In-Depth Bulova’s Accutron Astronaut – The Watch Chosen By The CIA For Pilots Of The Fastest Plane Ever Made
In-Depth Bulova’s Accutron Astronaut – The Watch Chosen By The CIA For Pilots Of The Fastest Plane Ever Made
Secret for decades, the A-12 spy plane program used the most cutting edge technology of its time – including Bulova’s Accutron.
June 12, 2017
Watches In The Wild The Road Through America, Episode 1: A Model Of Mass Production
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.
The Accutron Astronaut – the watch chosen by the CIA for the A-12 pilots.
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 worlds 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 general – perhaps aptly, for a tale so rooted in Cold War-era cloak-and-dagger secrecy. But when an aircraft called the A-12 first flew as part of a CIA “black aircraft” project, it was the most advanced in the world, and for its pilots, the CIA selected what was then the world’s most advanced watch.
The A-12 Spy Plane, And Project OXCART
The A-12 high altitude, high speed reconnaissance aircraft, developed for the CIA under the code name OXCART. (Image: Wikipedia)
If you know something about aircraft, you probably recognize this one immediately – only you might think it’s the very closely related plane made for the Air Force, the famous SR-71 Blackbird. This, however, isn’t the SR-71, but the Lockheed A-12 – a very closely related, but distinct aircraft, which was the SR-71’s immediate predecessor. Like the Blackbird, the A12 was made by Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works division, which handled – and handles – classified aircraft development programs for the U.S. military, and U.S. intelligence agencies.
Skunk Works was founded during World War II, initially to develop a first generation jet fighter aircraft, and in subsequent decades it has, in addition to the SR-71 and A-12, produced some of the most advanced aircraft of their respective generations, in the world. One of the best known was the project codenamed HAVE BLUE, which resulted in the F-117 Nighthawk – the world’s first stealth fighter aircraft. A speciality for Skunk Works (which took its name from a moonshine factory in the famous comic strip L’il Abner) has been designing the very fast, and the very stealthy, and the A12 was very both. The need for the A-12 and SR-71 programs was born from the shortcomings of yet another secret aircraft project: the high-flying photo reconnaissance aircraft known as the U-2, operated by CIA as well as the Air Force, and nicknamed “Dragon Lady.”
U-2 “Dragon Lady” being flight-tested for carrier operations aboard the USS America.
The U-2 was designed for missions over the Soviet Union and was designed to fly at such high altitudes as to be unreachable by Soviet surface-to-air missiles. The Dragon Lady could reach altitudes in excess of 70,000 feet – more than twice the altitude of modern commercial passenger aircraft. However even as it flew its first missions, in 1956, it was already clear that sooner or later, Soviet radar and missile technology would catch up to the U-2. It happened, as it turned out, sooner rather than later; in 1960 a U-2 piloted by Frances Gary Powers was shot down by a Soviet SAM, sparking a diplomatic crisis, and ending the era of of U.S. reconnaissance overflights of the Soviet Union.
By then, however, development of what would become the A-12 was well along. Both Convair and Lockheed submitted proposals, and Lockheed won the development contract. The project was code-named OXCART, a name chosen from a random word list of secret project names, but as the A-12 took shape, those working on the project at Skunk Works became more and more disenchanted with using such a clumsy name for such a groundbreaking aircraft, and the name Cygnus (the Swan, a constellation) was adopted at Lockheed. The name is now little known however, and the aircraft is generally remembered simply as the A-12.
A-12 spy planes on the flight line at Groom Lake, better known as Area 51. (Image: CIA archives)
The A-12, like its successor the SR-71, was an exercise in extremes. It was literally faster than a rifle bullet, capable of hitting speeds in excess of three times the speed of sound and 2,000 miles an hour. It could cross the continental USA in 70 minutes, and had a maximum altitude of almost 90,000 feet. Not only was it the first Mach 3+ capable aircraft, it was also the first operational stealth aircraft. Extensive research went into reducing the so-called radar cross section of the A-12 (that is, how big it “looks” to radar) and great effort went into optimizing the general shape of the aircraft, and developing specific technology such as the use of special radar-absorbing paint, to make the A-12 as hard as possible to find and track in hostile skies.
In the words of its designer, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, “everything had to be invented” for the A-12, including its fuel. The A-12’s fuel – a formula called JP-7 – was developed just for OXCART; the spec for it says rather poetically that its odor “shall not be nauseating or irritating,” and that its appearance at room temperature must be “water-white, clean and bright.” At about three times the cost of conventional jet fuel, it made flying the A-12 an expensive undertaking, but the formula was indispensable, for JP-7 had another critical role: cooling.
An interceptor version of the A-12 was also made: the YF-12A, designed to shoot down incoming Soviet bombers. (Image: CIA Archives)
At top speed and cruising altitude, the A-12’s titanium skin could reach temperatures of 800 degrees and as JP-7 would corrode conventional fuel tank liners of the day, the decision was made to use the skin of the aircraft itself as a fuel tank. The fuel thus absorbed heat from the outer skin and it had to be formulated so it wouldn’t accidentally ignite at such temperatures. One story goes that a crew chief actually tossed a lit cigarette into an open container of JP-7 without mishap. To ignite the engines and afterburners, triethylborane was used, which ignites spontaneously in air and burns at a very high temperature; the aircraft carried just enough for 16 engine firings. Workload for the A-12 pilot was exacting; deviating even slightly from the correct flight angle (angle of attack) at high speeds could cause the aircraft to “depart from controlled flight” with potentially catastrophic results.
