Yesterday I found myself in a time machine boosting me back in time into the year 1991. It was the year where I had to do my 12 month military service at the german navy. I was sonar operator on a so called mine hunter. We searched see mines (ground mines) by using sonar and then used a small remote controlled submarine to dop a bomb directly beside the mine to simply destroy it.

In 1990 Sadam Hussein invaded Kuwait and dropped hundreds of mines into the persian gulf as a barrier to make sure no military vessel or oil tanker was able to approach Kuwait.

A number of NATO countries as also germany sent their mine seachers / hunters down into the gulf to get rid of these mines. During this time I was stationed on the MHC Koblenz (M1071). So, that was the time where a saw quite a lot from the world ;-)

A few years after my military service the german navy replaced to old mine hunter fleet we were stationed on by new high-tech vessels.

One of the ships (MHC Weilheim (M1077))  was handed over to the navy museum in Wilhelmshaven and is now open to be visited for everyone. A very good friend of mine and I visited this ship yesterday and it really was like a trip back in time. Everything was still the same as it was 16 years ago (even the smell of the beds). We lived nearly a year on this small ship, along with 44 others and I have to admit that I liked the time very much. It was like a (big) family. Living together on that close space for that long time together with so many other people really gets you to know each other.

Would be nice to setup a veteran meeting sometime in the summer on board of this ship ;-)

BTW: if you wonder why the ship resp. the entire fleet was made from wood there is a simple explanation: see mines, especially gound mines have different kind of sensors to figure if there is a ship above that's worth to destroy. There are magnetic sensors, audio sensors and pressure senors. A ship made from iron has it's own magentic field, if it uses it's standard machines it also does a lot of noise and the bigger the ship is, the more water displacement it has which causes a pressure wave before and below it.

Modern mines are able to figure from all these parameters the excact type of ship above them.

When we were mine hunting in mines fields we had to make sure none of these sensors would "see" us. As a wooden ship there was no magnetic field, we used eletrical motors instead of the standard machines so there was no noise at all and with a spped of less then a knot you don't even have a fairway behind you and therefore no water displacement resp. pressure wave at all. In fact we were quite save in mine fields consisting of ground mines. There are of course other mine types as well, but there were other systems available to destroy them before we actually went into a mine field.

The trip yesterday made me thinking a lot of the old times and look into all the old pictures. Here are a few of them so you can get an idea of what I did: 

That's me while doing some exercise drills in the medeterian sea. Well, to be honest, shortly before the drill actually started.

My boat, the MHC Koblenz, entering Port Said, the entrance to the Suez Canal in the medterian sea.

As I was the only one with a beard on board, therefore I was also the only one with a hair cutting machine. That made me the "Südflanken" barber. The picture was taken in the middle of the Suez Canal.

The first day in the mine fields near Kuwait shores. The oil fields where still burning at that time and the entire sky looked like this in each direction. The picture was taken at 12 o'clock noon. Scary !!!

That's the remote controlled submarine (PAP 104) being used to drop a bomb beside a mine. You can see the 100kg TNT bomb hanging under the PAP.