Luftwaffe Help from Rick

[Guest WAR LORD]

This is a copy of a letter. Would be pleased with any information.

[J Temple-West]

Chris,

What an extremely interesting document!

It would seem to be a cancellation of an order for 160 ?Fliegerschaftsabzeichen? (Air Crew Badges) due to the badge no longer being awarded.

It brings to light an unknown (for me at least) maker of the Air crew badge.

Has anyone any information on the firm ?Hoppe & Homan, Minden. Westfalen?

[Guest Rick Research]

Returning them, actually.

What a treasure trove THAT little forgotten box under the stairs would be!

No clue on the signature-- "Wolff" maybe?

and what is on the back with the emphatic scrawl to "S.(ee) O.(ver)!!!!" ?

[Stijn David]

Hello,

Veyr nice find and indeed a company i also never ehard of before, i have done some searching and could find the following:

Company : Hoppe & Homann / Minden

-Horse-shoe factory at Minden, dounded at 1876. It was a fondry factory wich also began to produce bicycle?s at 1895. /1/ The Bicycle production line was apparently sold again on 1910 towards the Panther Fahrradwerke AG. /2/

-75 Years existence ? Jubilee and publishing of booklet ?Hoppe & Homann 1876 bis 1951.? /3/

-In 1967 the company was stopped and sold /4/

I have a friend who lives in Minden + i will ask him iff he can get some additional info for us ont his company.

Also of large interest is the mentioning of the metal : Elektron !!!

Elektron is composite and does belong towards the magnesium alloys, a composition as i have found it : 92 % magnesium, 5 % aluminium and 3 % zink. Why this material is used? the weight - the colour?, etc ... (no clue)

ANd have you guys noticed the following reference mentioned in this writting, Bestellnummer HH 712/31612

You can be relative certain that the HH does stand for Hoppe & Homann

Cordial greetings + thanks for sharing

Sources:

1/ http://ebn24.com/pdf/philipp_koch_1030.pdf

2/ http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_Fahrradwerke_AG

3/ http://www.buchfreund.de/books3/book16027.html

4/ http://www.giessereimaschinen-steffens.de/.../Referenzen.htm

Edited June 28, 2007 by Stijn David

[Guest WAR LORD]

When the factory was sold, there was found the badges and the letter with them. The badges indeed are the aliminume type.

[Stijn David]

When the factory was sold, there was found the badges and the letter with them. The badges indeed are the aliminume type.

Hello Chris,

Thank you for this information - very usefull. Would it be possible to show a picture of such a badge?

Cordial greetings,

[swotl99]

Does anybody know, if there are with Rivets? I do got one from a Collector some Weeks ago, and all you here is Aluminium Badges are Fake!!!

Thanks in Advance

kay

[Chris Boonzaier]

Here is a totally cynical and skeptical thought....

"When the facotory was sold, this letter and the badges were found"...

Forget the fact that a box arrives somewhere and lays around with a letter for decades and noone thinks to open/distribute/use the stuff...

Think more along the lines of... here we have a factory that under contract makes and SELLS badges to the Luftwaffe/RLM.

They are ordered, paid for with state money and delivered.

They are distributed to the different Units.

They are phased out.

Then the factory writes to the units ! Says "You dont need them, can we have them back?"

And the commander says "Well, you charged us good money for them, they ARE govt property, most of the guys would like one as a souvenier, there is no reason off the top of my head that I can think of why you should get something back for free that you charged us for.... but OK, I will happily return stuff that you have no use for and will leave sitting around in a box for 50 years until it becomes a "Stash""

And off they go... with the Deutsche post... on Immelmann Geschwader expense...

Over the last 5 years many dealers at German Shows have Aluminium ones on the table. Most collectors I know are very skeptical, I know none who has bought one.

I dont "Know"... but it seems like it COULD be a well planned hoax....

[Guest Rick Research]

I'd be happier with the ORIGINAL letter scanned and not a xerox but

you'd be amazed what has been left lying around literally untouched in closets under stairs and in file cabinets in Dead Storage. Institutional inertia and "priorities" result in nobody bothering with old clutter while new clutter piles up on top.

The assumption for your skepticism on this Very Old Thread (2007) is that badges paid for were returned and the money written off. There is no such statement in the letter shown.

Our very busy FIRST war Research Cyborgs have just trawled through archives and found correspondence from the FIRST war concerning VERY expensive enamelled Orders that were bought and paid for-- and returned as No Longer Needed to the manufacturer-- who was expected to cough the money back up. Needless to say, the manufacturers were not at all happy and voluminous correspondence occurred until Imperial Germany Ceased To Be.

These very expensive Orders, BTW, most assuredly EXIST-- but were never offically AWARDED.

Supply Cpatain Wuzzit's job wasn't that sort of bean counting-- it was getting rid of stuff sitting in HIS office that couldn't be used any more.

