Anyone have a historical watch?

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Seems the DAK was not known for it's persecution of Jewish or other races.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrika_Korps

The Afrika Korps gained a reputation by the Allies and by many historians as being magnanimous with Allied prisoners of war; since then many historians have used the term "War without hate" to describe the North African campaign as a whole.[9][page needed] However, Jewish people suffered during the fascist regime laws, and the local administration took part in the Holocaust deporting some thousands of Jews to Italy, under the supervision of Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, Wehrmacht commander of the Axis in the Mediterranean theater. Others suffered from forced labour and ill treatment at the hands of the Italian administration, including an Schutzstaffel and SD detachment. Robert Satloff described in his book Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands that as the German and Italian forces retreated across Libya towards Tunisia, the Jewish population became victims upon which they released their anger and frustration. According to Satloff, Afrika Korps soldiers plundered Jewish property all along the Libyan coast. This violence and persecution only came to an end with the arrival of General Montgomery in Tripoli on 23 January 1943.[10] According to Maurice Remy, although there were antisemitic individuals in the Afrika Korps, actual cases of abuse are not known, even against the Jewish soldiers of the Eighth Army. Remy quotes Isaac Levy, the Senior Jewish Chaplain of the Eighth Army, as saying that he had never seen "any sign or hint that the soldiers [of the Afrika Korps] are antisemitic."[11]. The Telegraph comments: "Accounts suggest that it was not Field Marshal Erwin Rommel but the ruthless SS colonel Walter Rauff who stripped Tunisian Jews of their wealth."[12]

Giordana Terracina writes that: "On April 3, the Italians recaptured Benghazi and a few months later the Afrika Korps led by Rommel was sent to Libya and began the deportation of the Jews of Cyrenaica in the concentration camp of Giado and other smaller towns in Tripolitania. This measure was accompanied by shooting, also in Benghazi, of some Jews guilty of having welcomed the British troops, on their arrival, treating them as liberators."[13] Gershom states that Italian authorities were responsible for bringing Jews into their concentration camps, which were "not built to exterminate its inmates", yet as the water and food supply was meager, were not built to keep humans alive either. Also according to Gershom, the German consul in Tripoli knew about the process and trucks used to transport supply to Rommel were sometimes used to transport Jews, despite all problems the German forces were having.[14] The Jerusalem Post's review of Gershom Gorenberg's War of shadows writes that: "The Italians were far more brutal with civilians, including Libyan Jews, than Rommel’s Afrika Korps, which by all accounts abided by the laws of war. But nobody worried that the Italians who sent Jews to concentration camps in Libya, would invade British-held Egypt, let alone Mandatory Palestine."[15]

According to Maurice Roumani, "Libyan Jews noted that in daily matters, the Germans largely acted out of pragmatic economic interest rather than adopting the political and ideological practices known elsewhere. The German authorities found Libyan Jews well equipped with goods they needed for their military activities. The Jews complied with their demands, some out of fear and others out of strict economic interest. By the end of their time in Libya, this strategic economic arrangement led the Germans to perceive the Jews as similar to the native Muslims and they therefore regarded the Jews to be less threatening than their brethren in Europe."[16]
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If there are any forum concerns about the DAK not being Gentlemen Fighters then this might be interesting reading.

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Note: To the best of my understanding of the Camp Atterbury POW table, Alfred Berg was in the 3rd Recce Battalion

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The 3rd Recca Battalion is missing after the capture date of Alfred Berg. I believe it was replaced with 21st Reconnaissance Battalion.
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By several accounts the DAK only conducted gentlemen's warfare and to this date, still in Germany Nato bases in Germany still use Rommel's name many buildings and camps.

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Sources Used by Author and Suggested Research
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After 1945 IMO Rommel was not in any direct line of fire, there was only one "scandal": the burial of Hans-Ulrich RUDEL, one of the highest decorated Soldier in WW2. Some starfighters and phantoms of the Bundeswehr made a low-level pass that day.... 40 years ago...
 
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I have finally found another key to why the Imperial Japanese Navy had Longines Weems.

I found this book today that has the key proof I have been looking for. As you may recall,
I found the document indexes in the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute
that discussed the Depart of the Navy Orders to Weems to stop communications with the IJN.

I have been trying to find the details of what could have been there. I came across this book
and it has the answers of who he was talking with. I think like many, I had assumed that
Captain Weems invented the Celestial Navigation method pretty much from nothing.
However, I am a bit more educated since that initial naive assumption.

