Seiko 7A38 - by the numbers

I'd first made contact with Gerald Roden as far back as March 2011, through Linkedin. Gerald was the Export Manager for Compagnie Générale Horlogère (Seiko's French subsidiary and Yema's parent company) from 1987 to 1991. He's been busy over the last few months and our correspondence had lapsed. Yesterday, Gerald kindly emailed me some photos.  They were taken using his iPhone, so the images aren't as sharp as they could be, but still make very worthwhile additions to this topic. 

You may remember the Yema Spationaute III L’Heure des Héros campaign advert from the previous page. 

Here's a slight variation of it, possibly pre-publication:

Instead of the more familiar photo of Jean-Loup Chrétien on his EVA, the upper image is of J-L, fellow Aragatz crew members Volkov and Krikalev (just visible) in the Soyuz TM-7 simulator in Star City. Similar to, but not quite the same as this Corbis Images © photo, taken on September 18th 1988, some three months before the launch:

The next two are from an advertising campaign Gerald ran in Singapore. The first is similar to the French L’Heure des Héros advert.

Although most of the text is too blurred to read properly, even zooming in on the image, the paragraph to the left of the watch states:

With high-performance materials such as the durable all-titanium case and unbreakable glass. Now where have we heard that before ? 

The headline of the second advert  is quite clevery worded, bearing in mind Yema's involvement with various French polar explorers.

As in the previous advert, the small image of Jean-Loup Chrétien on his EVA has been possibly accidentally reproduced the wrong way around. The Spationaute III shown in this presumably later advert now has the 'Y' logo'd dial, rather than the 'mission flags' dial. The other two N8 models shown alongside are the N80P896 'Pseudo Plongeur' and the dressy N81W53, which leads nicely into ....

Quite unexpectedly Gerald also sent me a few photos of original drawings of Yema N8 chrono's drawn under his brief, including the Spationaute III. Rather than include them here, I've started a separate topic: Original pre-production design drawings of Yema N8's.

I've cropped this out of the 'double' image shown in the other thread:

The drawing appears to be a transitional revision of the Spationaute III, between the (space flown) prototypes presented to the Aragatz crew members and early production version. Obviously it has the 'mission flags' dial, and as drawn, a somewhat over-sized '12' but like Michel Tognini's watch, the word 'P A R I S' stretches the length of the two flags. It also has the same slender hands as Michel's watch (the sub-dial hands are drawn even slimmer and without tails), but it has the larger diameter sub-dials of the production watches. 

What I wanted to see, more than anything, were any Yema N8's - and particularly Spationaute III's Gerald might have in his collection.

His first photo was of a group of Spationaute's.

L-R a Spationaute II (fitted with a tan strap normally found on Yema N8's); a Spationaute 1 (on Kevlar / Velcro) and a mint-looking 'mission flags' dialed Spationaute III. This one appears to be fitted with the plain navy leather strap rather than the shark strap.

In his email which accompanied the photos, Gerald wrote: You will see 2 interesting Spationaute III, with different engraving on the bezel.

So two 'mission flag' dialed Spationaute III's  That on the right has the prototype bezel engraving, same as Michel Tognini's watch.

In this side-by-side shot it's easier to see not only the differences in fonts used, but also in bezel outline thickness and lume markers. 

Great piece of information about these watches Paul. I made a link on the dutch horlogeforum.nl in my topic about the Spationaute III.

Best regards,

John.

Seiko7A38 at February 10, 2013 at 6:54 AM

But as I’d written previously, there was another French astronaut who, as a member of the Aragatz mission back-up crew, was also presented with a Spationaute III and from photos, may possibly have worn it regularly for 3 years (from 1988 to 1992) – Michel Tognini. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Tognini

 

Why ever did I not think to ask him before ? In the eyes of the French press he was en effet, Le Spationaute IIIème.

Time for a rather belated update to this topic. I think I owe Michel Tognini an apology. His surprisingly rapid response to my initial email and generous act of providing good quality photos of his 'prototype version' Yema Spationaute III was probably the most important single contribution to this thread.

Rather than bury his involvement in a topic initially dedicated to his compatriot, France's 'Elder Spaceman', Jean-Loup Chrétien, who was shall we say rather less than helpful and appears to be generally disinterested in the Yema watch that was specifically produced for his Aragatz mission ....

I probably should have started a new topic to run in parallel with this one.

