Multi-piece Kriegsflagge

[paulj]

Maritime Protocol.

A Courtesy Flag of the country in whose waters a ship is sailing should always be flown by the guest ship.

Ships also fly an appropriate flag when a foreign guest is on board. Hence US warships would carry the RKF as well as the German national flag should they receive a visit from a civil or military representative.

[oldflagswanted]

more about US made RKF's ???

Maritime Protocol.
A Courtesy Flag of the country in whose waters a ship
is sailing should always be flown by the guest ship.
Ships also fly an appropriate flag when a foreign guest
is on board. Hence US warships would carry the RKF as
well as the German national flag should they receive a
visit from a civil or military representative.

Nice reply. Years ago before the swastika ban on
a popular online auction site, a large sewn together
RKF was offered & sold as being from one of the WW2
German ships used later by the Annapolis Naval Academy.
Actually it was a pre-WW2 US Navy Yard made RKF, and
as such rarer than the "real" German made flags. Oddly,
I doubt that either the buyer or seller knew about it.
....... OLDFLAGSWANTED .......

[Kevin L.]

Well I finally got this 8' 5" x 16' monster unfurled to take a closer look at the construction. Very interesting. (This is the only place in my house where it would "fit" and I had to bunch it up. One of these days I'll have a better place to fully display this stuff.)

The rope hoist has been cut out but the rest of the flag, apart from some small stains and a really bad odor, is in decent shape.

[Kevin L.]

The first pic shows the interior of the hoist reinforcement. The edge of the flag itself was finished before the rope was added; a feature I didn't expect.

The second pic shows the pieces of the Iron Cross design that are cut out of a heavy canvas in a "cookie-cutter" style. This surprised me as well as I had assumed that they would be individual strips laid end to end.

[Kevin L.]

These pics show the different stitch styles and the variance of material. All of the white circles and white stripes on the swastika are cut out in the same fashion as the Iron Cross. The swastika is four separate pieces on each side of the white field and the stripes are applied on top of them. The white field is cut out to correspond with this design. This gives a total of four layers of cloth in these spots!

[Kevin L.]

Another interesting feature, and the reason that the swastika is in four pieces, is that there is a center seam that runs across the circle. The seams on the swastika correspond to this but you can tell that the white field was assembled first before the swastika was applied. I'm guessing that it is constructed this way to maintain strength in the center design. (???)

[Kevin L.]

The first pic shows the corner patch and the stamp of "GERMANY 2" on the hoist reinforcement. This is the only mark that I see. English maker I'm guessing?

The last pic shows the finished fly end. I can't imagine that it flew very well; bad wind resistance and it weighs quite a bit.

Thanks for looking, and if anybody would like to see more details just let me know.

Kevin L.