Air Navigation using the Weems Method for Celestial Navigation is a build up of several
centuries of navigation that obviously early sailors from Vikings and what not discovered
by pointing ships at the stars at night, which eventually evolved into nautical celestial navigation
with the use of sextants and octants. P.V.H. Weems only provided look up tables and charts
to short cut the process. Old news, everyone here knows this.

What I have learned is who created the basis for the charts and tables that Weems used
for his navigational system. It was Imperial Japanese Navy Hydrographer Shinkichi Ogura.
Weems obviously had a greater vision that Ogura and adapted it to Avigation. Now I think
we have the basis for why IJN took an interest in the Longines Weems.

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This could be another link to how the IJN Longines Weems watches got acquired by Yokosuka Arsenal District.

So we know this was going on at the time.

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The following will be difficult to read on a forum, but I took an excerpt that should be easy to read.

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Excerpt

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Further links led me to Admiral Nomura and this maybe important.
If we look at the history of Adm Nomura, you see he becomes the head of the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal
where most of the technical research was conducted for Naval Aviation including designs for many of the
famous IJN aircraft. This is also the main arsenal district linked to the Tateyama Air Corps that we found
the Longines Weems.

https://www.mwrforum.net/forums/sho...with-IJN-Weems&p=404294&viewfull=1#post404294

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Awesome research Seiji! You’ve inspired me to open a records request with the German military archives tonight for my grandfather, who we believe served briefly in the Afrikakorps.

It's maybe unexpected, but Rommel is a national hero in Germany and but of course he does have his critics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel_and_the_Bundeswehr

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It is noteworthy that NATO trains at the Erwin Rommel Barracks, which is really a part of a huge base.
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Awesome research Seiji! You’ve inspired me to open a records request with the German military archives tonight for my grandfather, who we believe served briefly in the Afrikakorps.

Wonderful! Once you know how to do it, would you let me know also?
 
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Wonderful! Once you know how to do it, would you let me know also?
Yes of course! It took about 30 minutes last night following the directions at the link below. You basically just complete and sign the two pdf forms detailed:
  • a usage application form (Benutzungsantrag)
  • the form “Order for a person-related research”
then attach in an email (or post by mail) to the Bundesarchiv using the contact info provided.

https://www.bundesarchiv.de/EN/Cont...-militaerische-unterlagen-persbezogen-en.html
 
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I updated the Longines C.O.S.D. table with the latest information.
If you are hunting down one of these watches, you may wish to focus
on COSD watches that have an extract for April 14th, 1945 or May 2nd, 1945.
These are the more frequent delivery dates increasing the likelihood
the movement is correct for the watch.

The only way to get the date is through an extract, and I think the extract itself provides fairly strong evidence about whether or not the movement is correct. Different batches of the COSD 12.68N may have obviously had different applications and therefore different survival rates, and of course likely different batch sizes. Is it a coincidence that the earliest date (14th April) is also the most frequently seen ? I think it’s very likely it was the biggest delivery batch, and that’s the primary reason we see it frequently.

There are also extracts for the 24th April and May 14th. The former was a single occurrence but came with excellent provenance from the family of the original owner, and the latter has been seen twice. I think it’s incorrect to question the “correctness” of these watches based on so little evidence (only fifteen extracts in total in your data). It’s a very complicated subject as you know, with variations in the type (large crown vs small crown, “issued” vs “non-issued”, big COSD vs small COSD, and so on), and we shouldn’t be muddying the waters with speculation.
 
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The only way to get the date is through an extract, and I think the extract itself provides fairly strong evidence about whether or not the movement is correct. Different batches of the COSD 12.68N may have obviously had different applications and therefore different survival rates, and of course likely different batch sizes. Is it a coincidence that the earliest date (14th April) is also the most frequently seen ? I think it’s very likely it was the biggest delivery batch, and that’s the primary reason we see it frequently.

There are also extracts for the 24th April and May 14th. The former was a single occurrence but came with excellent provenance from the family of the original owner, and the latter has been seen twice. I think it’s incorrect to question the “correctness” of these watches based on so little evidence (only fifteen extracts in total in your data). It’s a very complicated subject as you know, with variations in the type (large crown vs small crown, “issued” vs “non-issued”, big COSD vs small COSD, and so on), and we shouldn’t be muddying the waters with speculation.

