After a leisurely breakfast at our new hotel on Wednesday, we departed for our cruise across Steinhuder Meer to the fortress castle Wilhelmstein. Photo above is our group, assembled dockside prior to departure on our 30-foot sailboat.

Prior to boarding a small group assembled for another photo. L - R: HANS-GEORG HESS (125-LIFE-1985) Youngest combat sub Skipper of World War II, KNIGHTS CROSS; GERD THATER (194- LIFE-1986) Skipper of U-466 and U-3506 HARRY COOPER (1- LIFE-1983) SHARKHUNTERS founder-, Heilwig Hess, wife of HANS-GEORG.

(Why does HARRY always have his arm around another lady?) PAUL GATZKE (1222-1989) Kriegsmarine veteran.

After our visit into, around and through this ancient castle, some of us just took it easy at the little snack shop on the island before getting back aboard our sailboat for the return trip.

One of the high points of this part of the trip for the serious collectors is the side-trip to the shop of Ziggy (not his real name). When serious collectors come to his shop, he pulls the 'special' trays from under the counter and he has all sorts of World War 11 artifacts available for sale. He has a solid reputation that anything he sells is absolutely genuine - no fakes and no reproductions.

We then went to Bordenau, the ancestral home of General Scharnhorst, the hero of the German resistance against the armies of Napoleon. Like the museum of PETER TAMM, this place is not open to the public.

Indeed, this is the private home of a direct descendant of General Scharnhorst and she invites us into her home and gives us the grand tour. First of course, we enjoy the fantastic soup prepared here. It is a rich pea soup, loaded with ham and it is just delicious! Our Champion PHU, WAITE had one very large sandwich - and SEVEN bowls of soup! He was followed closely by MARK KELLER who downed six bowls of the tasty soup.

In the photo above we see HARRY sitting in a very famous chair. Many famous people have sat in this chair (in addition to HARRY) there were the Crown Prinz, Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and Hermann Goring. Fortunately, it was a big chair!

HARRY saying goodbye to Ingrid, an absolutely delightful lady.

We say goodbye to Ingrid, our charming hostess and we head for the bus. I was pleased to see our SHARKHUNTERS wall clock hanging in the study that was once used by General Scharnhorst.

Another SHARKHUNTERS wall clock was also hanging in the beautiful PETER TAMM Museum. As we have said so many times, the sun is always shining on some SHARKIEIUNTERS Members no matter where in the world the sun happens to be. With SHARKHUNTERS Members in 70 countries, the sun is always above another Member.

From Bordenau we went to a museum that features a beautifully restored Ju 52 that was recently recovered from a Norwegian lake. A flight of these 'Alte Tante Ju' landed on a frozen lake during the April 1940 Norway action and could not take off again. With the spring thaws, the obvious happened and the planes fell through the ice and went to the bottom. Several planes were recovered, parts cannibalized and this one plane emerged. There are many other exhibits here including the only Fiesler STORCH with folding wings. Outside there are even more planes and helicopters.

In the photo at right, we see our two airline pilots in the cockpit of one of the world's truly ugly aircraft, the Antonov AN 2. That's GUY GOODBOE (American Airlines) an the left and RUSS WITTENBERG (United Airlines) on the right. As I said - a very ugly aircraft and I don't know if these guys are helping it or not.

Museum Director GUNTHER LEONHARD (EH820-1998) writes something on HARRY's back - probably a reward poster.

All kidding aside, I hope you are enjoying what we can do with our new computer. The photos are much clearer and sharper. So far, most of the photos -we have sew in this issue have colne from RUSS WITTENBERG with a few from SUSAN BURLEIGH. They were the ones who sent their photos immediately. Thanks..

1999 Patrol in Germany U-Boat Tour

Introduction
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday