Hello Again, The retired Submariner who lives in the village came up with this rather poor aerial pic' of these U-Boats tied up in dock in N'Ireland. He informed me that he helped strip out dangerous items and get the Boats ready for scrapyard. Some were used as target practice on the surface others were sunk and used in search and destroy operations. Clocks were removed and sold for beer money by him and his shipmates. This is how these clocks like mine came to be on the English market in all probability. Regards, Ged.

My Clock with Eagle and Swastika on dial, Letter N denotes Northern Fleet. Regards, Ged.

Nice clock Ged, wish i had one hanging on my wall.
I saw one on Ebay made by Junghan, but was not sure if it was authentic?

What you have there is indeed one of the nicest examples of this type of 8day clocks I have ever seen silvered dial and all. Usually the brass comes through and or the clock has been restored to a brass face. Also these are frequently scratched around the winding keyhole. With the provenance you have the assumption that it was U-Boot use gets some credibility. One has to be careful to understand that these very same clocks have been used in the surface fleet as well. Concerning the Junghans with the green and red 'radio silence' markings Kevin you have to be careful. U-Boot use is out of the question as they were too fragile and the German navy used them after wwii (ie many of them were produced then. They have often been altered by adding markings (O/N, Mnumber and the eagle with the swastica). These Bundesmarine clocks should have a lengthy number looking something like this accross the face (if it has not been altered): 6743-17-194-7783 and possibly the word Bund

Thanks for the picture Ged. You are fortunate to have the excellent clock and the submariner's picture to go with it. I hope they also removed the smaller radio station clocks, although they are not as impressive and might not have earned the same amount of beer money.

There is a captured U Boat on display in Chicago which I walked through many years ago. There was a book written about it. I don't remember if it still had any timepieces in it (helm and radio station). If I’m ever back to see it again I’ll have to make a point to check.

Best regards,
Greg

The clock on Ebay was from England and in the description it said it was Kriegsmarine , it had a bad dial and and no pictures of movement or serial number.Had a reserve of 400 and did not sell.And i never saw one made by Junghans.

Hi Ged. You have a really nice KM clock there. I can only wish I were able to find one as nice.

Did you buy your clock directly from the retired submariner with the provenance that he removed it from one of those subs? Without such provenance, as Oliver mentioned there is no way to tell whether a particular clock came from a sub or a surface vessel.

The Clock attached is one of the said Junghans types. The radio silence zones are generally either red or red and green and the face will have the Bundeswehrnumber (if Bundeswehr)

To show how little change has happened in some cases please see this posting and the one following. First a Franz Happe 'submarine' wall clock wwi

....and now the wwii equivalent. As I wrote befor, these are also found with a brass coloured dial but as there is obviously brass underneath all the dials I guess that this is not the original look (=cleaned) It also apears that the cases were painted !black.

Sorry for the small pics here are better ones. Now there is actually a theory on how to identify submarine wall clocks. Aparently N stands for Nordsee and O for Ostsee making all clocks without these either UBoot (Atlantic) or Commerce raider...

.... sorry for the small images. By the way O stands for Ostsee and N for Nordsee (the main operational areas of the mostly local operations of the German navy. Neither would indicate a further field of operations and is therefore more likely to have been submarine usage.

Now I lost the post and posted it twice.... too much for today but to finish it off the Junghans in large. One can clearly see the Bundeswehr Beschaffungsnummer above the center.

What is the radio silence zone for? Why did they pick those times for having radio silence?

I thought you guys might like to see this website about the LST that was made here in town. Click here. They are getting one back here permanently for display.

Andy

Thanks for the tip with the edit, will use it going forward. Concerning the radiosilence zones I have no clue. It is one of those things someone tells you sometimes and.... Would think that it has more to do with the second hand ??

The radio silence times were created when radio operators on ships were supposed to stop all transmissions and listen the the emergency frequency (500kc) for any ships in distress. If there was not this common moment of radio silence an emergency signal might go unnoticed in all of the noise of hundreds or thousands of transmissions at any given point in time. I think it may also have been the time when ships could more clearly hear general command messages from the Admiralty on the non-emergency channels, or when subs could home in on shore radio signals to get better triangulations on their positions.

I think that radio silence times were for time hack broadcasts so that chronometers at sea could be adjusted to exact time of day for precise navigation

I just purchased a Uboat Clock from a person who got it at in Estate of a Veteran who resided in Bel Air, CA USA.

$1280.
Any comments appreciated:

Hi Perry. Could you please post photos of the dial and the movement?

As you have read in the above discussion, most so-called U-boat clocks actually aren't from U-boats and it is either a marketing ploy to get a higher price or just wishful hoping. The problem is that these clocks are generic timepieces that were used on every kind of ship and boat in the German navy and there is no way to tell which one was on a submarine and which one was on a tugboat or cargo ship or oiler or destroyer or the Bismark itself. Unless you have some iron clad provenance you should assume it was not on a U-boat since there were so few U-boats in the German navy compared to all of the other boats and ships.

Veteran's stories are always entertaining, but unless that vet was the captain of the U-Boat and has provided a written letter and photo of authentication or there is something equally compelling and fully documented it has little meaning. For example, there are countless watches that vets each swear they personally took off of Goering or Rommel or other famous people, and it seems most every generic German WW II aircraft clock that are sold by the dozens every week came off of ME-109s. If the Luftwaffe had that many ME-109s the skies would have been so full of them that they would have won the war in a week.

Some added info about LSTs: They were used by the Riverine Force in Vitnam on the Mekong Delta. The renovated ships wer e employed as cargo and barracks ships.

Some added info about LSTs: They were used by the Riverine Force in Vitnam on the Mekong Delta , Therenovated ships were employed as cargoships and barracks