I am not speculating. Both of those two dates are in my opinion confirmed by several examples of the same exact wording for the extracts invoiced on these same dates. Remember, I was the person that discovered the pattern for the wording of the extracts. After looking at several British military watch extracts, the COSD extract was very unusual in that it does not identify the reference for the watch it was installed in or the case material. I picked this out as the key phrase that now everyone looks for for the COSD. I have not said that the dates are the only dates, but these are safe dates. All the other COSD types are nothing more than the stage of usage of the COSD watches. All the watches began as a Longines delivered radium dial and gold flashed movement. They were likely all cased in a big crown Tuna case with only the letters "C.O.S.D. 2340". Then some were upgraded with a smaller crown and MoD nonradioactive dials and provided with an issue number. The remaining were broken down into parts and most of those were cased into Dennison 13322 case and repurposed by various organizations such as the B.A.S. and B.O.A.C. or presentation watches. What we see today which causes problems is many Tuna cases are being discovered and non-original 12.68N movements are being installed that are within the serial number range that I found. The reason I started the serial number project is to uncover the most likely correct movements for the original C.O.S.D. watch. My current thoughts are that April 14th, 1945 or May 2nd, 1945 invoiced dates with the correctly worded extract is the safest to assume these are the original movements. Other dates will require extracts to support them. Notice that many of these watches do not have reported extracts and it has been 6 years now since the project has begun. Several watches have wrong movements in them. I will speculate that the number of watches that have correct movements is less than all the current COSD watches recorded.

I will speculate that:
The Royal Navy has roughly 120-150 clearance divers? In 1945 there most likely were a little more of them, but we are limiting ourselves to a special COSD team which could mean that more than 200 COSD watches would be surprising to me. If we have 65 of them somewhat documented to some degree. We're looking at a good population of them in the tracking table.

https://www.mcdoa.org.uk/RN_Clearance_Diving_Branch.htm

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Buz wearing the Omega COSD.
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Longines ones
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I am not speculating. Both of those two dates are in my opinion confirmed by several examples of the same exact wording for the extracts invoiced on these same dates. Remember, I was the person that discovered the pattern for the wording of the extracts. After looking at several British military watch extracts, the COSD extract was very unusual in that it does not identify the reference for the watch it was installed in or the case material. I picked this out as the key phrase that now everyone looks for for the COSD.

As far as I know, the extracts from the other dates (24th April and 14th May) follow this exact wording too.

All the other COSD types are nothing more than the stage of usage of the COSD watches. All the watches began as a Longines delivered radium dial and gold flashed movement. They were likely all cased in a big crown Tuna case with only the letters "C.O.S.D. 2340". Then some were upgraded with a smaller crown and MoD nonradioactive dials and provided with an issue number. The remaining were broken down into parts and most of those were cased into Dennison 13322 case and repurposed by various organizations such as the B.A.S. and B.O.A.C. or presentation watches. upload_2023-9-14_11-48-22.png

I personally doubt all movements were immediately cased in the big crown Tuna case. If I was developing a dive watch case, I’d be buying more movements/dials to allow quick turnaround when they would invariably flood. Also remember that most with an “issue” number have the small COSD font, rather than the big COSD font, so the “issue” number wasn’t added to a big COSD back. So rather than building and breaking down tuna-cans, I would personally guess that at least some (or possibly all) of the BAS/BOAC/Presentation watches were built with spare movements/dials from stock.

What we see today which causes problems is many Tuna cases are being discovered and non-original 12.68N movements are being installed that are within the serial number range that I found. The reason I started the serial number project is to uncover the most likely correct movements for the original C.O.S.D. watch.

Which of the tuna-can cased watches that are in the table have a non-original movement installed that is also in the correct range ? I know a few have early SNs that are clearly from 6b/159s, but I’d be interested to know how you can define a movement as non-original when it’s in the correct range.

I will speculate that:
The Royal Navy has roughly 120-150 clearance divers? In 1945 there most likely were a little more of them, but we are limiting ourselves to a special COSD team which could mean that more than 200 COSD watches would be surprising to me.

To me the distribution of the known serial numbers would indicate something closer to 1000 supplied 12.68N movements.
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As far as I know, the extracts from the other dates (24th April and 14th May) follow this exact wording too.

I can confirm the wording matches.

