Gordon Williamson

Another remarkably well executed little award than can still be had for relatively low prices but getting difficult to find nice undamaged ones.

A very attractive and under-rated little cross. Anyone have one with a Spange attached ?

Darrell, Snap !

Here is my "26". It has the case usually associated with these, with the rectangular push button, case also mint.

Nice piece Darrell. This should have a second plate ( a large "washer" which goes between the screwplate and the back of the Spange ( like many Imperial EK1s), but they are usually missing. The example of this type I had some time back also had this washer missing.

No, this isn't the Juncker type. The Juncker type had a much better defined eagle, but both are desirable pieces.

Here is the Juncker type.

Lovely pieces John. I see that Fran?ois has joined too. Hopefully we may get the chance to see some of his fabulous collection of Luftwaffe material.

Very nice example. Normally you wouldn't expect to find a Pr?sidialkanzlei marked award in an LDO box, but as the boxes had individual prices, and could be bought in their own right its perfectly feasible someone who received the official award in a paper envelope might buy such a box to keep the award afe.

Gr?ner's standard work identifies the following vessels as "Hilfskreuzer"

HSK 1 Orion Crew 372

HSK 2 Atlantis Crew 346

HSK 3 Widder Crew 359

HSK 4 Thor Crew 341

HSK 5 Pinguin Crew 415

HSK 6 Stier Crew 321

HSK 7 Komet Crew 265

HSK 8 Kormoran Crew 393

HSK 9 Michel Crew 395

HSK 10 Coronel Crew 347

A total of 3554. Even allowing for some crew changes and rotation of various crew members on/off these ships, thats a very low number and suggests the Aux Cruiser Badge could be rarer in award terms than the Knight's Cross, and certainly a lot rarer than the German Cross in Gold.

I like the campaign shields too, but try to restrict myself to those with a Naval connection (Narvik, Krim, Kuban), especially if I can find evidence of them being worn by U-Boat crews (i.e. many U-Boat crewmen were ex-Destroyer crews whose boats were sunk at Narvik and thus wore the Narvik Shield)

Actually, Demjansk is just about the only one with zero Naval connection. There was a Naval transport unit at Cholm so even that one could legitimately be found on blue backing though I've never heard of one - these guys would normally have worn field grey uniform anyway, but may have had a set of "best blues" uniform for dress occasions.

My KM Narvik is a nice early, used piece in tombak

Your Aux Cruiser looks like too. Who is the maker ?

My other main passion lies with Kriegsmarine material, especially U-Boat Badges. Anyone else into KM material ? I see John Temple-West is here so we have at least one advanced collector of Luftwaffe pieces too and I'm sure others will come along.

As for KM badges, one of my favourites is the Auxiliary Cruiser, and this one an early Tombak piece, but one which has definitely "been there" was picked up from EBay for peanuts.

Darrell

Difficult to say. As with all these sorts of projects just as you think you have it completed, something else comes along you want to include. Its now at around 500 colour photos and 300 wartime b/w photos, mostly the Knights Cross winners. I'm working through the last of the photo captioning and hope to get the whole lot off to Roger Bender in the next couple of weeks. Roger is currently working on my U-Boat book, so even when he gets the KVK material it will have to await its place in the queue.

Yes, that sort of thing. Even closer , like this if possible.

I guess the little white circle was to look for the flaw on the 3. You won't find it on the one without Swords, only on the one with Swords. With Swords and without Swords came from different dies.

Does anyone have any of the propaganda postcards which featured awards and decorations ( usually on a red background) I know they did the KVK series and have been looking around for them. Seen a few with the EKs, Spanish Crosses etc but no KVKs. Nothings ever there when you look for it though !

The "with Swords" looks like it was a real beauty before the finish started to go.

Laurence,

Lothar Kreuz was a Generalarzt, a high ranking Army surgeon, who was also rector of Berlin University. He got the award for his resarch into prosthetic limbs for wounded/disabled servicemen. He survived the war, remained in medicine, and was also decorated by the West German government with the Grossen Bundesverdienstkreuz

Here is another photo of him.

If you look at the hinge on the 43 marked piece, it is set a mm or two down front the "notch" in the top arm. On the unmarked ones, both yours and mine, the hinge is set as far up as it can go, right to the edge. If you allow for this, the difference in length isn't really significant.

My money would still be on them being unmarked 43 unless we can find another closer match.

Especially when it has the firm's logo as well as the number.

W&L Crosses are in my opinion one of the finest that can be found, they certainly put over-rated makers like Juncker in the shade.

The other maker I think also produces some of the finest material is S&L. Normally I am no great fan of private purchase (LDO) stuff, but I could never resist a frosty Steinhauer.

If they were realy "favoured", they might get the award personally from Hitler.

The award ceremonies were often held in large public auditoriums and the awards made "en masse", a bit like graduation day at a university, with all the recipients taking their turn on stage to be handed their awards. There were usually "honour guards" from the military, always Ritterkreuztr?ger, to show the solidarity between those recieving thier awards for services on the home front, and those who were decorated for achievements "in the field"

Here, my friend Hein Springer from the Leibstandarte is one of the honour guards for the award to Franz Hahne

Laurence, yours is a very fine textbook original example. You should be very pleased with it.

The absolute vast majority of these went to non-military persons such as industrialists etc. There were only a tiny number to military guys. Here is one, General Kreuz.

The one I posted earlier was a Steinhauer, here is the Deschler.

There are quite a few differences in die characteristics, especially the reverse where the numerals are distictly different between the two makers.

Jim,

I try to keep an open mind on most things, but if I was going to buy one of these, my own preference would be for the type you have. For me yours is the perfect textbook example.

I have the identical twin to this piece, also in the identical box (with rectangular push button) and for me, am pretty sure its an unmarked "43". The L/11 pin tapers more towards the point and is shorter, but these unmarked pieces have pins which are identical to the 43. I've also compared the obverse details to the "43" and they are identical.

Here's mine.