hothmobile
Active Member
I have grown a small collection of time unit fuzes made by the Gebr. Thiel GmbH company during the war. They were located in Thuringia. What made me track these down is that I own a werkschutz Walther PPk pistol issued to one of the factories. Specifically, the pistol came from the State run Muhlhausen factory.
On the left is an illumination fuze that is marked by the Ruhla/Seebach code hhj.
The minty looking artillery round on the right is from the actual Muhlhausen state funded factory which was 32 miles away from the original Thiel factory in Ruhla/Seebach. The muhlhausen factory code for this division of Thiel company is dlr.
After corresponding with Michael Hiedler, and the help of his great factory code book, we were able to surmise that the Thiel factory in Muhlhausen was listed under the name Gertebau GmbH which was created by the Reichswehr.
The brass time units still tick!!! I had to have a winding key made as you can see in the picture so I can watch the time units in action. (don't worry, there is no detonator left)
In doing research on Thiel, I made a great pen pal friend in the UK who located the Muhlhausen artillery round fuze marked "dlr". It's the only one he's seen and it came in the original container still packed with a waxy material. It looks like it just came off the lathe. Being the only Muhlhausen factory coded Thiel fuze he's ever seen, He was kind enough to remove it from his collection and sell it to me even though he liked it because he believe it had been sabotaged. (we have not determined that as concrete). Thank you CLIVE!!
