Before the Moon Was on the Caseback: The Omega Speedmaster Professional 145.022-69 Pre-Moon Tropical

Turn this Speedmaster over and you will find a seahorse, not the Moon. Its caseback belongs to a design conceived before Apollo 11 landed, which means that when this 145.022-69 was made, Omega had not yet engraved the claim that would define the watch for the next half century: that it was the first watch worn on the Moon. On the front, time has turned the dial from black to brown. Between those two faces sits 1969, the year the Speedmaster went to the Moon.

Omega Before the Speedmaster

The story starts more than a century earlier. Louis Brandt founded the business in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1848, assembling key-wound pocket watches from parts supplied by local craftsmen and selling them across Europe. His sons joined in 1877, and in 1894 the brothers developed a calibre built from interchangeable components, a manufacturing idea as important as any watch they made. They named it Omega. The movement was so successful that in 1903 the company itself took the name, becoming the Omega Watch Co.

By the time the Speedmaster arrived, Omega had built its reputation on measuring time for other people. It had served as official timekeeper at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, a role it still holds. That background matters. The Speedmaster was born into a company whose identity was already bound up with the stopwatch, and it would become the chronograph Omega is best known for.

1957: A Racing Chronograph With Its Scale on the Bezel

Omega launched the Speedmaster in 1957 as part of a trio of professional watches, alongside the Seamaster 300 and the Railmaster. The first reference, CK 2915, was intended for sports timing and motor racing, and its name reflected that purpose. Its most important design decision was moving the tachymeter scale off the dial and onto the bezel. 41Watch describes that placement as unprecedented in the industry at the time, and it freed the dial to do nothing but tell time and count elapsed minutes and hours. The design is often attributed to Claude Baillod, although Omega has not confirmed it.

The trilogy also explains the seahorse. The hippocampus emblem, introduced in 1956, was engraved on the casebacks of all three 1957 professional watches, according to Watchonista. It stayed on the Speedmaster's caseback long after the connection to the Seamaster had been forgotten by most people wearing one, and it is still there on this watch.

Inside that first Speedmaster was the calibre 321, a manually wound chronograph with a column wheel that traced its lineage through Omega's 27 CHRO movement to work done with Lemania in the 1940s. Wikipedia credits its development to Albert Piguet of Lemania. Omega dates the calibre to 1949, while other sources place its development earlier in the decade.

How a Racing Watch Became a Space Watch

Schirra's own watch, 1962

The Speedmaster's first trip to space was not official. On 3 October 1962, astronaut Wally Schirra wore his personal Speedmaster, a CK 2998, on the Mercury-Atlas 8 mission known as Sigma 7. No agency had chosen it. He simply owned one.

Eleven tests and one survivor

Official selection came two years later. Omega's own account of the process describes NASA putting chronographs through trials intended to almost test them to destruction. The Swatch Group archive lists eleven successive tests, ranging from temperature extremes of minus 18 to 93 degrees Celsius through vacuum, humidity, corrosion, shock, acceleration, pressure, vibration and sound. The candidates included the Omega Speedmaster ST 105.003, a Longines-Wittnauer 235T and a third watch recorded as reference 6238. Only the Speedmaster passed. On 1 March 1965, NASA declared it flight qualified for all manned space missions.

Gemini: the first official flights

The first officially issued Speedmasters flew within weeks. Gus Grissom and John Young wore them on Gemini 3 on 23 March 1965, and on 3 June 1965 Ed White wore his Speedmaster outside the spacecraft during Gemini 4, the first American spacewalk, spending more than 20 minutes in open space. A racing chronograph from 1957 had become standard equipment for the most demanding job in the world.

The Case That Became the Moonwatch

Omega did not stand still once NASA had chosen the watch. In the mid 1960s the Speedmaster moved to the asymmetrical 42mm case it still wears today, with a flank that swells on the right side to shield the crown and the chronograph pushers. Sources disagree on the exact start date, with 41Watch placing the arrival of reference ST 105.012 in 1964 and Wikipedia placing it in 1965 to 1966. They agree on what came with it. Reference 105.012 was the first Speedmaster to carry the word Professional on its dial, a word Omega added in the wake of NASA's approval. Reference 145.012 followed in 1966.

