Eaglemoss Military Watches Collection.
Special Edition 7, Russia in Space
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, Feb 15, 2016 at 04:47 PM (10252 Views)
Many different watches have been worn by Russian Cosmonauts, for example;
On the first manned Space flight, Yuri Gagarin wore a Shockproof, water resistant Sturmanskie, these were based on a watch from the French firm Lip.
In 1960 NII-Chasprom, a Science Institute based in Belarus, made a small number of Electro Mechanical watches for the Soviet space agency, they are very rare as just 29 were made.
The first man to 'Walk' in space, Alexei Leonov wore a white faced Strela. Originally produced for the Soviet Air Force in the 1950s, variations of this watch were issued to cosmonauts for 20 years, until it was retired in 1979. The Russian company Poljot still produces a larger version of this watch.
A Chronograph initially produced for the Soviet Navy, The OKEAN 3133, has been commonly in use by cosmonauts since the 1970s. Publicly available since 1983 it is still a favourite for extravehicular activity, which requires a mechanical watch is used.
In 1994, after two years of testing and preparation by the "Yuri Gagarin Russian State Scientific-Research Test Center of Cosmonauts Training" in Star City, Fortis watches became official issue for cosmonauts
Case
Polished 40mm case, 042mm with the crown, 46.5mm lug to lug 20mm wide
Interior aperture 35.2mm across, 9.2mm deep. 5mm Crown 35.5mm flat glass
Case engraved with watch description.
Dial
35mm White dial.
Black printed tachymetric scale on outer edge. Black printed Minutes scale
Hours indicated with applied double baguette chrome markers and small green dots to represent the lume dots
Chromed paddle style hours and minutes hands with lume infill, Seconds hand is lollipop type, in gloss red and lume filled. Sub dial hands are polished.
Two sub dials would have been for running seconds and Chronograph minutes, in this watch they show days of the week and the date in black type on a circular grooved background.
Strap
Brown PU 'leather', 20mm wide, narrows to 18mm polished buckle. approx. fitting 180-225mm
Close up of the Sunnon PE60 movement
The watch produced for this issue most resembles a Strela, these were also branded as Poljot or Sekonda. The dial detail is better than usual.
This Strela is believed to be similar to that worn by Leonov for his space walk.