Authors Electric

German ship losses WW1 I start this blog with two images and some disembodied faces . The first of the images are the roughcast concrete walls in the Laboe naval memorial on the Kieler Fiord.  There are two walls facing across the main chamber. They are slate-grey like an officer’s field uniform and crammed with the thick black outlines of sunken ships.  They record the Kaiserliche marine and K reigsmarine losses in two world wars. It was the diagrammatic aspect that I found chilling. It encouraged one to compare and contrast 11 U-Boote lost in the first war with 840 in the second. 46 Luftschiffe in the first, none in the second -- as if this was about technological change not human lives. The crammed outlines on the second wall were unforgettable. They represented 120,000 dead and missing men German ship losses WW2 Shipwrecks around the British Isles (all)  The second image may not exist. I imagine it is night and I can see the lights from a constant series of wreck b...

The German naval memorial Laboe, Kieler Fjord On the morning of August 18 th 1939 my father, George Jones, walked up into Kiel to buy milk and bread. He and his companions on the small motor yacht Naromis knew they were no longer welcome in German waters.  Their original plan for the day had been to head down the Kieler Fjord then turn east for Warnemunde, where they would pick up the skipper’s daughter who had been staying in Berlin. After that they had intended to press on to Danzig, their purpose unspecified. However they had been told on the previous evening that there would be no more fuel for them in Germany. Perhaps someone had noticed George and his fellow RNVSR officer Bill photographing the Kriegsmarine's latest warships. Their only possible destination now was Denmark. The battleship Gneisenau at anchor. As soon as he returned home,  George sent this photo to Naval Intelligence As George headed for the shops  at seven o’clock in the morning  he...