The skin of the A-12 was made of titanium and it was the very first aircraft ever to be made entirely of the metal. Prior to this titanium had only been used for certain parts and the supplier to Lockheed did not have access to sufficient quantities for Project OXCART. The CIA therefore set up a number of overseas shell corporations to source the material clandestinely from what was at the time by far the biggest producer of titanium: the Soviet Union. (To paraphrase something Anthony Bourdain once wrote about Russia, one thing you get a lot of in espionage is irony). The plates making up the skin of the aircraft had to have slight gaps left in between them to allow for thermal expansion at top speed, and the result was that the A-12 would drip jet fuel onto the runway before takeoff. It was the intense heat generated by its faster-than-a-speeding-bullet characteristics that caused the CIA to turn to the Accutron Astronaut as a pilot’s watch.
The Bulova Accutron Astronaut
The Accutron watch was unlike any other wristwatch at the time – as we’ve mentioned, there were battery powered wristwatches that preceded it, with prototypes from Lip and Elgin being shown to the public (but not sold at retail) as early as 1952. These however used a conventional balance wheel and balance spring, with a battery and electromagnetic driving circuit to propel it, rather than a mainspring. While a battery-powered watch was something of a novelty, the fact that such watches relied on conventional balances, as well as the fact that the earliest commercial models were very unreliable and expensive, kept them from gaining widespread acceptance. Perhaps most damning however was the fact that a conventional balance and balance spring, oscillating at the same rate as a mechanical watch, cannot in principle produce consistently better accuracy than a standard mechanical watch. The Accutron changed all that.
Bulova Accutron Astronaut, from the Bulova Archives.
The Accutron has no balance or balance spring. Instead, it uses a tuning fork oscillator, driven by a transistor controlled circuit. The Accutron’s tuning fork (in the Accutron 214 movement) vibrates at 360 Hz and uses a button-cell battery. Attached to one limb of the tuning fork is a minute pawl tipped with a nearly invisible ruby jewel. As the tuning fork vibrates the pawl moves back and forth and this drives an index wheel with 360 teeth. The index wheel especially was at the time a wonder of miniaturization and micro-engineering, with teeth so fine that they are invisible to the naked eye. The mechanism has its advantages and disadvantages just like any other piece of engineering, but the high frequency meant that Accutron wristwatches, clocks, and timing mechanisms offered unprecedented reliability, often better than 1 sec/day. The fact that they would run on electric power with no requirement for a mainspring also made them highly suitable for use in aerospace applications.
An Accutron advertisement boasting of its use in the X-15 rocket plane program.
An X-15 hypersonic rocket plane in flight.
Perhaps one of the best known users of the Accutron were pilots in the X-15 rocket plane program. These hypersonic aircraft were launched from under the wing of a B-52 Stratofortress at very high altitude and flew at speeds of up to 4,500 mph. Many X-15 pilots qualified for astronaut’s wings as they flew high enough to have been considered to have reached the fringes of space.
The Astronaut used an Accutron 214 movement and had a 24-hour hand and bezel.
Though the Accutron had originally been designed as a consumer product, the construction of the tuning fork mechanism and low inertia of certain critical components gave it good resistance to high G-loads and as well, a better ability to withstand high temperatures without becoming inaccurate or otherwise malfunctioning. This led to the adoption of Accutron movements as cockpit instrument panel timers for manned space flight (they were used throughout the Gemini and Apollo programs) and also made them highly suitable for use in the cockpit of the A-12.
The Astronaut was especially chosen for the A-12 program due to its resistance to high temperatures.
The basic problem confronting A-12 pilots was succinctly described in a letter written to Bulova by a former A-12 pilot and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Frank Murray:
The Accutron Astronaut was in technical terms almost identical to Bulova’s other civilian models and it’s remarkable to reflect that this watch was not originally intended to tolerate the rigors of high-G acceleration and high ambient temperatures such as it experienced again and again in both the X-15 and A-12 programs. In addition, the Accutron performed very reliably in such diverse roles as cockpit instruments in manned space flight, onboard clocks in satellites and even in military applications; the Accutron was used as a timer for tracking aircraft in the Nike surface-to-air missile program (Nike missiles were stationed in the continental U.S. as a defense against Soviet bombers).
The main difference between the Accutron Astronaut and other Accutron models of its era was the inclusion of a 24-hour hand, and a 24-hour bezel. Like other Accutrons using the 214 movement, the Astronaut has no conventional crown and is set using a recessed key set into the back of the watch, adjacent to the battery door. Changing the battery and servicing an Accutron movement in general required specialized tools and training as the movement, while surprisingly robust in use, is very delicate on the bench (the same could be said, to some degree, about any watch movement, even quartz) and it would be exceedingly easy to destroy the delicate index wheel teeth or lever-and-pawl mechanisms with even a slight miscalculation with one’s tweezers.
The End Of The A-12
The A-12 was not destined to have a long operational 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 BLACK 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 one codenamed “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 U-2 which 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.
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 1969-70, 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 39,000-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 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 ever built, and it seems, ever likely to be built despite being based on designs from the late 1950s. Likewise, the Accutron as a mechanism was a truly ingenious example of just how far mechanical timekeeping can be taken and they remain fascinating instances of an exciting and exotic, and even romantic, period in the evolution of watchmaking.
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