“the Tape.ru” continues to publish unique photos of world war II.
Ukrainian photographer Arthur Bondar recently bought Internet auction in Germany, a previously unknown negatives, taken with a nameless sailor Navy forces of the Third Reich (Kriegsmarine). These pictures are special enough, because the combat ships and submarines is still considered sensitive military objects.
All 32 negative, dated 1940, were folded in a paper envelope in a military sample from the darkroom to the German port city of Kiel. Footage taken by an unknown sailor who served on one of the largest and most advanced warships of the Kriegsmarine — the battleship “Gneisenau”. In Navy forces of Nazi Germany had only two battleships of this type — the “Scharnhorst” and “Gneisenau”, and for combat missions, they almost always went together. At the beginning of world war II battleships actively participated in the most important battles of the German fleet in the operation “Weserubung” in April 1940, covered the landing of Nazi troops in Norway; in the operation “Berlin” in December 1941, attacked British merchant ships in the Atlantic; in the operation “Cerberus” (“a Leap across the channel”) in February 1942, when the German ships broke from Brest in France on the main Kriegsmarine base in Wilhelmshaven.
Bringing a lot of trouble to our allies, both German sea monster still waited for the inevitable payback. On the night of 27 February 1942 during the British RAID on Kiel, one of the most powerful of the bombs hit the battleship “Gneisenau” and much to damage it. Until the end of the war the ship was not repaired, and on 28 March 1945 he scuttled in Gotenhafen (now Gdynia Polish) as a fire-ship to block the channel port if the attack on the city of the red army. In the fall of 1951, the wreckage of the former Nazi Navy battleship raised from the bottom and sent to recycling as scrap metal.
the Battleship “Scharnhorst”, which is visible in some pictures, in March 1943 he arrived in Norway, where, together with other ships of the Kriegsmarine were trying to prevent the movement of allied convoys to the Soviet Union and to counter the threat of the landing of the British troops. In December 1943, in the famous battle of North Cape Navy led by the battleship “Duke of York” while attempting to attack convoy JW-55B sunk it. From 1968 to the German sailors who were on the “Scharnhorst” survived only 36 people. British Admiral Bruce Austin Fraser, commander of the battle aboard the battleship “Duke of York” for the victory over the German Navy received from king George VI a knighthood and the title of Baron of the North Cape current, and the Soviet government — orden of Suvorov I degree.
