There’s nothing particularly remarkable looking about this chronograph. A relic from a pre-digital era where such watches were necessary for recording elapsed time and assisting with calculations, now outmoded and lifeless. The crimson-coloured enamel that had once filled the channels of the indices on the bezel worn away to bare metal, its case and crystal scuffed and scratched. You’d be forgiven for thinking it is unloved and forsaken.
A 1964 Ollech & Wajs 17 Jewel Valjox 92 Chronograph, owned by Alen Rhea Rippey — Former Captain, U.S. Army.
But to its owner, Rhea Rippey, that could not be further from the truth. Rhea bought this watch 60 years ago, shortly before standing before a recruitment table and volunteering for the Army, Infantry, Airborne, and Vietnam. The small Ollech & Wajs newspaper advertisement described a chronograph — Equal To Any Challenge, and true to its word, the watch stood up well to all of the unknown rigours that awaited.
An OW mail order advertisement similar to the one Rhea Rippey saw in 1964
The repeated sharp jolts of automatic weapons recoil; river crossings; prolonged periods lying in ambush in water-filled gullies, endless marches through driving rain, there’s no easy hour for a watch on the wrist of an Infantry rifleman. But basic training and the subsequent unit assignments were only acclimatisation for the punishment dealt by helicopters. From internal high-frequency vibrations to those that violently shake the body inside the strong seat restraints; from inadvertent hard landings and the bone-rattling cacophony of multiple .51 calibre anti-aircraft hits to airframe at close range, Rhea’s chronograph took a beating but performed as though on a test bench throughout. As a combat pilot of 1st Cavalry’s 229th Assault Helicopter battalion, Rhea flew hundreds of deadly missions into enemy territory to insert and extract troops. His Ollech & Wajs Chronograph was the one constant in the unpredictable set of variables that defines the mayhem of combat.
“Backward planning is a critical component to the coordinated execution of any successful military operation. In aviation, accurate time hacks become existential elements in planning and execution. For example, timing the rate of fuel consumption during a mission, the countdown of a 20-minute artillery prep before flying into an LZ, or cross-checking the time remaining on a low-fuel warning light. These are not merely nice-to-know data points, but critical to the survival of a flight of fully loaded helicopters.” - Rhea Rippey
A Huey convoy drops onto a hot LZ to extract relieved troops, 6 seconds was the target for time on the ground.
Rhea’s O&W chronograph would prove more reliable than the UH-I Huey he flew out of Tay Ninh Combat Base near the Cambodian border one fateful morning in November, 1969. While his watch is still fully serviceable the aforementioned aircraft, or at least what little remains of its rusted airframe, is presently decaying deep in the undergrowth of triple canopy jungle, precise location unknown.
In this extract from his unpublished memoirs, Rhea recounts in vivid detail the most terrifying three seconds of his time in Vietnam:
“Fly it until the last moving part stops moving” — ARMY AVIATION ADAGE.
It’s a simple fact that most aircraft drew fire during our missions. Pilots whose aircraft were shot up more regularly than others earned the term “magnet ass” from other unit pilots. As opposed to merely taking fire, there was no rhyme or reason to explain who would be shot at versus who would be hit. Better stated, whether Number 5 in a formation would take hits rather than Number 2 was all one big crapshoot like everything else in a combat zone. Still, some of us were luckier than others. I stayed edgy because it began to be suggested that I was perilously close to earning the magnet ass sobriquet. I neither enjoyed nor welcomed the fact that OD aluminium patches showed up on my assigned aircraft with some degree of frequency. Only a fool enjoys being shot at. I understood that over time, the numbers game did not work in the target’s favour.
One random day I was assigned to an eight-ship mission to pick up an assault force at either LZ Grant or LZ Becky in preparation for a CA. We were briefed in advance that several probes on that base the previous night had been followed by a ground attack in the early morning hours. Everyone was especially watchful on the way in that day, checking out the jungle bordering the firebase with special care.
Captain Rippey poses for a photo, his trusty OW chronograph never left his wrist, even in moments of calm between combat missions.
‘Stacked Deck’ — the Battalion motto suggested the odds favoured the aircrews and the troops they served.
It was a typically hot, humid, high density-altitude day, conditions in which air molecules available for optimal engine performance and airfoil lift resembled the characteristics of those in thinner air at much higher altitudes. Operating in such conditions required strict attention to both control inputs and instrumentation necessary to maintain the machine inside safe aerodynamic parameters. The name of the game was to wring the maximum possible lift from the blades while avoiding pilot-induced problems such as over-correction, or unnecessary power demands that would degrade precious lift.