Had I done so, I'd probably have come up with a topic a title something like:

What became of the IIIeme Spationaute's Yema Spationaute III

Academic now, because we know Michel Tognini still owns it thankfully. 

So why the belated bump to this thread, you may be wondering ?  Well I was bored the other evening and started googling, looking for more photos of French and Russian cosmonautes / spationautes (both Aragatz primary and back-up crew) wearing the watch, that I hadn't seen before. What should I turn up, but two more photos of Michel Tognini - this time not in his Sokol space suit (Antares crew photos taken in 1992 - see bottom of page 1), but in civilian attire. 

Getty Images probably holds the world's largest repository of photographs. They seem to be continuously adding to the vast number of images already in the public domain and although strictly copyright (and chargeable for public use like this), they're thankfully not too heavily watermarked. That said, I've found they're not always captioned as accurately / well as they could be.  Here's the sub-gallery where I found these couple of new photos (or at least 'new to me'):

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/pictures/michel-tognini-241572

You may recall my writing at the bottom of the first page ....

The Spationaute III Michel is wearing appears to be fitted a 'double jonc' black leather strap, rather than the nylon / velcro NASA style.

Seems indeed that's what it was. 

Photo caption (in French) reads:

L'astronaute francais Michel Tognini lors de la presentation de la mission franco-russe 'Antares' le 8 avril 1992 en France. April 08, 1992.

Caption (a partial mixture of French and English) reads:

Mission Sovietique Antares (presentation) in France on December 21, 1991 - Michel Tognini, French astronaut.

This next one isn't anything like as good, but if you zoom in and squint hard, you can just discern that Michel Tognini is also wearing his Spationaute III in this photo.

Strange thing - whereas it's relatively easy to right-click and save their precious copyright images, for some reason Getty seemingly make it disproportionally more difficult to copy the text of their captions. I gave up with this one and instead took a screen print of it, which shows their inexcusable ignorance of the subject matter.

The older gent in a raincoat, with his arm around Michel Tognini's shoulder, whom they credit as 'another cosmononaut', is probably one of (if not) the most famous of the surviving original Russian cosmonautes: none other than Alexei Leonov - the first man to walk in space !! 

Seiko7A38 at September 20, 2012 at 5:42 PM

I've been looking (read googling like crazy) trying to find a better colour image of the B&W Soyuz TM-7 recovery photo above.

I am deeply indebted to the owners of www.spacepatches.nl because on their Soyuz TM-7 / Aragatz page:

http://www.spacepatches.nl/mir/tm07.html is this super photo of one very happy Aleksandr Volkov. 

Polyakov, Volkov and Krikalev shortly after landing with the Soyuz TM-7 on April 27, 1989. Chrétien had already returned with

the TM-4 crew aboard Soyuz TM-6 on December 21, 1988. Awaiting launch of delayed Soyuz TM-8, the crew left Mir unmanned.

Although this colour photo is much smaller, the watch Volkov is wearing is even more clearly recognisable as a Yema Spationaute III.

My searches on Getty Images inadvertently turned up a slightly larger version of the above photo of the Soyuz TM-7 crew post landing, showing Aleksandr Volkov wearing his Spationaute III.

Not that you can see it any larger here, due to the forum's current reduced page width format, but this image measures 1024x673 pixels, compared to the previous 626x393 (courtesy of spacepatches.nl). You can view it in the 1024x673 size here on Getty Images website. It's theoretically also available to download @ 5100x3354 pixels, but the privilege will cost you their extortionate standard fee of £485 ! 

Seiko7A38 at October 5, 2012 at 11:55 AM

Here's two more photos taken just before the actual Soyuz TM-7 launch - late afternoon on 26th November 1988:

 

 

Although the first image is much smaller, if you zoom in on it, it provides a far better (if somewhat surprising) result.

Aleksandr Volkov is wearing what appears to be a stainless blue-faced watch on a black nylon / velcro strap on his right wrist.

Jean-Loup appears to be wearing an Omega Speedmaster on a thin black nylon / velcro strap on his left arm, just below the elbow.

Another partial quote from the first page of this thread ....

Besides, I'm rather doubtful as to whether one would be better able to identify the watches they were wearing just before the launch. 

If you watch this JT Antenne 2 newsreel footage of the Soyuz TM-7 launch on 26th November 1988 (from approx. 03:35 to 03:50):

http://boutique.ina.fr/video/CAB02042120/ja2-20h-emission-du-26-novembre-1988.fr.html 

 

.... although it must be around 3:00pm local time, it's already very dark. So all the press photos were taken using flash guns. 

