1969 Omega flightmaster 910 ST145.013

Omega flightmaster 910, ST145.013, circa 1969

I was clearly in trouble now....not too long ago I had 5 vintage pieces, but with three recently acquired vintage Seikos, I now had 8 watches!

All of them had the world's first automatic chronograph movements (Heuer cal 11, Zenith El Primero 3019, and Seiko 6139A), and all dated from 1969 to 1972, bar one - my Heuer Autavia 11630P had the later Heuer cal.12 movement, and dated to approximately 1974, too late for me, so I sadly made the very reluctant decision to let it go.

Thankfully, I managed to find it a good home, and in it's place, I was very lucky to find (from a very cool collector of vintage guitars and watches in Sweden - thanks Arne!) a very early example of the Omega flightmaster 910, ST145.013, first released in 1969!

But why the manual winding flightmaster, one might ask? It's not in keeping with my theme of first automatic chronographs from Heuer, Zenith and Seiko, right? Well, the flightmaster is unique in it's own way, and very much an iconic watch of 1969 - how many watches, vintage or otherwise, can boast of having, in addition to the standard two chrono pushers, such a distinctive over-sized case, three crowns, and seven hands??

Plus, this was one of the very first flightmaster 910s (looking exactly like the one featured on the original flightmaster box - see above) - with no dots on either side of the 12 o'clock marker, and 'solid' pushers.

Early flightmasters supposedly had either solid red (for general public) or solid yellow (for pilots) chrono pushers, but in subsequent productions, Omega changed the 'solid' pushers to the distinctive, but much more common, 'half red, half yellow' pusher variant! Betcha didn't know that! =P

It also has the earlier 1159/155 bracelet/endlinks, which apparently were only used in the first year of flightmaster production, before it was replaced by the 1162/172 bracelet/endlinks.

In any case, I think no vintage watch collection from the late 60s/ early 70s can be considered complete without an Omega! 

I used to own a Jan 1970 pre-moon 861 Speedmaster ST145.022, which I never bonded with, but there was no such problem with this flightmaster 910 - I instantly fell in love with the funky colourful dial and the chunky case, which by the way, is very very comfortable on the wrist, in case any of you were wondering!

Original flightmaster box and manual