift the 30,000-pound airframe onto its three-pylon mount to be assembled in 10 days. The pylons hold the airframe in an operational flight attitude at 85,000-90,000 feet – its nose up 8 degrees and airframe rolled 9 degrees to the left.”

The tuning fork mechanism of the Accutron gave it unprecedented accuracy and was seen, as well, as marvelous technology, and with unquestioned superiority on its side, Accutron timekeepers and watches found wide acceptance not only from consumers, but also in the world of astronautics and aeronautics including in the cockpit of the fastest plane ever made. It’s a story maybe better known within the Accutron enthusiast collector community than in the general 0 perhaps aptly, for a tale so rooted in Cold War – era clock -0 and 0 dagger secrecy. But when an aircraft call the A-12 flew as part of a CIA “black aircraft” project, it was the most advanced in the word, and for its pilots, the CIA selected what was then the world’s most advanced watch.

Th A-12 was not destined to have a long operation life. A single-seat aircraft operating under the authority of the CIA, it was never used in its intended mission of clandestine overflights of the Soviet Union. Instead, the A-12s were flown to Okinawa, and were used as part of Project Blac Shield, which consisted of a total of 29 sorties flown primarily over North Vietnam, but also over Laos and North Korea, including a mission that located the USS Pueblo after its capture by the North Korean navy in the 1968 incident now known by the name of the captured vessel. Lt. Colonel Frank Murray flew four of these missions, and also flew the last flight ever of an A-12 when once codename “article 131” was flown from the top secret base at Groom Lake, Nevada, to storage in Palmdale, Arizona. The A-12 was replaced in service by the SR-71, which had two seats for both a pilot and a reconnaissance officer, and which was operated until 1998 by the Air Force and 1999 by NASA. In yet another twist of irony, the “Dragon Lady” – the I-12 with the Sr-71 and A-12 had been intended to replace – remains in service today, providing a flexibility and versatility still unmatched by surveillance satellites.

The A-12 and its sister, the SR-71 Blackbird, have set speed records that remain unbroken to this day and are simply the fastest jet aircraft every built, and it seems, ever likely to be built despite being based on designs from the late 1950’s. Likewise, the Accutron as a mechanism was a truly ingenious example of just how far mechanical timekeeping can be taken and they remain fascination instances of an exciting and exotic, and even romantic, period of evolution of watchmaking.