I did later find a couple of slightly larger versions of that colour photo, shown in the above quote from the first page, but if anything they were blurrier - I suspect blown up by someone else from that small image. I'd more or less given up looking for anything sharper - for the reason stated immediately above.

Funnily enough a google search earlier this week turned up a similar B&W image, which was much sharper. It was uploaded on 21st November 2017, to a Tumblr photo / blog site dedicated of all things to the Omega Speedy Moon Watch.

The quote below the image reads:

Taking into account the last sentence from the Tumblr caption, plus what I'd noted from the small colour photo and subsequent observations in this thread, I think we can now confidently state that at Soyuz TM-7 launch on 26th November, 1988, the Aragatz cosmonautes wore the following watches:

Jean-Loup Chrétien

Left wrist - Yema Spationaute III on black YEMA velcro strap

Left forearm - Omega Speedmaster on thin black velcro strap

Right forearm - Poljot 3133* on extra long brown leather strap

Aleksander Volkov

Left wrist (under glove) - Elektronika-5 LCD digital

Left forearm - Poljot 3133* on extra long brown leather strap

Right wrist - Yema Spationaute III on black YEMA velcro strap

Sergei Krikalev

Left wrist** (under glove) - Elektronika-5 LCD digital

Left forearm - Poljot 3133* on extra long brown leather strap

Right wrist** (under glove) - Yema Spationaute III on black YEMA velcro strap

*Presumably Poljot 23J chronograph model # 3133/1981704 (black dial).

**Sergei wore in reverse positions for Soyuz TM-7 landing on 27th April, 1989.

Getting back to Michel Tognini's Spationaute III ....

And my apologies for appearing to have 'done this to death' already  but ....

There was one nagging question in my mind, and that was had Michel Tognini's Spationaute III ever flown in space ? We know that Michel was issued with it in December 1988, as a member of the Aragatz back-up crew and from subsequent photographic evidence, he wore it regularly, both for public engagements and even during his official Antares mission crew photo shoot in July 1992.

Logically, there's no reason for him having worn it during the actual Soyuz TM-15 Antares mission, because he'd been presented with his blue-dialed Yema Antares '7T32' some time prior to launch.

Here follows a partial quote of my lengthy post from the bottom of the first page:

Seiko7A38 at October 12, 2012 at 4:39 AM

There are plenty of photos of Michel Tognini wearing the Yema Antares onboard Mir - on a wide white nylon / velcro strap, like this:

.... and video footage of Michel wearing it here: http://videotheque.cnes.fr/index.php?urlaction=doc&id_doc=14893

However, I wasn't expecting it to be quite so easy to find photos of him wearing a Yema Spationaute III. How wrong I was, it turns out.

Not in his official Soyuz TM-7 'Aragatz' back-up crew photo from 1988 ....

 

But courtesey of www.spacefacts.de, in the official Soyuz TM-15 crew 'walkout' photos (Michel Tognini left), presumably taken in 1992 !

The Spationaute III Michel is wearing appears to be fitted a 'double jonc' black leather strap, rather than the nylon / velcro NASA style.

Before I go any further - into what is going to be a rather lengthy post, I thought I'd slip in this photo. It's another of the Antares crew, partly related to those four in my quote above. I found it recently while searching Getty Images website (their ref. 170976530). Obviously a posed shot of the crew pouring over a training manual, taken in Star City, possibly in the same room (note the green polyester curtains). The main difference with this photo is they're wearing their leather helmets - so presumably taken at different session. Zoom in on it and once again, Michel Tognini can be seen to be wearing his faithful Yema Spationaute III on his left wrist.

This one was apparently taken some 6 months before the launch. It's captioned:

Soyuz Tm-15 crew Michel Tognini (France), Sergei Avdeyev and Anatoly Solovyov, 1992. January 02, 1992.

