Posted by Ed Kiser on January 31, 2004 at 04:08:02 from 64.12.96.8 user Kisered.
Titty found a copy of "Riddle of the Sands" in the houseboat while it was being used as the "Fram" but after briefly glancing through it, she decided that it was not her kind of story. Now that just becomes like throwing down the gauntlet; I got the book and set out to read it to see what she had missed out on.
One interesting feature came to light. On one of the maps (love books that have maps!) that shows the NW part of Germany, the North Sea coast bordering Holland, and there is a town there in West Friesland part of Germany just across the river from the Dutch boarder that is called "Norden". This name reminds me of that famous bomb sight that was used in WWII in the bombing of Germany from bases in England. That bomb sight was called the "Norden" bomb sight, and was considered a secret to be well guarded. Of course, once a bomber with that thing on board crashed, there was the likelyhood or just the possibility that the Germans could have dug that out of the wreck, and possibly reverse engineered the thing to disclose those secrets.
My question is this, why was this bomb sight named after this relatively insignificant town in Germany? Or was it named after something (somebody?) else that just happened to be the same as the name of that German town?
Until I saw that name on the map in "Riddle..." I did not know a town of that name existed in Germany.
The things one learns by reading "All Things Ransome."
Ed Kiser, South Florida