Launching of US Submarine USS Robalo (SS-273)

Image size: 1600 x 1245 pixel. 475 KB
Date: Sunday, 9 May 1945
Place: Manitowoc, Wisconsin, United States
Photographer: Harry Berns, Official photographer of the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co., Manitowoc, WI

USS Robalo (SS-273) hits the water with a huge splash, during her launching at Manitowoc Shipyards, Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Note the inclination gage mounted on her hull side. USS Robalo, a 1525-ton Gato class submarine, went into commission in late September 1943 and transited to the Pacific during the last part of that year. Her first war patrol, during the first months of 1944, began at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It produced no sinkings and terminated at Fremantle, Australia. Robalo left Fremantle in April 1944 to conduct her second patrol, this time targeting Japanese tanker traffic in the South China Sea. Her new Commanding Officer, Manning M. Kimmel, attacked several ships and was credited at the time with sinking one, though postwar review failed to confirm this. In return the submarine was near-missed by enemy bombs that damaged her periscopes. Repaired after returning to Fremantle, she left for another patrol in June, en route back to the South China Sea. On the night of July 26, 1944, while passing through the Balabac Strait, near Palawan, she apparently struck a mine and quickly sank. A few of her men swam ashore and were captured by the Japanese. However, either due to deliberate action by the enemy or through the hazards of war, none of Robalo's crew survived to the end of the conflict!

Source:

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph USNHC # 69262, courtesy of the Manitowoc Submarine Memorial Association, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 1970

http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08273.htm

http://www.worldwar2database.com/gallery3/index.php/wwii1029

Picture of People Giving a Nazi Salute, with August Landmesser Refusing to do so

Image size: 1600 x 1066 pixel. 695 KB
Date: Saturday, 13 June 1936
Place: Blohm + Voss shipyard, Hamburg, Germany
Photographer: Unknown

August Landmesser (born May 24, 1910; missing and presumed dead Oct 17, 1944; declared dead in 1949) was a worker at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, best known for his appearance in a photograph refusing to perform the Nazi salute at the launch of the naval training vessel Horst Wessel on 13 June 1936. August Landmesser was the only child of August Franz Landmesser and Wilhelmine Magdalene (née Schmidtpott). He joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1931 in hope of getting a job. When he became engaged to the Jewish woman Irma Eckler in 1935, he was expelled from the party. They registered to be married in Hamburg, but the Nuremburg Laws enacted a month later prevented it. On October 29, 1935, their first daughter Ingrid was born. In 1937, they tried to flee to Denmark but Landmesser was arrested and it became known that Irma Eckler was pregnant and expecting another daughter. Landmesser was charged and found guilty of "dishonoring the race" under Nazi racial laws in July 1937. Landmesser argued that neither he nor Eckler knew that she was fully Jewish, and he was acquitted on May 27, 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence. Landmesser and Eckler publicly continued their relationship, and on July 15, 1938 he was arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in the concentration camp Börgermoor. Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to a second daughter Irene. From there she was sent to the Oranienburg concentration camp, then the Lichtenburg concentration camp for women, and then the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. Their children were initially taken to the city orphanage. Ingrid was later allowed to live with her maternal grandmother; Irene went to the home of foster parents in 1941. After her grandmother's death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster parents. A few letters came from Irma Eckler until January 1942. It is believed that she was brought to the so-called Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed; she was pronounced dead in 1949, with a date of April 28, 1942. Landmesser was discharged from prison on 19 January 1941. Landmesser worked as a foreman for the firm Püst, a haulage company. The company had a branch at the Heinkel-Werke (factory) in Warnemünde. In February 1944 he was drafted into a penal battalion, the 999th Fort Infantry Battalion. He was declared missing in action and presumably killed during fighting in Croatia on October 17, 1944. He was declared dead in 1949, with an effective date of August 1 that year. The marriage of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler was recognized retroactively by the Senate of Hamburg in the summer of 1951, and in the autumn of that year Ingrid assumed the surname Landmesser. Irene continued to use the surname Eckler. In 1996, Irene Eckler published the book Die Vormundschaftsakte 1935–1958 : Verfolgung einer Familie wegen "Rassenschande" (The Guardianship Act 1935–1958: Persecution of a Family for "Dishonoring the Race"). This book about the story of her family includes a large amount of original documents from the time in question including letters from her mother and documents from state institutions. A figure identified as August Landmesser is featured in a photograph taken on June 13, 1936, published on March 22, 1991 in "Die Zeit". It shows a large gathering of workers at the Blohm + Voss shipyard in Hamburg, for the launching of the Navy training ship Horst Wessel. Everyone in the image has raised his or her arm in the Nazi salute, with the exception of a man toward the back of the crowd, who grimly stands with his arms crossed over his chest. Whether the depicted man is Landmesser is not known with certainty; calls to definitively identify him have gone unanswered, and his daughter Irene is not sure.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser