Rolex GMT Master

August 1963. High above the Mojave Desert, a hundred miles outside of Los Angeles, a B-52 Stratofortress with a serial of 52-0003—dubbed by the Air Force as “the High and Mighty One”—opened its bomb bay doors. But instead of bombs, a cargo of a different kind dropped out: a svelte aircraft, an X-15 which was dwarfed by the giant bomber. The X-15’s XLR99 rocket engine roared to life. For 85 seconds, it burned, pressing the pilot in the cockpit back hard against his seat. The force generated by the burnout propelled the X-15 to 3794 miles per hour. And it kept flying up, and up, through the layers of clouds that envelopes the Earth, to the very edge of the atmosphere itself… and beyond. Air Force test pilot Joseph A. Walker had reached space. As one of the twelve test pilots in the X-15 program—an illustrious group that counted Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, among its number—this was not Wright’s first rodeo. His first jaunt in an X-15 caused a moment of mirth, when Walker was jolted against the back of his seat with such force that he cried out, “Oh my God!” and was answered by an air traffic controller, "You rang?" But after over twenty flights, he was accustomed to the aircraft’s power. In his July 1963 flight, he reached an altitude of 66 miles, high enough for him to be granted astronauts’ wings. However, in his August 22 flight, he surpassed that record with an altitude of 67 miles. With these flights he became the first American civilian to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight, and the seventh American in space. The same year that Walker took this, his final flight in an X-15, Rolex released this watch: the Reference 1675/3 GMT Master. Ever since its debut in the 1950s, the GMT Master had long adorned the wrists of pilots—and even astronauts. It was a useful tool, with its distinctive blue and red bezel. The addition of crown guards in the late 1950s heralded the introduction of the Reference 1675, perhaps the longest-running and most desirable reference of GMT. When compared to its black-and-red bezeled stablemate, the Reference 1675, the Reference 1675/3 was something of an outlier, with its then-unorthodox combination of gold and steel on the case. The watch was further distinguished by the dial, a glossy black with cone-shaped hour markers. Moreover, some of these watches had brown dials, giving rise to the nickname “root beer.” This particular 1675/3, however, is not a root beer version… and this is why it’s interesting. Somewhere along the line, a past owner opted to switch out the black bezel insert that initially came with the watch. The insert that was put in its place is a “creamsicle” insert most commonly found on root beer variants. This bit of visual trickery is both uncommon and delightful, and we have elected to keep it in order to maintain the watch’s unique nature. As a transitional example from the late 1970s, this 1675/3 lacks the quickset date that would dominate the model with the Reference 16753. Beloved of astronauts and pilots alike, the 1675/3 is, like Joseph Walker, simply out of this world.