[Chris Boonzaier]

Yeah, but even in the unlikely event that they want some cheap aluminium badges back... would that not be done between factory and "The Air Force" i.e., the supply department?

Would the factory contact individual Staffels? I have a hard time believing that. The armed forces have channels to go through.

Being the sceptic I would say this is an ingenious way of validating 160 (eventually more) variations of this badge that noone has seen before.

The reason I found this was the link to this thread from elsewhere on the forum.

Best

Chris

[Guest Rick Research]

"Would the factory contact individual Staffels?" Other way around. The unit-- which would presumably have been a primary training and certification establishment for flyers-- is (reputedly) returning badges conveniently on hand to the maker. Why would they send them to the Luftgau Storage Depot to then RESHIP to the manufacturer? Chain of command (missing correspondence) DOWN: "Return all on hand to origin source"....

Think of this: hospitals in WW2 kept stocks of wound badges on hand. I've seen Urkunden issued "sorry, no badges available at this time." Paperwork and thingums did not necessarily all come from GHQ together.

I've got no horse in this race, simply making the observation from what I know from even earlier Lost Stuff that many items WERE simply forgotten in basements for decades and to this day.

Some examples:

Late 1960s--

"Afrikakorps" tropical helmets were discovered in unissued quantities to such a massive scale that they were being given away as premiums at Esso/Exxon gas stations here (!) with fill ups that back then only long distance truckers would have had tanks big enough for. They sold for $19.95 in every militaria magazine and yard sale in Northeast U.S. Now... all gone.

In 1969, Steinhauer & Lück cleaned out their basement and got rid of--I paid $3 for mine--their January 1939 jubilee edition catalog. This has since been reprinted for those not old enough to have handled money in 1969.

I was present at our local New England show perhaps 20 years ago when a very large carton of drop dead mint, never issued marksmanship lanyards was opened. I remember people diving in and literally clawing up with every grade of Panzer cord, Luftwaffe, artillery shell, infantry acorns etc etc in their fists. Every mint unissued (solo) example Out There today probably came from that haul of THOUSANDS of them. Now... dispersd to the 4 corners of the Earth. I was there when they were all in One Giant Box.

I've bought up overlooked cartons of this-n-that from under defunct German tailor shop cellar stairs of all sorts of "rubbish." Like the eCrap fraudsters, I have enough medal bar backings (the huge Imperial Old Style type) to make a pretty unscrupulous penny-- if I were a Wicked Person and not Saint Ricky. Partly I buy such stuff to see "innards" without having to vivisect intact items-- and partly to keep "guts" out of the hands of Bad People. (Yes, I am THAT noble. )

Meanwhile, thanks to the Sinister Contacts (eat your hearts out Three Initial Agencies )we in the Research Cyborg Community have, I am aware of a German government warehouse--

yes, think the last scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" FILLED with crated (in WW2) German military museum contents seized by the Soviets and quietly returned (YES, RETURNED) still in the original never opened Third Reich crates

rotting or waiting to burn to the ground or be stolen piecemeal by anyone with the key to the door

including French battle standards captured in 1870-71

which would make WONDERFUL sentimental/public relations returns...

but which are falling apart after 70 years of neglect

because no gawddammed bureaucrat can or will generate work that will require more brain power to come up with "if we return it we don't have to store it and then it's good publicity and their expense" because

bureaucrats (government and corporate)

rule by inertia.

So if anyone here HAPPENS to have the ear of M. le Président-- you might JUST whisper that the Germans are sitting on "destroyed by Anglo-American terror bombing in 1945" Franco-Prussian war booty that a quiet little word might just get BACK after 139 years away. You see there are Research Cyborgs scouring dark neglected corners EVERYWHERE....

Just imagine what the Vatican has forgotten in back corridors of THEIR basements.

As an additional (and yes mercifully final) Statistical Observation: the "flood" of such badges onto the market some years back?

Um... are there THOUSANDS of them out there NOW or... the same 160 badges circulating and recirculating over and over and over again, 1 here, 1 there...

because some collectors believe without verifying and other disbelieve without verifying?

Pith helmets. Marksmanship cords. Once thousands... all still out there but (and this is the point between mass proiduction ongoing of fakes and a single-exhausted-source) JUST the same number

now? :ninja:

[Chris Boonzaier]

That there are stashes, I agree.

But we shall have to agree to disagree. For this letter to convince me that some new on the scene badges are originals I would have to inspect the original.

Healthy skepticism makes me say this smells fishy.

Would anyone have accepted these badges WITHOUT the covering letter?

[Guest Rick Research]

We do that all the time, with all sorts of Never Seen THIS Before items. Definitive attribution/documentation is almost universally lacking for almost anything we collect.

It's when Never Seen becomes... half a dozen "Rommel ribbon bars" on every show table....

PS it would be nice to actually SEE one of these whatever they ares! :beer: