The Other “Patrol”

I hope you enjoyed reading about our “Patrol in South Germany & Austria” in KTB #172. Here we highlight just some of what we enjoyed on our “Patrol in North Germany” with Poland & Berlin.

Coffee Gathering & Christmas Party

Our first Sharkhunters Coffee Gathering and Christmas Party in a long time came off beautifully, despite early morning threatening weather. After some early morning showers, the skies cleared and the sun ruled the skies, and our Members began to arrive.

All in all, there were about four dozen Members, guests and wives at HQ for this gathering, although many others coming from central and the south Gulf coast were forced to turn back due to extremely heavy storms they encountered. So it is with Florida – beautiful weather in one place, terrible storms only some miles away.

We were especially pleased to see DETLEV ZIMMERMANN (247-LIFE-1987) in such great shape now. This veteran of U-315 had been in pretty bad shape for a couple years now, with his hips going bad. Over the summer, he had both hips replaced and while he still is not climbing ladders – yet – he is now in great shape.

While it has been some years since our last gathering of this kind, we are planning more for 2004 around the USA. Keep watching the KTB to see if there is one scheduled near you. There is no charge to be at one of these gatherings – we just pick a restaurant, give the time and date of the gathering, and people order what they want off the menu and pay their own tab. It’s that simple – and a lot of fun!

BBC Praise

The BBC considers SHARKHUNTERS to be:

“The most respected and the most authoritative source in the world for German U-Boat history.”
--per BBC reporter Graham Pound; November 1996