Gordon Williamson

He has the honour of carrying the flag at passing out parade.

He's in the second row here at extreme left, wearing the Marksmanship Lanyard

In 1938, he earns the 4 Yrs Long Service Medal

He'll be the one doing room inspections and making life hell for his recruits.

Where as a member of the NCO corps, -

Now, he's an NCO and soon he'll be heading back to the training grounds.

He's actually a pretty good shot too, and earns the Marksmanship Lanyard.

Pretty soon, he's got his first stripe. A Stabsmatrose

Where there are lots of interesdting things for the new guys to do like cleaning and polishing, then cleaning and polishing some more, and of course gun drills.

He is posted to First Minesweeping Flotilla

Passed through training and now he gets to wear a real sailors uniform.

On the water at last.

On exercises. Just think of the current value of these M16/18 helmets with naval decals !!!!

With his recruit group, just before the oath taking ceremony.

Werner Starke joined the Kriegsmarine in October 1935 and like also sailors, went through basic infantry training in field grey.

Textbook piece , definitely a "keeper" ! Well done Darrell !

Info on them isn't that easy to come by. I've only found one really useful book so far "Orders and Medals of Japan and Associated States" by J W Peterson.

There were three main Orders, the Rising Sun ( for general merit both military and civil), the Sacred Treasure ( also both military and civil, usually awarded as a long service type decoration) and the Golden Kite which was purely military.

As far as I can see, awards were by rank. For example, the Golden Kite -Generals 1st Grade to 3rd Grade, Field Grade Officers ( Majors, Colonels etc) 2nd to 4th Grades, Junior Officers 3rd to 5th Grades, NCOs 4th to 6th Grades, and enlisted men 5th to 7th Grades.

I only recently developed an interest but got hooked pretty quick for several reasons, first the quality is superb, second apart from some of the really high grade Japanese awards which went to royalty etc they aren't much faked so originals are easy to find and best of all they aren't too expensive though the really high grades can fetch in the thousands. Certainly cheaper than 3rd Reich pieces !

Nice. Do you have more information about who got what class of award?

When did you start collecting Japanese stuff?

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Reverse. Although it looks black in the scan, the centre is deep red enamel.

Obverse close up

6th Class

Not the clearest of mages but looks like a good "50".

Most are indeed smooth but some originals (i.e. L/13s) show some contouring to the edges of the wreath seen from the reverse.

On the example you show Gordon, the outline of the oakleaves is visible on the reverse. I had a 1st class fake many years ago that had this feature. I've noticed that on most examples the reverse of the wreath is smooth. Is this a reliable indicator of fakes or do some genuine pieces also have visible outlines on the reverse?

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There may well be genuine L/16 Spange out there, but personally I wouldn't touch one with the characteristics of those shown here.

So ALL L/16 EK11 spange are fake, right?

Allan

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Very interesting Jan Arne. It is different to the one Nick Morigi sells. On the one you show the area where the claws of the eagle would be on the reverse does not stick out as on Nick's.

Reverse