dates

[Roser]

Is it possible that the Germans used another calendar then the French or British. I know the capture of an German Taube on 14 October 1914. German armypapers mentions the loss the day before? How is this possible?

Roser

[Soderbaum]

Hi Roser

The most common reason when you have discrepancy of "one" day is that people today (also some researchers) dont understand how "military" days often where reported...

an example: A German a/c is shot down 16:00 Day 1 and the report is able to catch the breaking time for this day, which could be 16:00, 17:00, 18:00 (did vary).
The other side (French, British) was not able to report the incident for Day 1 because they also did have a military breaking time and the report from this "sector" was not reported until 19:00....so it was reported Day 2...

If you read original reports you will soon catch this phenomen...


Gunnar

This is interesting. I had heard of Naval or Ship's Time beginning at Noon, and running through the 24 hours to noon next day, whereas civilian time is from midnight to midnight.
Are you saying that the Army had something similar to Ship's time?

[Soderbaum]

Hi Neville

I am not saying that the different breking-times for the daily reports has anything to do with the Naval ship time...
Instead it was an effect of the War situation where Daily reports become an important factor for the media "propaganda".....it was important to quickly report War successes to the people/soldiers...

Just an example, I have Daily Kofl and Grufl reports from 1918 which has different 24 hours periods then a normal day...

Basically, because of gigantic areas for collecting information and "mostly" communication problems it was surely difficult to get the information for the correct date...


Gunnar

This is interesting. I had heard of Naval or Ship's Time beginning at Noon, and running through the 24 hours to noon next day, whereas civilian time is from midnight to midnight.Are you saying that the Army had something similar to Ship's time?

neville... What our friend Soderbaum is refering to is simply a daily deadline (time) in which combat and operational reports had to be passed on to staff operations to be processed... Anything happening after the reporting deadline had passed was automatically dated for the next (operational) days reporting... Quite simple really.

"Prost!"

Ah ! Thanks for that. I had visualised a country Bobby looking for three crashed aeroplanes; One went down at 1300h, one at Two Bells, another at One P M.
But a military newspaper deadline is news to me. Had not seen reference to it before.
Surely anything that happened 'yesterday' would appear under the correct date in the weekly returns? Enough..

Ah ! Thanks for that. I had visualised a country Bobby looking for three crashed aeroplanes; One went down at 1300h, one at Two Bells, another at One P M. But a military newspaper deadline is news to me. Had not seen reference to it before.
Surely anything that happened 'yesterday' would appear under the correct date in the weekly returns? Enough..

Not so much a military newspaper deadline, but a deadline to get combat/accident/operational reports to the rear (staff HQ) so that they could be written up in a timely manner by the military administrators. The military, no matter what time, what nationality, or what branch, generates tons of paperwork on a daily basis... not even just for Propaganda purposes, but for operational purposes... even more so during times of war... Hence the need for "deadlines" or "reporting times". I've spent far too many years in the military myself "wading" through the mountains of paperwork... Not a pretty sight.

"Prost!"