20 YEARS AGO in our KTB

KTB #4 came out in May 1983 and was actually the first of our newsletters to be named the KTB, which is the German shortened word from KriegsTageBuch which literally translated, means Daily War Book or better known as the logbook. At that time it really was a newsletter, being infrequent and only a few pages long. Our KTB is now a magazine in all sense of the word.

There was information about a guy named Roger Miklos, who claimed to have found a German U-Boat filled with gold, silver, jewelry, art treasures from major European museums and of course, the mercury ballast. His story was so full of holes that even a novice could spot all the errors, but he hooked Thames television to do an on-scene documentary as they salvaged this “special” U-Boat, sunk in the Turks & Caicos Islands. The idiotic claims he made about this boat could (and did) fill a couple pages. When Thames Television arrived on scene to film this event, Miklos had a ton of excuses why this mysterious U-Boat wasn’t in the spot where he said he found it. Can’t imagine why not…..

And there was another guy, full of romantic stories – he claimed that he was I.W.O. on various U-Boats and at the end of the war, was Commander of a Type XXI operating in the South Atlantic. We checked and found that EVERY boat he claimed he served on as I.W.O. was sunk with all hands lost! We asked him how it was that he was still alive. And the number he gave for the Type XXI boat he said he commanded was actually assigned to a Type XXIII coastal boat that was still unfinished in the shipyard when the war ended and as we all know, there were no Type XXI electro-boots on patrol in World War II. Again we asked for an explanation and again, he had none – and he sent a telegram, an honest-to-goodness telegram, stating that he forbade us to use any of his wartime experiences in our magazine. What wartime experiences? When we checked through JOHN TAYLOR (19-LIFE-1983) at the National Archives, we learned that there never was anyone names Heinz Houben in ANY branch of the Wehrmacht in World War II. Oh well, as children, we all have fantasies but when we grow up, we leave them behind – most of us anyhow.

There was a glimmer of a story about U-Boats taking uranium to Japan towards the end of the war, and we began to research it. Even the vaunted Chicago TRIBUNE said that this was impossible and a wartime fairly tale. Later on, SHARKHUNTERS proved that this WAS indeed true, but more about that later.

KTB #4 was the first time SHARKHUNTERS asked for dues as, up to that point, all expenses had either come out of the pocket of HARRY COOPER (1-LIFE-1983), the postage and the photocopying was sometimes done in the mailroom of the company where HARRY worked as a Vice President. The annual dues back then were $20. Compare the twenty dollar dues of 1983 with the fifty dollar dues of today; an increase of 150% which is not bad over twenty years when the cost of printing has risen far more and the cost of postage has gone through the roof!

And compare the three-page typewriter done KTB of 1983 with the 44 page computer typeset KTB Magazine of today – it is a massive improvement! A lot has changed in twenty years!

15 YEARS AGO in our KTB

KTB #36 was a little late because the area where we lived and had our offices (Fox Lake, Ill.) had been under tremendous rains and everything was so badly flooded that there was no electric service.

Key Largo Adventure

As we were preparing for our First Ever SHARKHUNTERS tour (Key Largo, FL), we learned that so many people had an aunt, an uncle, an old school friend etc. living near our convention location that they could get a free room – and wanted to just ‘drop in’ on our convention and naturally, pay nothing there either. We did have a great attendance – some 50 Members were there, and at that time there were only 250 Members total in SHARKHUNTERS. There were three U-Boat Commanders (one with the Knights Cross), eight more U-Boat officers & crewmen, several American ASW veterans, a few American submarine veterans and a lot of Members who were really interested. It was a great time.

DAVID WHITE (42-+-1984) prepared a rough draft of a story he was going to write about U-66, but then he died before ever getting it finished. OTTO GIESE (45-+-1984) sent a very interesting audiotape with his memories of the war – some really funny, some really sad. He told us that he went to school with REINHARD HARDEGEN (102-LIFE-1985) and that they both would chase after the same girls – HARDEGEN always won them.

