In one line
The chronograph Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took to the Moon. Column wheel, horizontal clutch and 17 jewels; for many people, the finest hand-wound chronograph ever series-produced in the twentieth century.
First things first: does the watch in front of you have one?
That is the question that brings most people to this page, and the answer is short: read the reference on the caseback, not the dial.
145.022 — the first with the calibre 861.
The changeover happened in 1968.
The dial lies. There is a transitional run: the earliest 145.022s, stamped “68” inside the caseback, already carried the 861 and the new hands, yet kept the dial with the applied Omega logo, exactly as the 321 watches had. Trust the front and you will get it wrong.
And it pays to get it right: a 145.012 today fetches roughly twice what a 145.022 in the same condition does. The whole difference sits inside the case.
321 against 861: where you actually feel it
Omega did not change calibre because the 321 was bad. It changed because the Speedmaster was selling too well and that movement was slow and expensive to assemble.
| Calibre 321 | Calibre 861 | |
|---|---|---|
| Chronograph control | Column wheel | Cam |
| Frequency | 18,000 vph | 21,600 vph |
| Pusher feel | Smooth and crisp | Harder, with more travel |
| Cost to build | High | Lower — that was the reason |
| Years in the Speedmaster | 1957 – 1968 | From 1968 |
A column wheel is a toothed part that distributes the pusher's orders with watchmaking precision; a cam does the same with a flat part that costs less to produce. Both work equally well. They feel different under the finger.
If you want to see the watch that introduced the replacement, we have its page: Speedmaster Professional 145.022.
Where it comes from
It was not born at Omega. It is Lemania's CH27 C12 project — the two firms shared an owner — and it reached the first Speedmaster, the CK2915, in 1957. Omega gave it the number 321 and fitted it to chronograph Seamasters as well.
NASA put it through a run of tests in 1965 that reads today like a joke: heat at 93°C, cold at −18°C, vacuum, 95% humidity, noise, vibration, 40 g of acceleration and shocks from six directions. It was the only one to come through intact. That is why it flew.
Omega retired it in 1968 and put the cheaper-to-build 861 in its place. It came back in 2019, and the way it came back is worth telling on its own.
Three things almost nobody knows
- They brought it back by scanning a watch that had been to the Moon. Rebuilding it in 2019, Omega did not work from drawings. It made a three-dimensional tomographic scan, layer by layer, of the movement Gene Cernan wore on Apollo 17 — the ST 105.003 now in the company museum — and reproduced the calibre from that scan.
- Its family ended up inside a Patek Philippe. That Lemania CH27 project led to movements which finished up in chronographs from Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin. Put it precisely: they share an ancestor, they are not the same movement — Omega expressly denied that the reissued 321 took anything from the Lemania 2310.
- Its nickname comes from an astronaut, not from the Moon. The Speedmaster 105.003 is known as the “Ed White” because it was the watch on his wrist during the first American spacewalk, in 1965. Four years before the landing.
Technical data
| Type | Hand-wound chronograph |
|---|---|
| Base | Lemania CH27 C12 |
| Chronograph control | Column wheel with horizontal clutch |
| Frequency | 18,000 vph (2.5 Hz) |
| Jewels | 17 |
| Power reserve | 44 hours |
| Diameter | 27 mm |
| Thickness | 6.74 mm |
| Subdials | Chronograph seconds, 30 minutes and 12 hours |
| Production | 1940s – 1968 · reissued from 2019 |
What a watchmaker checks before buying one
A sixty-year-old 321 that runs is not the same thing as a 321 that is right. What you check is whether the chronograph starts, stops and returns to zero three times in a row, and whether the centre seconds hand lands exactly on zero: a lazy return points to a worn or badly adjusted heart cam.
Original spares ran out decades ago, so a proper service depends on the watchmaker holding stock of his own or being able to make the part. That puts the cost of upkeep above an 861, which is still supplied. It is part of the price of owning one.
And be wary of a movement that looks too clean and too bright: heavy polishing of the bridges wipes out the factory finish and takes value away, however good it looks at first glance.
Watches that used it
- Speedmaster CK2915 — the first, 1957
- Speedmaster 2998
- Speedmaster 105.003 “Ed White”
- Speedmaster 105.012 and 145.012 — the Moon landing references
- And its replacement, now on the calibre 861: Speedmaster Professional 145.022
Looking for today's Speedmaster? The current Moonwatch Professional runs the calibre 3861, this one's great-great-grandchild.