The asymmetrical case is the Speedmaster's most practical feature. A crown that sticks out is a crown that catches, and in a pressure suit, in a spacecraft, catching on anything was a serious matter. The raised shoulders turn the case itself into a guard, and that solution has defined the shape of the Speedmaster Professional ever since. Bob's Watches records that the 145.022 kept the same 42mm steel case with twisted lyre lugs, a Hesalite crystal and a fixed black tachymeter bezel.

Calibre 861: A New Heart in 1968

The 145.022 is defined by what is inside it. In 1968 Omega replaced the column wheel calibre 321 with the calibre 861, based on the Lemania 1873 and, according to Wikipedia, also designed by Albert Piguet. Watch Wiki gives the 861 17 jewels, a frequency of 21,600 vibrations per hour and a power reserve of around 40 hours, in a movement 27mm across and 6.87mm high. The chronograph is controlled by a cam rather than a column wheel, and the calibre differed from the Lemania base mainly in its decoration.

The change is sometimes read as a downgrade, but the reasons for it were practical. A cam switching chronograph needs fewer finely finished parts than a column wheel design, and the 861's 21,600 vibrations per hour is faster than the 2.5 Hz, or 18,000 vibrations per hour, at which Omega's rebuilt calibre 321 still runs, giving the chronograph a finer resolution. Timeline.watch describes the new calibre as more accurate and cheaper to produce. It also lasted. Omega's own history records the 861 in use from 1968 until 1997, and its successor, the 1861, carried the same basic architecture forward for decades.

1969: The Year of the -69

The -69 suffix identifies the case version within the 145.022 family. Watchfid, which has catalogued the reference in detail, dates its production from 1969 to 1974, and Bob's Watches notes the details that set it apart from the transitional 145.022-68: a more squarely ended chronograph seconds hand, shorter luminous plots on the dial and a printed rather than applied Omega logo. The ST prefix on the full reference denotes a steel case.

Then came July 1969. When Apollo 11 landed, Neil Armstrong left his Speedmaster inside the lunar module as a backup, and Buzz Aldrin chose to wear his. That made Aldrin's watch, a reference 105.012 powered by the calibre 321, the first watch worn on the Moon. Aldrin's Speedmaster was later lost while being sent to the Smithsonian Institution and has never been found. The watch on the Moon was an older reference than this one, but the 145.022-69 was the Speedmaster entering production in the same year.

What pre-moon means

Omega responded to the landing on the caseback. Watchfid identifies three caseback types across the 145.022-69's production. The earliest, used from 1969 to 1971, carries the seahorse and makes no mention of the Moon. Later casebacks added the words flight qualified by NASA for all manned space missions and the first watch worn on the Moon, and a rare Apollo XI caseback was made for the Japanese market. The Vintage Watch Shop describes the seahorse caseback as making no reference to the moon landing and thus signifying its early age.

So a pre-moon 145.022-69 is a watch from the very edge of history. It was conceived as a NASA flight qualified chronograph, not yet as the Moonwatch, and it wears the emblem of the 1957 trilogy on its back instead of the claim Omega would make for the rest of the century.

Reading the 145.022-69

The dial layout is the one the Speedmaster has kept since 1957, and every element has a job. Watch Wiki sets out the calibre 861's registers: a 30 minute chronograph counter at three o'clock, a 12 hour counter at six and running seconds at nine. The central chronograph hand sweeps the outer track, and the tachymeter on the bezel converts the time taken over a known distance into an average speed, the function that gave the watch its name in the days before anyone imagined it in orbit.

Watchfid's study of the reference records a stepped dial common to every 145.022-69, with the outer track set on a lower level than the centre. It also documents three tachymeter bezels used across production: two distinguished by the position of the dot beside the 70 on the scale, and a third, from the autumn of 1970, printed with a graduation error at 220. Two crown versions bearing the Omega logo were fitted, one narrow and one wide.

Taken together, these details show a watch still being refined in small ways while its larger reputation was being made in space. The case, the movement and the dial layout were settled. The printing, the hands and the bezels continued to evolve, and the 145.022-69 captures that stage of the Speedmaster's development precisely.

