Germany's Last Mission to Japan by Joseph Mark Scalia

Author:Joseph Mark Scalia [Scalia Mark Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612515250
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Published: 2016-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Commanding the naval contingent to Japan was forty-eight-year-old Gerhard Falcke, a naval construction engineer and electrical welding expert. Upon the conclusion of preliminary POW interrogations, the ONI assessed Falcke as “well-informed, reliable, intelligent, [and] cooperative”—a “high-type” man who, despite professing no “active interest in things political,” nevertheless exhibited allegiance to National Socialism.3 The OKM had regarded Falcke as the ideal officer to head the technical mission to Tokyo; before completing his training as a naval engineer, he had served as the Kriegsmarine’s foreign liaison, coordinating cooperative naval efforts with the Soviet Union, Italy, Bulgaria, Spain, and Japan. His combination of diplomatic and engineering experience provided him with unique qualifications for this mission.

Falcke was one of the oldest of U-234’s passengers. Born in 1897 near Merseburg, he attended Volksschule at Koburg and Gymnasium in Cologne, graduating in 1915. After completing secondary school, Falcke immediately joined the Imperial German Navy, serving at sea until resigning his commission as Leutnant zur See (lieutenant [jg]) in 1919. Like Kessler, Falcke left the navy after the war to resume his education and subsequently entered the technical Hochschule (university) at Aachen to study electrical engineering, welding, and machine and tool construction.

Falcke received his degree in 1925 and immediately began his career as a production engineer with the Siemens Company in Seimensstadt. By 1928 he had advanced to section manager and was transferred to research and development, where he specialized in electrical welding methods. In 1935 he left Siemens to establish himself as an independent contractor. Falcke quickly received orders to install electrical welding processes for the Messer facility in Frankfurt/Main as well as the Müller plant in Cologne; however, he was accused of nonfulfillment of his contracts in both instances and subsequently left after a short stay. In 1936 Falcke went to work for the fledgling Luftwaffe, serving as a technical adviser with the Air Force Technical School near Berlin. At the academy Falcke brought his expertise in electrical welding methods to bear on standard production procedures to produce airframes with superb structural integrity.4

On 15 March 1938, with the situation in Europe worsening, Falcke was recalled to duty with the Kriegsmarine. In view of his engineering experience he was immediately advanced to the rank of lieutenant commander and assigned to the Shipping Branch (Flottenabteilung) Branch) of the OKM in Berlin. There he coordinated the procurement of material and equipment for the navy’s Construction Office (Konstruktionsamt) and, upon obtaining the necessary items, also determined priority for the allotment of these materials for the construction of new weapons and equipment for naval surface vessels. In 1940, however, Falcke was reassigned when the Shipping Branch and the Construction Office were combined to form the Department of Warship Construction (Hauptamt Kriegsschiffbau).5

In 1940 Falcke was named chief of the Liaison Section of the Department of Warship Construction. In this capacity he was the liaison for naval technical representatives from countries within Germany’s sphere of influence.6 Although his duties required diplomatic and technical visits to these countries, Falcke himself never ventured from

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