20 YEARS AGO in our KTB

KTB #10 was still in the experimental format, using the legal size paper. We reported that former Member DAVIS SIMPSON (15-1983) stopped in for a visit with his wife and his father. JIMMY FRYE (9-1983) gave us a personal tour of U-505.

We were “opening a can of worms” with our inquiries into the possibilities of German U-Boats attempting to reach Japan with cargoes of uranium. ROBERT WILCOX (25-1984), who wrote ‘JAPAN’S SECRET WAR’, felt that two Boats, U-234 and U-1224 were involved and possibly also U-1062 and U-863. At that time, we were trying to locate some of the officers and crew of U-234. Two Members had more to add to this story. JIM VIZIGIAN (29-C-1984) was at Portsmouth, NH Navy Base when U-234 surrendered and he saw the cargo manifest showing 560 kilos of uranium on board, consigned to the Japanese Army. Former Member JAK MALLMANN SHOWELL (73-1984) wrote that the men were treated so badly by their American captors that one of the German officers committed suicide with the lens of his sunglasses. Further research showed us that JAK erroneously had meant the Skipper of U-873 (Fritz Steinhoff) and not an officer of U-234. Further, it is no longer believed by intelligent researchers that Steinhoff committed suicide by slashing his wrists with shards of glass from his eyeglasses but rather was beaten to death in his cell by his captors in Boston. Despite this inaccuracy by JAK, we at Sharkhunters did indeed prove that German U-Boats were trying to reach Japan near the end of the war with cargoes of uranium as well as Me163 Komet rocket propelled fighters, Me262 jet fighters and a lot of other technical advances.

Dues back then in 1984 were still $25. We dispelled the rumor that Hitler offered a reward to any Skipper who could sink either the QUEEN MARY or the QUEEN ELIZABETH, the fast ocean liners that were the pride of the British merchant fleet. There was no such reward.

KTB #10 was only 4 pages long and done on that old manual typewriter we have mentioned so many times. For anyone even remotely interested, that old typewriter was destroyed many years ago when my 30 foot sailboat had a ‘problem’ and sank! Fortunately the boat was salvaged in great shape, but the same could not be said for the Olivetti typewriter. Oh well…….

15 YEARS AGO in our KTB

One of the high points in KTB #41 was the announcement that I was going to be a father! That turned out to be SEAN PATRICK COOPER (½-LIFE-1987) some time later. We also continued to debunk that Roger Miklos and his claim that he found a ‘mystery’ German U-Boat in the Turks & Caicos Islands. The mystery of course, is why would anyone believe such an idiotic story as he hatched – but Thames Television did indeed swallow the hook.

MIKE HOWELL (174-LIFE-1986) had invented a new board game called CONVOY which simulated the Battle of the Atlantic. He sent us a prototype and I’ll bet if we looked hard enough, we’d find it here. We reported on the treatment of Werner Henke, Skipper of U-515 by (then) Captain Dan Gallery while Henke was a prisoner aboard USS GUADALCANAL and the ruse Gallery played on him to make him divulge certain information which, some think, eventually led to Henke’s suicide.

EDITOR NOTE – Please don’t write to tell us that Henke was shot while trying to escape. Any PoW in a camp in the USA who calmly strolls to the barbed wire fence in the middle of a sunny day and nonchalantly begins to climb the wire in front of the machine gun towers is NOT trying to escape. He is committing deliberate suicide.

My wife and I took a weekend off and flew to the Bahamas where we visited with many friends there including DENIS KNOWLES (36-1984), Sir ETIENNE duPUCH (153-+-1985) and his wife, and his daughter Mrs. EILEEN CARRON (135-1985). STEVE TOMAN (70-1984) had just joined the US Navy. We quoted the passage from the logbook of the SS THOMPSON LYKES, which the official history tells us collided with and sank the French sub SURCOUF. EDDIE RUMPF (179-1986) advanced a theory that it was possibly U-502 that sank SURCOUF, thinking it was a small tanker. We knew that the experimental U-Boat that the British took and renamed HMS EXPLORER was nicknamed HMS EXPLODER by her crew, and ROBIN BRANCH (198-1986) told us that the other one renamed HMS EXCALIBUR was nicknamed HMS EXCRUCIATOR by her crew. They had a lot of problems with those boats that used hydrogen peroxide for fuel!

We again reminded our readers that we borrowed the name “KTB” for our Magazine from the Kriegsmarine. KTB was short for Kriegstagebuch which, literally translated, meant ‘Daily War Book’ which was shortened to KTB. Basically, it means logbook.

KTB #41 was just 12 pages long & yes, done on that now famous old manual typewriter, which is now at the bottom of the sea.

10 YEARS AGO in our KTB

When KTB #81 was coming out, we were coming up on our “Patrol in Chicago” and that is featured on the cover. There were more memories from HORST DEGEN (116-+-1985), Skipper of U-701 and there were memories from JIM VERDOLINI (480-2003), radioman aboard USS GUADALCANAL when they captured U-505. We reported on how famous bandleader Glenn Miller really died in World War II.

We reported that James Bacque had released his book ‘Other Losses’ in which he chronicled the millions of German troops in American PoW camps starved to death under orders from Eisenhower AFTER the war had ended. We reported that the great book ‘Iron Coffins’ written by HERBERT WERNER (18-1983) was going to be made into a movie. (EDITOR NOTE – That plan never materialized and it appears to be dead in the water.)

We revealed the gist of an interview that ran in LIFE Magazine in 1940 with the CEO of Texaco, Thorkold Reiber, in which he said that any German U-Boat Skipper who saw a Texaco tanker helping the British…..the U-Boat should sink the tanker! There were other “American” companies that made a ton of money in WW II selling to all sides, including General Motors, Ford, Standard Oil and most of the major oil companies of the era. Their loyalty was to profit. KTB #81 was still just 28 pages in length.

5 YEARS AGO in our KTB

Notice anything missing with KTB #127? Yep, we forgot to put our emblem on the front page. We detailed the new (at that time) 212 Class submarine, built in Germany. This information came from HARRY COOPER (1-LIFE-1983) which he got during the 34th Annual International Submariner’s Convention which was in Friederichshafen on the shores of the Bodensee. There were complete details on the 212 Class in KTB #127.

Sharkhunters presented a check in the amount of $1,000 to the Präsident of the German U-Boat Veterans Association for a donation to the U-Boot Ehrenmal (U-Boat Memorial). With this check, our contribution to the Memorial up to that time was a total of $5,000 – all from the sale of the hand-signed prints.

We continued with the wartime memories of Captain REINHARD HARDEGEN (102-LIFE-1985) and Lt. Col. JAMES ROSE (78-C-1984). There was more information on the “U-Plätze” which were secret coves and hidden harbors used by the Kriegsmarine in the early days of the war. We covered “The Slender Thread” by WILLIAM CARR (3721-1994) in German-Japanese cooperation and communications in WW II and the Indian Ocean Fulcrum.

We told the histories of U-154, U-155 and USS S-41. It was in this issue that it was reported that the website now known as ‘Uboat-dot-Not” was full of errors and that U-Bootfahrer on line had a good laugh any time they logged on to it.