Both RANDY BALCOM (74-1984) & “MAD DOG” MOSELLE (77-1984) were going to try to find and dive U-166, but no luck. OTTO KRETSCHMER (122-+-1985) sent a photo of himself at the ceremony when the Kretschmer March was dedicated. Even though it has been almost five years since OTTO departed on his ‘Eternal Patrol’, I still get a lump in my throat when I write his name. He was a fine man and a dear friend.

We touched lightly on the incident wherein U-852 under command of Heinz Eck shot some floating crates in the South Atlantic – and there were survivors around those crates who were also shot, some killed. We have all the court documents, thanks to his sister THALITA ECK (663-+-1988), and because PETER HANSEN (251-LIFE-1987) sat in on the court martial, there is plenty of previously unknown information on this situation - so we will cover that in depth later on.

U-Boats Full of ‘Nazi’ Gold…..

Some fellow named Charlie Shaw sent photos purporting to be sunken U-Boats…..one in 65 feet of water off Venice, Florida and the other in 60 feet of water off Bradenton Beach, Florida. Naturally, they had to have the obligatory ‘Nazi gold’ on board. Charlie had planned to join SHARKHUNTERS but when we told him, nicely and factually, that NO German U-Boats were sunk in Florida waters ANYWHERE – I guess he wasn’t interested in fact. He’s probably one of the ‘experts’ on DOT-NOT website today.

KTB #36 was eight pages long and still done on that old manual typewriter. We were still located in the northwest suburbs of Chicago – but that was soon to change.

10 YEARS AGO in our KTB

KTB #75 carried a report of the SHARKHUNTERS convention in Chicago where we had a US Navy Sea cadet Honor Guard aboard U-505. There were more exciting first-person stories from OTTO GIESE (45-+-1985), CHARLES GUNDERSEN (205-C-1986) and LCDR MILES GRAHAM (521-+-1988).

“SHARKHUNTERS – It’s not just a club – it’s an adventure!” Those were the words of BRIAN ORLANDO (807-1988) after our dive trip to Roatan, Honduras where we enjoyed the hospitality at the dive shop owned by TYLL SASS (526-1988). We had such a great time down there, eating huge lobster dinners for six bucks and chilled beer for another half a buck.

There were some historic notes on men like Lothar von Arnaud de la Periere, the greatest submarine Skipper of all time. He sank 198 ships in World War One, and a great many of those with his deck gun. He was a Vice Admiral in charge liaison with the workers of the French dockyards and was en route to take over the duties of Admiral Sud (Admiral of the South) when, on 24 February 1941, his plane crashed at Paris-LeBourget Airport. The question was raised if this was an accident or was his aircraft, like so many others in the war, sabotaged to fail?

KTB #75 was 28 pages long and done on a new typewriter.

5 YEARS AGO in our KTB

In KTB #121, we continued a story by ERICH TOPP (118-LIFE-1985) and also the doctoral thesis of PHILIP ATTENBOROUGH (440-1988), and there was a new article by MIKE HOWELL (176-LIFE-1986) on the American submarine CSS HUNLEY. We asked about the Italian submarine SAN JURJIO that had some interesting incidents on her patrols, but no new information was forthcoming. There was more by DON ANGEL ALCAZAR de VELASCO (158-+-1985) on who did and who did not, escape from Germany in the closing moments. We showed DON ANGEL as being dead when this issue went to press because we were led to believe that he was dead. However, he has been reported as dead several times so far, and these are only efforts to remain hidden. We are back in contact with him again in 2003, so he is not dead.

PETER HANSEN (251-LIFE-1987) told us in his Peter’s Periscope column, about Operation FELIX, which he claims was conceived by ‘Desk Warriors’ in Berlin, which was the plan to have Admiral Wilhelm Canaris go to Spain to convince Franco to let the German troops move through Spain to attack Gibraltar, so the Germans and not the British, would have control of the door to the Mediterranean. Obviously, it failed.

KTB #121 was done with the newest computer technology available at the time, and was 40 pages in length.