Die Hochseeflotte

Yang

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

Eure Exzellenz, hervorragende Bilder. Have you tried opening a photobucket account? Works really great since you can easily create folders and use the batch upload to put lots of pictures online at once. And fetching the links is easy as well.

Btw received my copy of Splissen & Knoten short before christmas, really a great book and a fun read. But can you explain why "König von Sachsen" is "Lucie-Max-Anna" and what´s so funny about this signal combination? Didn´t got that one at all :(
 

Firestorm

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

After the Bombardment of the Algerian coast by "Goeben" and "Breslau" English battlecruisers com into sight on the 4th of August 1914. They are "Indefatigable" and "Indomitable" following the German ships with high speed but not attacking because the state of war with England did not come into being until midnight of that day. The smal cruiser "Dublin" and others joined as well.

The English pursuers The English battlecruisers got out of sight on 3:50 in the afternoon, only the small cruiser "Dublin" stayed in touch until 9:00.
Yeah the Brits fell to far behind and lost the Goeben because it was 'tea time'. :laugh:
 

TBR

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

Btw received my copy of Splissen & Knoten short before christmas, really a great book and a fun read. But can you explain why "König von Sachsen" is "Lucie-Max-Anna" and what´s so funny about this signal combination? Didn´t got that one at all :(
That's the three letter abbreviation of a certain Goethe quote. It even worcks better when you translate the quote into Englisch: Lick my...

Sometimes military and today international callsigns are hilarious. One German warship currently has the international callsign DRAG :) .

There are also some in-jokes among signalmen reffering to the symptom descriptions found in the medical section of the International Signals Book, such as MMU.
 
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Bullethead

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

There are also some in-jokes among signalmen reffering to the symptom descriptions found in the medical section of the International Signals Book, such as MMU.
Back in WW2, a lot of radio traffic was still sent in Morse code. As such, they had a lot of 3-letter codes like that to minimize the time required to transmit various routine things. Sending Morse requires a certain degee of skill to make it understandable on the receiving end. So when they were having trouble understanding somebody, they'd send one of their own made-up 3-letter codes as a quick way to complain about it, instead of using the standard form for "say again", whatever that was.

My Dad's told me a couple of these. Unfortunately, I can't remember the 3-letter codes, but I remember the translations. My favorite was:

"Try sending with your left foot; your right foot's not working".
 

TBR

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Re: The Kaiserliche Marine in Turkey

double post - seems the cellular tower is affected by the cold, my connection at home is very sluggish.
 
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TBR

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

instead of using the standard form for "say again", whatever that was.
IMI - Though in truth we used those codes as shorthand for documenting voice radio traffic. The last time I morsed was on "Mölders", though "Sachsens" signalmen were truly enthusiastic in morsing and waving during Trafalgar 200 because of a certain pretty (and female) South African Navy petty officer...
 

Zakalwe

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

Great pics again.

Man, "Goeben" is a beauty. It always makes me :mad: when thinking of we didn`t take her back. What great place for a Jutland meeting we would have.... :cry:
 

Graf von Spee

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

Great pics again.

Man, "Goeben" is a beauty. It always makes me :mad: when thinking of we didn`t take her back. What great place for a Jutland meeting we would have.... :cry:
It was crazy for Germany not to take Goeben back. Did the government consider the money that tourists all over the world would spend to travel to Wilhelmshaven to see this ship?

The North Sea coast of Germany is probably not a big tourist attraction, so, I think that the Goeben could have helped.
 

Blutarski

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

It was crazy for Germany not to take Goeben back. Did the government consider the money that tourists all over the world would spend to travel to Wilhelmshaven to see this ship?

The North Sea coast of Germany is probably not a big tourist attraction, so, I think that the Goeben could have helped.


..... When GOEBEN's disposal was announced by Turkey in the early 70s, the Federal German Republic attempted to purchase YAVUZ/GOEBEN from Turkey in order to turn her into a memorial ship, but the project fell through due to "political correctness" issues [warlike symbolism, IIRC].

Too bad. Our loss.
 

Bullethead

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey

IMI - Though in truth we used those codes as shorthand for documenting voice radio traffic.
Yeah, when I was in radio school in the USMC, I learned a BUNCH of such shorthands. Never once used them out in the fleet or field, though. We wrote everything down on message pads that, get this, had the codes for "break" (BT overscored) and "over" and and such already printed on them in the appropriate places. We just wrote the message's main contents on the blank lines, and nobody ever bothered to say "break" between the DTG and the message body. I guess our message pads were based on a format developed in WW2 or Korea, and everybody was too lazy to change them thereafter.

But here's the really funny thing.... Just as I was winding up my career, we started getting these cool digital radios with touch screens where you could call up a blank message format and type in the contents. And this thing had the same useless, unused shorthands in its preformated blank messages as the old CARBON COPY (anybody remember that?) message pads we'd been using?!?!?!?. Still, we killed quite a few people with these things so the luddite stuff didn't slow us down :).

The last time I morsed was on "Mölders", though "Sachsens" signalmen were truly enthusiastic in morsing and waving during Trafalgar 200 because of a certain pretty (and female) South African Navy petty officer...
I never used Morse outside the Boy Scouts. Never learned semaphore, either. Whenever some squid tried to wave flags at me, I just made some obscene gesture back at him, which made him switch to vernacular sign language so we could communicate that way. You know, gang signs and such :D. When I was in the Corps, we had 1 vehicular, high-powered (as in touch the antenna and die) HF radio that came with a Morse key, but nobody was trained in Morse and the thing did voice just fine, so we used the key as paperweight, if we hadn't lost it already.
 

TBR

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The Kaiserliche Marine in the sandbox

Yes, the Kaiserliche Marine had a "Flussabteilung Euphrat" and a "Flussflottille Tigris":



One of the curiosa of a World war.
 

Yang

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Re: The Kaiserliche Marine in the sandbox

Did they manage to transport some of the small coastal TBs (or other assets) there as well or was it just barges for ferrying duty?

Btw, that spot above "Kolonne" made me start an unsuccessful attempt to clean my display. :D
 

TBR

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Re: The Kaiserlich Marine in Turkey



"General", the German Detachment to the Ottoman Navy accomodation and transport ship.
 
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