Hello All, At the risk of boring you all to death, I post my U- Boat Clock again, I have done this as we have a lot more members than when I first showed it and many of you may not have seen it before. Note the Eagle and Swastika engraved on the face. Regards, Ged.

I like your clock Ged.Is it a platform escapement and where did you find this unique clock?

Kevin, Thanks for interest, yes the original movement and Platform escapement are still inside. I picked this up in working order along with another but of English make, a liverpool maker i believe for the princely sum of £30 for the two, The Liverpool one had botched hairspring and I sold it for £25. So you might say I paid a Fiver for the U-Boat Clock. I have only seen one other in the "flesh" and my brother owns that. The guy who sold the clocks to me was an Undertaker and part time clock collector, He told me he was the first one "in" and got to see and to a deal on clocks before anyone else ..Regards, Ged.

You got a deal on that one Ged, we will probaly see very few of these ever.
Could you show a movement picture sometime, i would like to see it.

That's a great looking clock Ged - I'm drooling. Is there a way to tell that it is from a U-boat as opposed to another kind of Naval vessel, or is the attribution based on provenance?

Jim, When I first posted this ,I had seen the film series on TV "Das Boot" and a clock identical to this one of mine was shown in that film. I then recieved an email from a German Clock collector who confirmed this was the type of clock issued to U-Boats. I also have a Clock reference book showing this type of clock attributed to U-Boats. I was also told theres no way of tracing which vessel it was on.Of course I would love to know, but consider myself lucky to own this conversation piece. Regards ,Ged.

Hi Ged,

Thank you for re-posting an image of your magnificent Kriegsmarine ships wall and communications center clock. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll have one some day.

The letter “N” under the serial number on the right side of the dial indicates that this clock was issued to a vessel of the German North Sea Fleet. It looks like some pictures I have seen of clocks by Kieninger & Obergfell made for the German Navy in WWII (also known as KUNDO, to those of us who have repaired the common post-war 400 day torsion suspension clocks). Clocks such as yours were used in various military vessels for general time keeping as well as in the ships communications room.

Per Knirim, pg. 281, most German submarines were issued: 1 chronometer, 1 navigation watch, 1 class II navigation watch, 2 stopwatches, 2 navigation chronographs, and 6 small Navy clocks. All of this per late war regulations.

The small clocks were similar to those used on board aircraft. The Junghans 8 day clock, with J 30 E movement was a commonly used U-boot clock. The Junghans J 30 E movement was also used in wooden cased Junghans message center clocks of the Army as well as in 8 day aircraft clocks.

Clearly, larger clocks were also used on subs. It is possible to see a large ships clock, like yours, visible in a contemporary photograph on pg 184 of Knirim’s MILITARUHREN; The picture is of the interior of a type ‘IX C’ U-boat. I don’t know much about the types of U-boats used in WWII, maybe this was one of the larger models? Perhaps someone could fill us in.

Best regards,
Greg

Thanks for the extra information, Greg! When you say these were used as wall and message center clocks, the impression I get is that they were like their U.S. counterparts in that they would have been used broadly and generically on all kinds of vessels rather than exclusively on the Unterseebooten. Is this the case, or were they exclusive to the U-Boats?

Hi Jim,

These clocks were installed and used on battle ships as well as U-boats. From reading Knirim, I would surmise that Ged’s clock was more often mounted in surface going vessels than it was in submarines. There is no way to be sure unless you can ask the man who unscrewed it from the sub.

The only clock which appears to have been designed exclusive for the U-Boat was a special shock resistant navigation chronometer mounted in a pressure tight gimbaled case with a screwed down bezel. These chronometers were made by Wempe and the Deutsche Uhrmacherschule. All of the other timepieces in a U-Boat were standard Kriegsmarine issue for surface going vessels as well as submarines.

Best regards,
Greg

Rather late I'm afraid, but I wonder if the following information on U-boats will be of interest and help to answer the question Greg posed in the final paragraph of his posting on 16th November 2004.

Before and during WW2, 1154 U-boats of 26 different types were commissioned into the Kriegsmarine. A further 135 U-boats were laid down but not completed. There were 54 Type IXC, which had an overall length of almost 77 metres, commissioned. However a massive 568 of the smaller Type VIIC (67 metres in length and known as the 'Workhorse') were built.

In the final days of the war 242 U-boats were scuttled by their crews in 'Operation Regenbogen' and by the 4th May 1945 only 43 U-boats were still at sea. A further 154 U-boats were surrendered to the Allies, with 115 being taken to Lisahally (Northern Ireland) and Loch Ryan (Scotland). Of these, 121 were eventually scuttled in the winter of 1945-46, most of them in deep water to the north-west of Northern Ireland.

I believe this lends weight to Ged Pitchford's suggestion that it was during this period that a number of clocks were 'liberated' from these U-boats and, rather than being sent to the bottom with the rest of the boat, found their way into the public domain in exchange for beer-money!

Regards,

Anthony

Hallo friends of German WWII. ships clocks,
I want to add, that these expensive clocks due to brass case and high quality movement were installed on all type of Kriegsmarine ships but only up to 1939! With the beginning of the war the shipyards had to use the cheaper models of Junghans full size steel casing or smaller J230 D/E with alloy and bakelite casings.

The attached page of a Kriegsmarine manual of 1944 for watches and clocks show how many of the different types of timepieces were to install on what type of ship ( chronometers, deck watches, stop watches and wall clocks).
- The first row of first table shows Battle Ships with 1 chronometer, 1 B-chronometer (torpedoboat chr.) and up to 64 wall clocks.
- Row 1 of table two shows for U-Boats 1 B-chronometer and 6 small wall clocks.


. Gruesse/Regards/Salute K o n r a d K n i r i m
. konrad.knirim@t-online.de
. http://www.knirim.de