For the first time in our almost 22 years history, Sharkhunters was “Out of Commission” for more than a week, thanks to Hurricane FRANCES. Most people think of Florida as endless stretches of sandy beaches with row upon row of thousands of palm trees – and in many parts of southern Florida, that is the case…..but not in the area where we are located. Here we are in the midst of rolling hills with thousands of oak trees – big, tall, strong oak trees…..but with very small root systems! And then Hurricane FRANCES struck, first with several days of endless, heavy, soaking rain which softened the ground, then followed by a full day or more of winds in the area of 100mph (160kph) and in this county (kreis), hundreds of these huge oak trees simply were blown over. Many did no damage to anything, but a great many fell on electric power lines, tearing them down and leaving entire towns and cities without electric power.

And so it was with this area, and with Sharkhunters. Not one – but three huge oak trees fell less than 100 yards from here, tearing down the electric lines at 1000 hours on Sunday, 5 September. More and more wind caused more and more oak trees to fall all across Florida and at one time, the television news reported that some 2,000,000 homes in Florida had no electric power, and so it was with our facility.

YOUR CALLS WERE NOT ANSWERED because, with no electric, naturally the telephones and the answering machine was useless as well. Without electricity, there was no air conditioning and the daytime temperatures went above 100 degrees and at night, it only got down to 85 degrees – naturally, making it impossible to remain here for those days. Without electricity or telephone lines, we could not even post a notice of this on our website.

FINALLY – after an entire week of waiting for the electric company to restore power to our area, on the evening of Saturday, 11 September, a virtual army of trucks, special trucks and machines and about 100 men came to our area and began to cut away the hundreds of fallen trees, string new wires and finally, at about 2100 hours, the lights came back on again in our area.

THANKS to all our Members who called with their concerns and worries even before our telephone and electric service was lost. And a special thanks to our friend JOHN GESTRICH (3684- 2000) who said that if our home was damaged and unlivable, he would drive for two full days to here with his motorhome and give it to us for as long as needed. Thanks to you all for your concerns and we are back in operation with no damage, thanks God! But this will also tell you why this KTB is a little bit late.

Kind of Light and Short

We are aware, as you are, that this issue of our KTB Magazine is a bit shorter than normal. You probably know that Florida suffered a very unusual hurricane season – five hurricanes hit Florida hard, and two of them came to this area with terrible damage. Thousands of people and some of our staff have been without electric power for more than three weeks and some walk through two feet of water in their homes! We are getting back to normal and KTB #180 will be the normal size again. Thanks for understanding.

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