The Tropical Dial

The front of this watch has its own story. A tropical dial is one that has faded from its original black to brown over time. According to aBlogtoWatch, the cause lay in a chemical coating applied to black dials that was meant to protect them from fading. In some cases the coating did the opposite, reacting with the dial and allowing it to fade faster than normal once exposed to sunlight. It was never intended by Omega.

The name comes from geography. Watches worn in the strong sunlight close to the equator showed the effect most clearly, while those worn under Swiss skies barely changed, so the brown dials became known as tropical. aBlogtoWatch associates the phenomenon most closely with Speedmasters of 1957 to 1965, and notes that it also affected Seamasters and watches from other makers of the era. Fratello's survey of tropical Speedmasters runs from the CK 2915 all the way to the 145.022-69, which places this reference at the end of the line of Speedmasters that could turn.

What makes a tropical dial compelling is that no two change in the same way. The shade depends on the dial, the coating and the life the watch has lived. The browning is the record of years of daylight on a single wrist, written onto the one part of the watch designed to be read.

After the Moon

The Speedmaster's most dramatic moment came the following year. In April 1970, with Apollo 13 crippled and its crew relying on manual procedures, astronaut Jack Swigert used his Speedmaster to time a critical 14 second engine burn needed to bring the spacecraft home, according to Wikipedia's history of the watch. NASA later honoured Omega with the Silver Snoopy Award. The 145.022-69 was in production throughout, the Speedmaster on the shelf while the watch was proving itself in the most famous emergency in the history of spaceflight.

Final Thoughts

What we love about this 145.022-69 is that it records a watch in the moment before it became a legend. The seahorse on its back comes from a 1957 racing chronograph trilogy. The asymmetrical 42mm case was shaped by the demands of spacewalks. The calibre 861 inside arrived the year before the landing and stayed in production for almost three decades. And the brown dial on the front is the mark of the decades since, a change no one at Omega planned. Few watches carry so much history on both sides of the case. This one does.

References

1. Wikipedia, Omega SA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_SA

2. Wikipedia, Omega Speedmaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Speedmaster

3. OMEGA, 1965: The Speedmaster is qualified by NASA for the space program: https://www.omegawatches.com/chronicle/1965-nasa-tests-and-qualifies-the-speedmaster

4. Swatch Group, MoonSwatch 1965: https://www.swatchgroup.com/en/services/archive/2025/moonswatch-1965

5. OMEGA, Speedmaster Calibre 321: https://www.omegawatches.com/en-us/watches/speedmaster/heritage-models/calibre-321/product

6. 41Watch, Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch: history and all references: https://www.41watch.com/en/journal/historical-reviews-of-iconic-watches/omega-speedmaster-complete-history

7. Watchonista, How the Seamaster Logo Landed on the Speedmaster: https://www.watchonista.com/articles/history/strange-true-watch-tales-how-seamaster-logo-landed-speedmaster

8. Watch Wiki, Omega 861: https://www.watch-wiki.net/doku.php?id=omega_861

9. Timeline.watch, 1969 Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch ref. 145.022-69 ST: https://www.timeline.watch/watch/1969-omega-speedmaster-moonwatch-ref-145-022-69-st/

10. Bob's Watches, Omega's Living Legend: Speedmaster 145.0022: https://www.bobswatches.com/rolex-blog/omega/omegas-legendary-chronograph-speedmaster-145-0022.html

11. Watchfid, Understanding the Speedmaster 145.022-69: https://www.watchfid.com/understanding-the-145022-69-reference/

12. The Vintage Watch Shop, Omega Speedmaster 145.022-69 Pre-Moon Chronograph: https://www.vintagewatchshop.com/products/omega-speedmaster-145-022-69-pre-moon-chronograph/

13. aBlogtoWatch, Omega Speedmaster Tropical Brown Dial Vintage Watch Explained: https://www.ablogtowatch.com/omega-speedmaster-tropical-brown-dial-vintage-watch-explained/

14. Fratello, Omega Speedmaster Tropical Dial Parade: https://www.fratellowatches.com/speedmaster-tropical-dial-parade/

• Case in very good condition, light hairlines visible, no major wear visible.
• Bracelet is 1069 flat link bracelet, light stretch as to be expected.

• Dial very strong tropical brown
• Hands oxidised