As you might have heard it being said on Mainspring before, right now is a great time to be a watch enthusiast. Yesterday was great, today is amazing, and tomorrow will beat all records. Now more than ever we have options. A ton of options for all sorts of watches at all price points and coming from all horological regions of the world. The old and new ones. If you like small rectangular watches, then there is what you’re looking for. If you prefer massive tactical tool watches, well there are many options for those. And if you are more into re-creations of key yet obscure military watches, honestly there aren’t that many of them yet but more coming each day. And to be more specific, here we’re talking about the re-creations of the originals and not their modern re-interpretations, in the sense that their design was updated for the contemporary enthusiast and collector, losing a bit of their soul in the process. 

Thus today we’re going to turn our attention to Forstner, the famed bracelet company with roots dating back to the early 1920s, and the A-12, its almost highly faithful recreation of the 1960s Bulova Accutron Astronaut used by CIA and Air Force test pilots. The original is the type of watch I would have never heard of save for Forstner’s recreation because, even though Bulova has made a new version of the Accutron Astronaut two years after Forstner’s A-12, the brand’s modern design ethos never aligned with my own horological taste. Therefore the modern Bulova would have remained unknown to my horological head. And in many ways, the Forstner A-12 is a more accurate re-creation of the 1960s original both in terms of design and mechanics, but also in terms of character and soul. And this is why you would be more inclined to pay the $475 USD Forstner asks for it, instead of the $3,500 USD Bulova wants you to depart with. 

Specifications

The original Bulova Accutron Astronaut is a type of watch no brand would dare make today. It was born at the time of the Cold War and of the CIA’s “Black Aircraft Project” of spy planes, for which the high-altitude, Mach 3+ reconnaissance Lockheed A-12 plane was selected. From a user-perspective, time on the Bulova was set by way of a recessed key on the case-back which meant there was no crown that could get entangled in pilots’ suits and equipment. It was also powered by Bulova’s battery-operated Calibre 214 known for its 360Hz tuning-fork movement and legendary accuracy, which was much better suited to sustain the high G-force accelerations the test pilots would be subject to than a traditional mechanically powered timepiece. And that constitutes one of the first elements which makes the Forstner A-12 interesting to look at: though much more pedestrian than the Caliber 214, it is powered by a Ronda 515-24HR quartz movement. 

The benefit of modern quartz calibers is the superb accuracy-and-battery-life-to-dollar ratio we get from them. So -10/+20 seconds daily deviation and a battery life of approximately 45 months or 3.75 years. In and of itself, the Ronda 515-24H makes up a decent portion of the value one gets from the $475 USD one would spend on the Forstner A-12. However, one element of the brand’s integration of the Ronda into the case which might be a negative for some is the absence of the one-tick per-second hand*. Forstner opted to do sans the latter to keep the watch as thin as possible in order to preserve the dimensions of the original as accurately as possible. And so speaking of which: the Forstner A-12 measures 39mm in diameter, 39mm lug-to-lug, 12.6mm thick and has an 18mm lug width. The vintage Bulova Accutron Astronaut measured 38mm in diameter, 40mm lug-to-lug, 13.5mm thick, and had an 18m lug width.  

*Let’s be real: generally watch folks wish brands would remove the annoying ticking seconds hand all together. So why would it be an issue here? 

So it’s an almost perfect match, something that cannot be said of the modern Bulova whose case was enlarged to 41mm. And I wouldn’t be able to tell you how many millimeters a seconds hand would have added to the total thickness of the A-12. But what’s sure is that it looks darn good as is and that choice made it possible for Forstner to put a super vintagy tall and domed piece of sapphire on top of the dial. I have it on good authority that manufacturing domed saphire crystals ain’t cheap, further adding to the good value the Forstner A-12 seems to be sure to offer. Moreover, we find a period-correct bi-directional friction-fit bezel, a sterile matte black dial  with superb applications of C3 lume on the hands and printed markers, a decent 50 meters of water resistance, and a glorious Forstner 5-link Bullet Bracelet with screwed links and a short and nimble double-pusher deployant clasp with seven (7!) holes of micro-adjustments. 

Design 

Thus far in this review I evidently compared the Forstner A-12 to the 1960s Bulova Accutron Astronaut and its modern and expensive re-interpretation. Yes because, well, the former was inspired by the first latter and constitutes a more affordable alternative to the second latter. But at this point in the review we’re going to leave behind the source which inspired the Forstner and focus solely on its design—that of the dial, case, and bracelet—for what it is: that of a military timekeeping device which is delightfully vintage and superbly executed. But more so importantly, Forstner managed to endow its re-creation with a profound and intense 1960s military charm and character which makes it look like it was designed then. And first we’re going to go back to the question of the missing seconds hand: I don’t believe that Cold War-era CIA test pilots necessitated the seconds hand as much as astronauts did, and so pragmatically, it is ok for it to be absent. 