In my efforts to find any evidence that Michel Tognini might possibly have worn his Spationaute III during the actual Antares mission, I thought it worth re-visiting that first CNES video, that I'd linked in my earlier post / partial quote. It's entitled: Vivre dans l'espace. Most of the footage is of Michel Tognini doing a live TV broadcast to French schoolchildren, about the practicalities of living aboard the Mir space station. During that session, Michel only wears the Yema Antares '7T32' on a broad white YEMA logo'd velcro strap (on his left wrist). But check out that photo in my quote. Michel can be seen wearing another watch on a similar wide white band on his right wrist. You can just make out the letters NG. Seems he was also boldly sporting a Breitling. 

http://videotheque.cnes.fr/index.php?urlaction=doc&id_doc=14893

  (09 seconds in)

  (23 seconds in)

  (24 seconds in)

Note a third unidentified watch on Michel's left wrist as he climbs the gantry. 

In the closing seconds of this video, just before the credits roll, as Michel is extricated from the Soyuz capsule and helped to the recovery area, there are a couple of brief glimpses of him wearing another watch on his right wrist. 

   (11:43 in)

But it turns out to be his Breitling Chronomat on the broad white velcro strap. 

There are plenty more videos on the CNES website worth watching, if only for their watch spotting potential. This one, being entitled 'Mission Antares' proved to be a little disappointing, in that it mostly covers training for the various medical and other experiments (in Star City). It does however yield a few glimpses of Michel wearing his Spationaute III on terra firma.

http://videotheque.cnes.fr/index.php?urlaction=doc&id_doc=25553

   (04:19 in)

   (04:38 in)

  (05:33 in)

  (05:48 in)

From around 11:20 minutes, while he's sat in the Soyuz simulator and again around 13:30 minutes into the video, Michel can be seen wearing another dark blue dialed chronograph on a tan leather strap. That's his Breitling Chronomat again, rather than the Spationaute III. 

There are a couple more CNES videos featuring Michel Tognini and the Antares mission which include different footage of him aboard Mir. Following on from 'Mission Antares', they're rather unimaginitively titled 'Mission Antares Profession Cosmonaute' and 'Profession Cosmonaute'. The former is 9 minutes long and the latter (perversely with the shorter title) is 17 minutes long. There is however some duplication of footage between the two videos. 

http://videotheque.cnes.fr/index.php?urlaction=doc&id_doc=23230

http://videotheque.cnes.fr/index.php?urlaction=doc&id_doc=25053

In the first linked video, between 1:30 and 1:45 minutes, you can catch a few quick glimpses of Michel wearing the Yema Antares on his left wrist and the Breitling Chronomat on his right, while conducting the Alice experiment. That said, his arms are constantly moving, so  it's nigh on impossible to get decent screen grabs.

  (01:31 in)

  (01:40 in)

The second video shows him conducting another experiment, during which he's wearing both the Breitling Cosmonaut and the Yema Antares on the same right wrist. I finally managed to get this screen grab after a few earlier unsuccessful attempts. It's almost in focus. 

  (07:38 in)

But as far as Michel wearing any other watches aboard Mir - Rien du tout. 

As I wrote, there's some duplication of footage between the two videos, particularly of the landing and recovery. (Michel returned to earth on Soyuz TM-14). Most sightings of watches are only fleeting glimpses, too quick for screen grabs. One I did take (from both videos) was this one of Michel being helped into the helicopter.

   (07:30 in)

  (15:18 in) 

I couldn't quite make the watch out, but presumably it's the same one he's wearing on his left wrist in this superb still shot of him taken immediately post recovery, while still in his Sokol space suit - in which the watch looks distinctly like the obligatory Omega Speedmaster.

Those two videos did provide one final surprise though. Aboard the helicopter, Michel can be seen to take the joystick. On his right wrist is a very familiar looking dark coloured 'double jonc' strap.

  (07:36 in)

  (15:24 in)

Seeing that prompted another search for photos of the Antares (Soyuz TM-14) landing and recovery. How I'd managed to miss this image on the CNES website before is completely beyond me !  

It's captioned slightly erroniously as Soyuz TM-15 (rather than TM-14).

Couple of points to note: Michel's Spationaute III is showing aproximately 6:55 (pm), which would have been about right for local Kazakh time of the landing (a sunny Summer's evening). The chap stood immediately behind him appears to be holding Michel's blue CNES overalls which he was wearing when helped into the helicopter (but then presumably removed).

Intrigued, I couldn't resist sending Michel an email, asking for confirmation, which he replied to in his typically polite and prompt manner:

Dear Paul 

Thank you for your email and also for the picture. I did have this one.

Yes indeed that was right after landing. I had 4 watches with me during my Antares mission, but the one in the photo is the one I put on the top of my space suit during reentry and landing.

Kind regards, Michel.

So there you have it. Flown.