I had the pleasure of dining with astronaut Jack Lousma last year. Jack was in the 5th Apollo astronaut group, he was backup on Apollo Soyuz, was on Skylab, and commanded STS-3. He told me a little story of the Speedmaster he wore on Skylab. Seems his wife tracked it down through NASA and the Smithsonian, many years after the mission. After some negotiation, she was able to get it on loan to the Michigan Military and Space Museum. I was on business travel this week in Michigan and took the day to go visit this museum and see the watch. If you get a chance, I highly recommended spending a few hours there, it is amazing. I had guessed the watch was probably a 145.012-67, given the timeframe of Skylab. Well, here's what I found: An absolutely stunning CB cased '66, with gorgeous patina (my pics do no justice), a slightly ghosted DoN bezel, sharp CB case facets, and NASA serial #53. Thanks to the museum staff I was able to handle the watch. This is the coolest Speedy I've ever seen, it has it all.
Pics or it didn't happen What a cool experience! Didn't realize a 105.012-66 CB was flown...so awesome.
One of NASA's batches seemed to be all 66CBs, so an abnormally large proportion of flown 321 Speedmasters are CBs, including Cernan's from Apollo 17.
This is so cool, and you are very lucky to have been able to handle it! Thank you very much for sharing! Michigan Military and Space Museum is now on my list of places to visit! I kind of dig the jubilee on it too!
Oem or not it doesn't fit well. The gap is huge. I have found an OEM jubilee for the FOIS. Unfortunately it has no number only no12, 9/77 date, and 49 on the end pieces.
Fantastic write up and pictures of the watch. This watch has been one that I wanted to get a better look at because of the bracelet. I wish you could have identified it but the close up pictures are good enough for me. First you wear Wally's gold Speedmaster and now this. It's going to be tough to top those two. Well done. I talked with Jack about this watch as well when working with him signing a piece for my collection. He wore this Speedmaster during his Skylab mission and thereafter until the Speedmasters were collected and returned to the NASM for storage. Later, upon his request to the NASM it was loaned back to him for his STS-3 mission. He wore it on his wrist under his pressure suit on the bracelet you see now as well as a second Speedmaster on the suit exterior. One other little fun fact about this very watch. It was on Jack's wrist as he became the only Shuttle Pilot to pop a wheelie in the Space Shuttle. This is a longer video than I prefer to post but if you scroll to the 4:00 minute mark you can see Jack doing "some of that pilot $hit" when he takes over manual control for a yet to be perfected Shuttle autopilot.
Just busy preparing MWU update for July 2017... these are ready Skylab 3 July to September 1973 - Lousma's first spaceflight . . . more soon: https://moonwatchuniverse.tumblr.com/archive
Wait, so he was still wearing a 105.003 in 1973? Unless I'm going crazy, that's a straight lug with two lines of text.