Troop loading at the PZ had gone normally, the usual bumping and scraping of backpacks and weapons was interspersed by periodic joking among the troops and a final head count by sergeants double-checking their squads. The troops were fuelled with expectation and wired by a bit of adrenaline. The aircraft performed perfectly at initial hover. We climbed steadily over the outer wire, reaching for the tops of the tall 125-foot trees surrounding the firebase. Once we cleared the treetops, we were greeted by the typical rolling sea of uneven green foliage undulating in the tropical air, a sea that spread to the horizon. Our altitude at this point was approximately equivalent to an 18-storey building. Nothing suggested anything other than a smooth transition from essentially a slow, high, out-of-ground-effect forward hover into actual flight. We would then re-form into our accelerating en route formation ahead that would take us to the LZ.
Just as I nosed the aircraft over toward translational lift, a sharp, loud explosion cut through the previously smooth turbine whine. It had the sound of a grenade detonation in the transmission compartment. Instantaneously, the nose lurched violently to the right. The AC immediately came on the controls. Both of us reflexively bottomed the collective, rolled off the throttle, and kept the nose forward with cyclic as we each scanned for a forced landing area, the standard emergency procedure for classic engine failure.
Instantly, that bizarre stress-induced slow-motion cognitive phenomenon kicked in. Every passing 1/1,000th of a second seemed to transform perception into plastic moments, a delay which allowed for microscopic examination of every discrete detail during those moments in time in which life or death could go either way, and one had the luxury of examining each precious one of them. The next three seconds extruded into what felt like three excruciating minutes.
“Had to be a .51 cal hit to the engine from the prior night’s attacking force. They’re still here!” I reasoned in a thought flash.
With no power turning the rotor system, no significant forward airspeed to utilise, and no usable lift available in the blades to maintain altitude, the aircraft instantly began a sickening drop from its point of engine failure. From 10–20 feet above the treetops, we were sinking fast with neither forward airspeed nor usable altitude with which to manoeuvre into a suitable forced landing area, even if one had existed.
A sweeping visual instrument crosscheck confirmed what I already knew: engine rpm was heading toward zero while rotor rpm remained steady in the normal operating range thanks to the automatic clutch disconnect that was designed for such situations. The aircraft had become the aerodynamic equivalent of a dump truck loaded with rock. This would not end well. I made a desperate visual scan for a forced landing area anywhere in my field of vision ahead and to the right. Seeing only the vastness of thick treetops rising rapidly, I squeezed the cyclic trigger to announce, “I got nothing.” My stomach lurched upward into my throat as we plummeted downward with sickening velocity. Treetops were reaching greedily upward for our skids when the AC rolled the aircraft left while looking out his window. I could not see what he saw, but a sliver of hope desperately sprang into my heart. Maybe he’s got something!
Initiated with virtually zero forward translational airspeed, this leftward roll was more of a “tilt-and-slide” than an actual descending left turn. We were slipping sideways into the jungle trees, left skid low, at a steep vertical angle in an uncontrolled descent inside a thin-skinned aircraft with no power and eight combat-loaded, unrestrained troops sitting inside a cargo area that was open on both sides. It was the most surreal final approach challenge I could imagine in my worst nightmare.
Immediately the scratching and crunching of limbs against the aluminium skin began, first on the left side and belly, and then extending to both sides as we slid hard into the top canopy. When the main rotor blades made initial contact with the forest, those impacts provided aural input that battered in around my headset ear-cups followed immediately by tactile feedback that passed through the controls into my hands. That totally foreign sensation of rotor blades cutting through limbs and tree trunks was transmitted through the blades, then down through the rotor head and mechanical linkages where it was dampened by the failing hydraulic system and finally fed into the cyclic and collective as a series of random jolts and heavy crunching vibrations. I felt the actual shredding of the jungle in my hands. The Huey had become the equivalent of a massive jungle weed eater.
These stark sounds and physical feedback created a flashing mental impression of a runaway, top-heavy, out-of-control locomotive rattling, swaying, and sparking its way down a section of dangerously loose, very rough and uneven track. As the massive blades sliced through the engulfing forest, limbs crunched and snapped under their impressive dull force. I could feel this contact bleeding off rotor rpm as the slowing rotor system increasingly lost the lift that we would need to cushion impact at the bottom. The thick forest exploded upward as the jungle began to swallow our aircraft in a screeching fury.
The inside of the jungle’s dark mouth was thick and green and terrible. It was quite alien to one who knew it previously only from its rising scent of organic decay, heat, hanging water vapour, and omnipresent potential for hidden internal danger. Our tilted windscreen filled with the slanted impressionistic diagonals of canted trees. I had never judged a flare point by looking across the cockpit out of the port-side window or timed the final pitch pull while canted in a nearly 45-degree roll, but as this splintering, scraping, rending cacophony reached its crescendo, I raised the nose and pulled pitch in unison with the A/C. In my last cognitive moment, I could discern little to no braking effect. This may be the way I die. I halfway felt the beginning of impact before everything went red.
* * *
I had no idea how much time had elapsed or what else had happened before I heard the voice, seemingly from quite a distance away. It was yelling “FIRE!” Through a languid mental haze, I slowly reconnected with the situation. I was alive! I visually checked myself for damage. Legs, yep, arms, yep, move head and back, yep. Wiggle toes, yep. No visible blood. The red I had experienced in my vision upon impact was gone. Even though groggy and still a bit adrift, I increasingly grasped the concept of being strapped inside a burning aircraft. My mental acuity was running a few beats behind the curve of actual events. Some grey smoke wafted into the cockpit from over my left shoulder. It was at that point that I noted for the first time that the door gunner was standing outside my door frantically yanking to force it open. How long had he been there?
The familiar vertical and horizontal lines of the instrument panel hood and the support posts for the windscreen were now bent at strange Alice-In-Wonderland angles, having twisted and deformed upon impact. The structural damage had repurposed the doorframe into a vice that held my door immutably in place. I pulled the emergency door jettison, then pushed as hard as I could with my left arm from behind my seat’s heavy armour side panel, but the side plate blocked any leverage from my right arm. Between my pounding from inside and the door gunner’s pulling from outside, the twisted door finally flew off its hinges, sending the gunner stumbling backwards off the skid into jungle foliage. He recovered, then pushed the heavy protective side panel back so I could exit my seat.
Moving sharply away from the fire danger, my very first step from the airframe ended abruptly when my leg disappeared up to my knee through a hole in the jungle floor. For the first time I realised that the entire aircraft rested upon an odd horizontal maze of old, thick bamboo trunks that now formed a jungle mat beneath the aircraft. Some of these bamboo shafts had grown to a diameter of 4–5 inches or more, altogether creating the visual equivalent of a river log jam on dry land or a pile of pickup sticks on a game table. Since we had impacted this bamboo stand at an angle, the weight and slanting direction of the falling aircraft had caused the strong, mature stalks to bend horizontally under the aircraft, allowing some of the impact energy to be dissipated and cushion our crash to an unknown degree.
As I extricated my leg and made my way across the tangled bamboo mat, I noted that the AC and crew chief were both vertical on the other side of the broken wreckage and that there was no overt fire. Examining the airframe, I was again astonished to see that the stand of bamboo into which we had impacted more-or-less sideways held our battered Huey several feet above the jungle floor. She lay skewed to her left, engine steaming and rotor blades ragged, twisted, and broken by their battering passage through the trees. Altogether, this sad aircraft looked like a large, wilted appetiser presented on an organic platter, an offering on a raised aboriginal bower to pacify a jealous jungle god.
It had been that relatively thinner stand of lighter green bamboo amid the darker jungle trees that the AC had identified as the least bad of our terrible options. Additionally, the bamboo’s energy-absorbing properties had cushioned the crash, thereby preventing a fuel bladder rupture upon impact, a common eventuality in Hueys that almost certainly would have produced a fire. I haven’t the slightest doubt that his quick selection of that bamboo thicket as our most optimal crash site, combined with the angle at which we impacted the bamboo, had saved many lives that day. This had not been my day to die.
* * *
Overhead, a couple of growling aircraft from the flight had broken off from the departing formation to circle at low altitude over the trees, peering down intently as they counted heads for their damage assessment to be radioed back to BN Ops. Our aircraft smoked from broken oil or hydraulic lines leaking onto hot transmission or engine surfaces, but it was not JP-4. We had dodged the deadly fire danger.
Standing across the wreckage from the AC and crew chief, I could see that both appeared unhurt. Because the incredibly thick density of the surrounding jungle vegetation would require minutes for me to reach the other side of the aircraft, we conversed across the broken airframe. I learned that the engine had experienced a compressor stall rather than a .51 calibre hit. Priorities were established to remove the radio, M-60s, ammo, and anything of intelligence or military value that remained on the aircraft. It was obvious that this bird would have to be destroyed in place. She wasn’t going to fly ever again.
I then turned my attention to the condition of our formerly onboard troops and the security of the crash site. I could see them randomly lying where they had been thrown clear, scattered around the impact area like dried, curling autumn leaves blown across a hideously overgrown garden untended for decades. Sweating and itching intensely from heat and insect bites, I struggled and wriggled my way through virtually impenetrable undergrowth to reach each man, careful to evaluate his physical and mental capacity to defend our position should that become necessary. I knew that our flight had notified the firebase and that they would send a patrol out ASAP. But between now and their arrival, I still was concerned that we might attract attention from remnants of the prior evening’s attacking force that possibly might remain in the general area.
To my great relief, I found that most of the troops did not seem to have broken backs or limbs. Although not without pain, many could move themselves into prone shooting positions, while a couple were inhibited from more than minimum utility because of possible internal injuries. Due to the incredible undergrowth density, it took me a full thirty minutes to assess medical conditions; position and organise the eight men around this crash site near where they had been ejected; check their equipment; assign fields of fire; and prep them for unwelcome contact, should it occur.
Some long time later, after a tense approach of an unidentified group through the dense jungle wall, the relief patrol emerged, and the injured troops were assisted or carried from the scene on litters. The rest of us were escorted laboriously through the jungle to the firebase where the Battalion Commander had flown out to pick up the crew in his personal aircraft. During the return trip, the cooler air aloft was a huge relief from the stultifying oven temps on the jungle floor. Upon arrival back at Tay Ninh, he made a smiling observation that confirmed his awareness of my rising magnet ass status.
Once again, I had been the beneficiary of random luck. Fate had rolled the cosmic dice dispassionately, but my number had not appeared. For the following several days, every fibre in my stiff, aching body reminded me constantly that I had avoided a fate far worse than impact damage thanks to a random stand of bamboo that began growing in a remote jungle across the world, perhaps decades before I was born.
Taken from the memoirs of Rhea Rippey, chapter — ‘Autumn Leaves’
It is easy to understand why Rhea feels such a visceral emotional connection to this unremarkable-looking old watch when a simple glance at it can trigger such a film festival of memories: the stinging scent of cordite; stale sweat from a LZ deep in the jungle, the rhythmic ‘thumping’ of an M-60 door gun over the high-pitched whine of a 1,400 horsepower turbine engine; the unmistakable thud of a high-calibre round tearing through the aluminium alloy skin of the aircraft. It doesn’t only summon traumatic flashbacks of battle, it evokes memories of cherished friendships and fallen brothers, the exotic smells of Southeast East Asia, its paradoxically beautiful landscape, his time as an instructor pilot at Army Helicopter Training School in Texas and subsequently a long and successful career as a freelance photographer (another profession where precise timing is a prerequisite). At this time of year, a glance at his watch can transport Rhea back to Christmas day 1969, not in Nashville, Tennessee, but billeted in a hot, humid bunker, full of expectation of incoming rockets or mortars. Guys passing around week-old homemade cookies and small chucks of dried-up fruitcake that survived the trans-Pacific trip from home; A transistor radio tuned into the live Bob Hope Christmas Show at Long Binh; Scraggly palm trees had been resourcefully decorated with scraps of anything with colour, Christmas cards, makeshift ornaments made from used ration tins or other bits of creatively repurposed trash. After nightfall, a few red tracers lofted from perimeter bunkers into the black night sky were sufficient to raise the spirits.
Rhea applied the same Army Aviation protocol to his watch as he did his chopper and wore it until the last moving part stopped. However, he was unwilling to let it end its days in a dark desk draw, they had endured too much together for that. So, in September of this year, he contacted Ollech & Wajs in Zurich to enquire about the possibility of giving his beloved timepiece a full overall and a much-needed systems check. It is always a great pleasure, indeed an honour to have what we call an ‘Original’ back in for a service. By that we mean an OW that has seen action in Vietnam and continues to serve its original owner to this day. We contacted our closest authorised service centre in Maryland to advise them the watch was ‘coming in hot’. It could not have been in safer hands than those of head watchmaker Eugene Stohlman, a skilful technician who specialises in classic movements. Overall the watch was in very good order considering its arduous formative years. Eugene got to work carefully dismantling the venerable Valjoux 92 movement and evaluating each part. Once the six decades of grime was purged and the necessary components replaced, he turned his attention to the exterior. Although the bezel was all but bare, under a loupe Eugene was able to detect enough microscopic traces of the original crimson enamel to colour match exactly a bespoke fresh enamel mix. Rhea had almost forgotten that the bezel numbers and minute markers were once contrasting colours to aid visibility.
The case back is removed for the first time in many years, maybe ever
The dial and hands have been preserved beautifully beneath a thick skin diver crystal
The Valjoux 92 — one of the early movements designed for dive watches.
Six decades of grime was purged from the movement and the necessary components replaced
Two months is the longest time the watch has ever been off the former U.S. Army Captain’s wrist and he is looking forward to a memory-filled reunion in time for the holidays. Indeed, getting his trusted old watch back in original working order will be a truly remarkable Christmas present as far as Rhea is concerned.
Re-enameled, the exact same crimson and black markings the bezel had when it left Zurich in 1964.
We hope you enjoy reading this story over the holidays and whether you’re spending it at home with family or far away from home on duty, we wish you happiness, safe travels and all the very best for 2025.
Our sincere thanks to Captain Rhea Rippey for allowing us to tell the story of his watch and to our good friends at Maryland Watch Works for a skilful restoration.