I personally doubt all movements were immediately cased in the big crown Tuna case. If I was developing a dive watch case, I’d be buying more movements/dials to allow quick turnaround when they would invariably flood. Also remember that most with an “issue” number have the small COSD font, rather than the big COSD font, so the “issue” number wasn’t added to a big COSD back. So rather than building and breaking down tuna-cans, I would personally guess that at least some (or possibly all) of the BAS/BOAC/Presentation watches were built with spare movements/dials from stock.

There is no information that has been found on the orders or how the watch was constructed.
In fact, there is no government documentation that the COSD 2340 exists. There is no documentation on how the watch was used.
We are fortunate that the IWM has photographs so we know it was a diving watch.

No one knows anything about the Dennison cased watches except there are some MWR members that have explained that the common practice to dispose of UK military watches that are no longer of use to the military is to encase them in Dennison 13322 cases and make them available to other purposes.

Which of the tuna-can cased watches that are in the table have a non-original movement installed that is also in the correct range ? I know a few have early SNs that are clearly from 6b/159s, but I’d be interested to know how you can define a movement as non-original when it’s in the correct range.

To me the distribution of the known serial numbers would indicate something closer to 1000 supplied 12.68N movements.

Please see Victoria watch. The movement is in the serial range but it was from a 6B/159

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Longines also does not assign serial numbers for a run that long to one type of movement. Usually they are much smaller runs of tens at a time. So the serial number range is only a guideline for the movements. It will be mixed with many different types of movements. There is no evidence that Longines has ever made 1000 continuous sequential movements of the same kind with no breaks in between. If you have seen pictures of any of the archive extract pages you would see usually the batches are less than a few dozen at a time.

Also, we don't know how the MoD issue numbers were assigned. It's interesting that no watch has been found with an issue number below 2000, but we have many that are between 2000 and 2300 and nothing about 2300.

Two other people tracking the issue numbers.
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Please see Victoria watch. The movement is in the serial range but it was from a 6B/159

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In the post it mentions that the OP sourced the dial, and that the watchmaker sourced the movement. Is it clear the movement came from a 6b/159 ? Also do we know the SN ? It just seems to mention the age was right.
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Longines also does not assign serial numbers for a run that long to one type of movement. Usually they are much smaller runs of tens at a time. So the serial number range is only a guideline for the movements. It will be mixed with many different types of movements. There is no evidence that Longines has ever made 1000 continuous sequential movements of the same kind with no breaks in between. If you have seen pictures of any of the archive extract pages you would see usually the batches are less than a few dozen at a time.

Three ways to look at it…

Look more closely at the SNs in your table. There clearly aren’t 1000 sequential movements, but can’t you see the four distinct batches. Everything within the batches is fairly evenly spaced as you might expect. The range totals indicate something like 1000-1200.

Also, if you consider how a Longines archive page looks from the time period of the COSD, then it’s fairly clear (I think) that the movements were supplied in blocks of sixes. So if you have a single SN it’s reasonable to suppose that it was from a block of six. So let’s say you’ve got two “correct” movements with serial numbers that are more than 12 apart, then actually that would suggest at least twelve movements. If, say, there are 50 serial numbers in the table, that could suggest 300 movements.

If we have 65 watches, that would be a 30% survival rate if the total population was 200. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this high before.
 
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Three ways to look at it…

Look more closely at the SNs in your table. There clearly aren’t 1000 sequential movements, but can’t you see the four distinct batches. Everything within the batches is fairly evenly spaced as you might expect. The range totals indicate something like 1000-1200.

Also, if you consider how a Longines archive page looks from the time period of the COSD, then it’s fairly clear (I think) that the movements were supplied in blocks of sixes. So if you have a single SN it’s reasonable to suppose that it was from a block of six. So let’s say you’ve got two “correct” movements with serial numbers that are more than 12 apart, then actually that would suggest at least twelve movements. If, say, there are 50 serial numbers in the table, that could suggest 300 movements.

If we have 65 watches, that would be a 30% survival rate if the total population was 200. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this high before.

Exactly, the survival rate is possibly very high. And one of the contributing factors is that the tuna cases were not destroyed. So we are finding new COSD every year. People just get lucky and find the cases in old watch maker estates.

Also have you seen this watch? It's a 6B/159 for the Hydrographics department.
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I've done that before too. It's very interesting and may show where the batches are. I did that when I had only a couple dozen watches in my table.
I think it does show where the batches lie. In conjunction with the strong possibility that Longines supplied in block of six it’s very easy to reach a number of around 1000-1200.