Bob Rohrbach’s Tudor Submariner and the Splashdown Bezel

The confirmed source for this story is the Time+Tide video and its accompanying text. It identifies the watch as a Tudor Submariner and says Rohrbach was issued it in March 1969. It also says the watch “has not left the family since.”

Those are important record points, but they are not the same as factory papers, service papers or a maker’s archive. The material supplied for this article does not give a reference number, serial number, case number, calibre, case diameter, bracelet reference, water-resistance rating or detailed photographs of the relevant engravings. It also does not state whether any paperwork from the original issue survives.

That distinction matters because a watch record is built from named sources. In this case, the public record is an interview and publisher summary. Rohrbach’s account gives the human chain: issued in March 1969, worn through service, used during the Apollo 14 recovery, kept in the family, refurbished later, then given to his eldest son. The video does not, from the supplied material, publish a document trail for every link in that chain.

Design interpretation sits separately. The bezel story is persuasive because it matches the physical logic of the object: a high-contrast dial for reading the time, a marked outer ring for elapsed time, and a case shape meant to protect both. That is not a specification claim about this exact watch. It is a reading of why the design choice is central to the account Time+Tide recorded.

Time+Tide frames the watch in two ways: as working equipment and as a status signal. The summary says the Navy handed the Tudor over as “a piece of kit,” while also noting that before the Trident existed, SEALs wore Navy jump wings. According to the same source, seeing those wings next to a Rolex or Tudor identified someone as a fellow member of the Teams.

That social reading is not separate from the design. A Submariner-style watch presents its purpose on the surface. The bezel, the minute track and the large hands are visible from a distance. If the account is about recognition among operators, the watch’s legibility becomes part of its language: it can be read as an instrument, and it can also be noticed as belonging to a particular working world.

The Tudor and Rolex pairing in the source is also historically suggestive, but the supplied material does not give procurement records or model references for the watches seen in that setting. Tudor is a Geneva watchmaker under the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, and Rolex is its sister company, according to the magazine’s reference notes. Anything more specific about military issue patterns would need an additional source.

The most consequential later date in the supplied material is around 1997. Time+Tide says Rohrbach wore the watch until around then, sent it back to Tudor for a refurb, and that it came home looking brand new. He then gave it to his eldest son as a graduation present when the son finished SEAL training.

For collectors, that is a useful service-history note, but it is also a place to be exact. “Refurb” is the source’s word. The supplied material does not say what Tudor replaced, refinished or retained, and it does not publish an invoice or service guarantee. Without those details, the safest record entry is that Time+Tide reports Rohrbach sent the watch back to Tudor around 1997 for a refurb.

That caution does not make the story smaller. It keeps the different kinds of evidence in their right places. The operational account explains why the bezel matters. The family account explains where the watch went next. The missing technical data marks the questions a future record could still answer.

Time+Tide Watches posted the Bob Rohrbach interview on YouTube on Oct. 14, 2026. The supplied channel-feed data lists 2,070 views.

The confirmed public details are the video title, publisher, posting date, channel source and the account summarized above. The watch’s exact reference, calibre, serial number, case number, dimensions and surviving paperwork remain unconfirmed in the material supplied for this article.