5 Years Ago in our KTB

In KTB #60, we announced plans for our THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION, which would be in Charleston. There was the good news that there were SHARKHUNTERS Members is 23 countries. We revealed why OTTO KRETSCHMER (122-LIFE-1985) never wore the traditional Skipper's WHITE HAT. We reported that LARRY DAUPHEMIA (423-1988) and his friend had a tragic dive on U-853; his friend was killed during the dive. USS CROAKER received a miracle - she was headed for the breaker's yard, and they weren't even sure she would remain afloat for the tow to Philadelphia Navy Yard - but the city of Buffalo, New York took her as part of their Naval Heritage Museum. We re-printed the 'PLAN OF THE DAY' for USS GUADALCANAL for 25 April, 1944. We reported a group was planning to raise the pocket battleship GRAF SPEE and turn her into a Museum/Memorial (that plan never materialized).

10 Years Ago in our KTB

In KTB #14 we had continued reports of Roger Miklos, the guy who claimed to have located a sunken U-Boat in the Caribbean, filled with gold, jewels and bodies of high-ranking NAZI officers. We had long pooh-poohed this claim, and it turned out totally false...but Thames Television (London) bit on his bait, and sunk a bunch of money into an expedition that found nothing!

CHRISTOPHER LOWE (11-1983) reported finding the rusting hulk of an Italian UIT boat rusting away in a breaker's yard in England. DAVID WHITE (42-+-1984) reported that U-537 did indeed plant a remote weather station in Canada; it was in the KTB of that boat.

Membership dues were still $25 per year, for a six-page-long KTB that was done on an old typewriter and run off on a photocopier. KTB #14 would take just a little more than one page of today's computer-set KTB Magazine. That is a great increase in value over ten years.