1939 Letter from Leitz NY

[LeicaTom]

Leica cameras and parts for M O D use also came into Britain via the "Shetland Bus"
This was a clandestine ferry service between Norway and Scotland run throughout the war using trawlers crewed by some very brave men.

"Shetland Bus"? hummmm that sounds very interesting, the British S.O.E. and American O.S.S. had some very daring clandestine operations going on during the war, I knew of the Swedish/RAF/MOD/Ball Bearings deal, but not about this anywhere online I can read about this operation?

I figure that few if any Leica IIIC `s even got to the USA for sale before 1941, as travel was very limited for American`s to Germany then, mostly only diplomatic services and handful of some news people, were left over there after September 1939

Mostly everone here had to wait till after 1945 to get their hands on the new Leica, American servicemembers were the first to be able to do so in September 1945 at the Post Exchange in Frankfurt

 

[LeicaTom]

Hello LeicaTom,

Checkout the website below,it will give some details of the wartime "Shetland Bus"

http://www.shetland-heritage.co.uk/shetlandbus/

Click on all the links at the bottom of the webpage and you will find the very much appreciated American wartime contribution to this operation with the supply of MTB boats (Hessa,Hitra and Vigra) to supplement the loss of fishing vessels and the terrible events in Telavag.
Regards,William

Wow! Great reading....I always enjoy finding out more historical facts about the war, even when I think I`ve read everything, there`s still something secret that was done, that few people know or remember....

Thanks

Tom

 

[Spider67]

Yes and I believe that Lotte Kuhn Leitz spent time as a "guest" of the Gestapo because of this!!

There was an article on that in the German magazine stern"Stern" (Yes the guys who fell for the Hitler diaries). A young American Rabbi who liked Leicas started to research that story and found out that he helped his jewish employees in a very subtle way and that he kept it secret. They also wrote that there is a book on that topic to come.
Another story told by an engineer was that they were prohibited develop new Leica models but had to do work on aerial cameras. The eningineer said that he simply enlarged the blueprints so that they fit the size of the arial camera he was supposed to work on and continued to work on the new models

 

[Jocko]

Further to this, I noticed the post-war editions of "British Journal Photographic Almanac" have no references to Leica in any way. Minox, Reid, and Corfield get shown, in the 1954 edition... hmm.

I wouldn't read too much into that, Dave: The adverts in my 1936 edition are equally lacking, in contrast to references to the Contax (example below). The BJP has always been an essentially "professional" publication, and I've heard it said that there was a certain prejudice against Leica and for Zeiss on the part of many British pros.

With regard to Noel's comment about Japanese cameras, it's often forgotten that although theoretically available in the late 50s they were effectively unobtainable for the majority of photographers due to a requirement that each purchaser was approved in writing by the Board of Trade, which limited sales almost entirely to professionals. It wasn't until 1962 that such restrictions vanished - look at the small print in this Minolta ad from 1960 🙂

Cheers, Ian