Kriegsmarine New Project

[Gordon Williamson]

Thanks to the success of Torpedo Los, the publisher has green lighted a new project to cover the War Badges of the surface fleet ( i.e. everything except the U-Boats)

This will cover all the known makers of each KM war badge, plus a selection of unidentified (i.e. non maker-marked) pieces, the award documents and variants, miniatures, packets and cases and wartime photographs of them being worn.

For each badge there will be 5/6 views , straight on views of the obverse and reverse, oblique views of the pin, hinge, and top hook where applicable, and a close up of the maker mark.

With a rough tally of around 80 or so known maker marked badges, averaging 5 views each, thats 400 images, add in the unidentified ones, award docs and variants, wartime photos, and miscellanea such as stickpins etc, it will probably pan out to around 800-1000 photos all of which, with very few exceptions ( such as wartime photos) will be in full colour.

No time scale for this yet, as other things are already in progress (such as the Imperial Iron Cross) and will be done first.

Thanks however, to the generous contributions already made and in-hand from KM collectors like Jan Arne Straete, Ian (Skip) Burtonshaw, Marcus Hatton, Erik Krogh and others, I'd guess nearly 50% of the required images are already in. Detlev Niemann has also provided some good shots of a number of rarer pieces.

Here is an example of the kind of coverage each badge will have ( example Destroyer Badge from Jan Arne)

[Gordon Williamson]

Oblique views of the fittings

[Gordon Williamson]

Although we have only been assembling material for a few weeks, a lot is already in. The list below indicates those still needed ( once these are in, a further review of contents will be needed to account for known variants of various manufacturers etc).

Minesweeper

Tombak

Hymenn

Boerger

Mayer

Deumer

Steinhauer

Schickle

Zinc

Souval

Schwerin

Rudolf Karneth

Walter & Henlein

Wiedmann

Hermann Aurich

Destroyer

Tombak

Steinhauer

Boerger

Schickle

Zink

Schwerin

Walter & Henlein

Souval

Orth

Hymenn

Mayer

Funcke & Bruninghaus

High Seas Fleet

Zink

Schwerin

Mayer

Flak

Zink

Schwerin

Souval

Hermann Aurich

Funcke & Bruninghaus

Juncker

Auxiliary Cruiser

Zink

Mayer

E-Boat

First Pattern Zink

Funcke & Bruninghaus

Mayer

Foerster & Barth

Bacqueville

Second Pattern

Mayer

Blockade Breaker

Zink

Souval

AGMuK

I already have photos of many of these but in some cases, taken some time back and not of sufficiently high quality for todays publishing standards. If anyone has any of these that they'd like to see in the book and can provide images like those above, contributions would be most welcome.

[Martin W]

Gordon,

it sounds like a wonderful project.Looking at the names of the contributors i am sure there will be some superb examples illustrated.I have a very nice example of a zinc Schwerin HSF badge that is on hold for me right now.I should have it in a couple of weeks.

Regards,Martin.