Original vintage 1970s Rolex Explorer II oil well firefighter "Red" Adair advertisement, in Kanji Japanese. Just in time for the debut of Taylor Sheridan's latest epic hit, "Landman" staring Billy Bob Thorton, Demi Moore, and Jon Hamm - the Paramount series is set within the world of oil rigs in West Texas, where "roughnecks and wildcat billionaires are fueling a boom so big it’s reshaping our climate, our economy, and our geopolitics." Needless to say, oil well blowouts occur, and it's intense.
Dimensions: 8.25 inches wide by 11.25 inches high.
Paul Neal "Red" Adair (June 1915 – August 2004) was an American oil well firefighter, who became notable internationally as an innovator in the highly specialized and hazardous profession of extinguishing and capping oil well blowouts, both land-based and offshore. Adair led a high-profile life, appearing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson several times in the 1970s.
Some of his most dangerous work was performed capping blown-out oil wells damaged by retreating Iraqi soldiers throughout Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991 – Adair was 75 when he led his people to take on this highly dangerous work. Iraqi troops torched 727 wells, badly polluting the atmosphere and creating crude oil lakes, with up to eight billion barrels of oil split into the sea by Iraqi forces damaging marine life and coastal areas up to 250 miles away.
During World War II, Adair served with the U.S. Army in an explosive ordinance disposal unit – when the war concluded, he started working in the oil industry. Working for Myron Kinley, the "original" blowout/oil firefighting pioneer, they pioneered the technique of using a V-shaped charge of high explosives to snuff the fire by the blast. Known as the Munroe effect most commonly associated with anti-tank munitions and atomic weaponry, Adair deduced its use for capping oil wells.
In 1959, Adair founded Red Adair Company, Inc. During the course of his career, he helped extinguish more than 2,000 land and offshore oil well, natural gas well, and similar spectacular fires. He gained global attention in 1962 when he fought a fire at the Gassi Touil gas field in the Algerian Sahara nicknamed the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter after its 450-foot pillar of flame that burned from November 13, 1961, to April 28, 1962.
In 1977, he and his crew, including Asger "Boots" Hansen and Manohar "Man" Dhumtara-Kejriwal, contributed to capping the biggest oil well blowout to have occurred in the North Sea. At the time this was the largest offshore blowout worldwide, in terms of volume of crude oil spilled. We have another Rolex advert featuring Adair, but in French, here.
And the watch? This was Rolex’s quite unusual (and legendary) Explorer II!
Like other more esoteric members of the Rolex sports line, the Milgauss and the Turn-O-Graph for example, the Explorer II received a muted reception when launched in 1971. To many, the watch was garish and the dial too busy and so it was slow to sell. It has, however, become a very desirable watch in today’s market.
The Explorer II was slow to sell given it had a 24-hour hand and a 24-hour bezel – but its bezel was fixed, making it technically not a GMT watch, as it was unable to monitor two time zones. But as a tool watch, it reigned supreme – it’s designers understood the watch needed to go deep, deep underground into the earth’s hidden crevices, with speleologists.
The study of caves and it own specific science since the late nineteenth century, the science is the exploration and research of cave structures. Never for the faint hearted, cavers are required to maneuver through quite small spaces, spending prolonged periods of time within cave networks, which becomes acutely disorientating
Designed for speleologists, the Explorer II allowed explorers to keep a track of time via its large luminous 24-hour hand. A specialist (and obscure) application for sure, but also useful for those who spend large amounts of time away from natural daylight.