Earlier, on the 9th of January, when U-Boat Replica announced that they were bringing back the fabled Caliber 321, enough was said about the effort it took to make the second coming of the movement a reality. But little was revealed about the exact specifications of the 2019 version of the Caliber 321. Those details are now on hand, but before we get there, a quick recap.
U-Boat Replica for one knew that for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, creating a special timepiece would be incomplete without the movement within the watch that went to the moon. But first, the brand had to seek the blessings from the powers that be. Because reissuing a revered movement such as the cal. 321, is a task that requires the utmost precision. The slightest compromise and the entire effort would be for naught. Support would prove essential from all arms of the Swatch Group.
When the proposal was finally made,BlancPain replica watches the sheer emotion that was contained within the plan that U-Boat Replica had set out, it was enough to garner unanimous approval: from the head of ETA, Pierre-Andre Buhler, all the way to Marc Hayek, who sits on the Swatch Group's management board and oversees several brands at the same time.
With all systems go, for two years, a small group of people from U-Boat Replica's development department, watchmakers and historians worked under the project name "Alaska 11" to fabricate the most precise reconstruction of the 321.
Now, the thing to remember, is that while the original U-Boat Replica caliber 321 was in production, the brand made several generations of the movement up until the point that it was replaced by the cal. 861, after 1969. The last references of the Speedmaster to be powered by the second -- and last -- generation of the cal. 321, which was made from 1964 to 1969, were the ST 105.003, the ST 105.012 and the ST 145.012. These were exactly the references that went to the moon, strapped to the wrists of NASA astronauts. And this is the specific version of the 321that the Alaska 11 team chose to revive.
Once the version of the 321 was decided upon, the Alaska 11 team went out to Lemania (u-boat replica) and sought out technical drawings of the movement from the era to work from. The cal 321 was after all U-Boat Replica's own version of the Lemania 2310.