And so visually it makes the dial clean and easy to read, and if you can overcome the potential stress related to the lack of the seconds hand, then you can appreciate the brand’s choice here. (I for one prefer to keep and set accurate time to the precise second, but a Forstner A-12 in 2025 doesn’t fulfill the same role as did a Bulova Accutron Astronaut in the 1960s.) You would therefore wear the A-12 for what it is, what it represents, and how it looks. Not its alleged potential to be a precise and reliable piece of spycraft because that’s not what it was meant to be. And so starting from the domed sapphire crystal, passing by the brushed stainless steel bezel insert with its paint-filled markings and gently serrated bezel assembly which actually makes up the 39mm diameter Forstner listed on its website, we find a flying saucer-shaped case which measures 35.4mm in diameter at its widest point, excluding the tiny 3.6mm onion-shaped crown. 

The case is superb, with a (technically) mid-case section measuring just a few millimeters in height, vertically brushed, underneath of which a wide polished chamfer circles the entirety of the screw-down case-back, and which glides below the mandible-shaped lugs which are attached to metal overhangs north and south of the case. I’m not an entomologist but the lugs do look like the mouth of an insect, and so are visually stunning and beautifully finished as they are mostly polished. As we know, the L2L is 39mm and therefore you can easily imagine how much of a delight the Forstner A-12 is to wear on the wrist, especially on my 6.50”/16.5cm flesh-and-bone apparatus. Moreover, the tiny crown I mentioned earlier is cool because it is a Forstner creation and is perfect for a set-and-forget quartz-powered timekeeping device. Lastly, the bracelet: the rounded and angled links, complemented by the narrow and polished center links, is both handsome and darn comfortable to wear. 

Lest not forget the dial the Forstner A-12 is endowed with, and which again I find to be looking rather dapper sans the seconds hand. The majority of the dial is black and matte, save for the thin and polished pencil-style hour and minute hands as well as the triangular-shaped GMT hand. (The tip of the minute hand is slightly curved to counter the parallax effect.) All three hands are lumed and generously so, as are the printed hour markers. At the cardinal points, batons, everywhere else, shark teeth-shaped triangles. In-between them we find little dots which align to the odd hours of the GMT scale adorning the bezel, so that it is easy to align the bezel with the dial in order to keep track of time in a secondary time zone. The fact that there are basically three sets of hour markers on the dial confer to the Forstner A-12 a decidedly military and purpose-driven character which I for one I’m a big fan of. (I know you are too.) 

The Heart of the Matter

At the heart of the matter is the fact that the Forstner A-12 is the epitome of a recreation well done. Not only that but done by an independent entity and not by the creator of the original timepiece it drew inspiration from. And so now we can put the topic of the Bulova Accutron Astronaut back on the table as we’ve dissected the A-12 through all of its facets and all of what makes it an exceptional timepiece. Exceptional for the price ($475 USD) and for its design and execution, both of which are superb. Because it is one thing to imitate and another to celebrate. Looking from a broad perspective, there is little in terms of design that separates the A-12 from the Accutron. The former was inspired by the latter, as we know. But looking at the A-12 from a more precise and analytical manner, we do find a few elements which make it stand apart from the old and new Bulova’s equally. 

On the one hand, it delves into the historical significance of the Old Bulova and its matching low-key purpose-driven character. Wearing the Forstner I feel transported to any of the blockbuster space-exploration themed movies of the past thirty years, hopping in my Cobra and driving to one of NASA’s training centers. (Sorry, I don’t know my Cold War CIA movie references.) And the A-12 manages to do so through its almost perfect period-correct dimensions, the choice of a quartz-powered GMT caliber, the domed sapphire crystal, and the genius pairing to Forstner’s Bullet bracelet which, under the name Jacoby Bender, it supplied to NASA’s astronauts in the 1960s. On the other hand, it is visually and financially much more compelling than Bulova’s modern Astronaut watch, which ought to matter to a few of you. And through a few liberties the brand took—doing without the seconds hand and redesigning the handset—it makes for a more wholesome package. 

Conclusion

As mentioned in the introduction, there aren’t many re-creations of obscure military watches on the market today. Though I do hope they will become more common because they help us to better understand a section of the history of horology and of mankind since the middle of the 19th century we might not be familiar with—as did for example the MKII Fulcrum 39 and Tornek-Rayville Type 7B BlakJak. Not only that, but they also make a certain type of bygone horology accessible to many of us, as I do find the asking $475 USD to be more than reasonable for what you get. So please check out Forstner’s website to learn more about the A-12 and, why not, the Pilot Ref. F-6B/346 which I ought to review as well. Right? 

Thanks for reading.