No doubt there's much more, and it's my earnest hope that some English-speaking German reader will be inspired to contact us to fill in the many gaps and inaccuracies which undoubtedly remain in what follows. I've done my best to ensure that the information herein is accurate as far as it goes. Surely someone has to set that particular ball rolling, if only by example!?! My temerity as an outsider in presenting this article is excused solely by the fact that that as far as I can ascertain, these individuals have yet to share their knowledge in the English language.
There can be no doubt that many model engine aficionados living in Germany know far more about the Jena engines than I do. In undertaking this task, I openly recognize that I am doubtless woefully under-qualified to do so! Apart from my sincere interest in the engines, my sole credential is the fact that I own a number of Jena models, including a fine example of the Pioneer which is thus available for direct examination. However, this did nothing to rescue the old Pioneer from the obscurity in which it had languished ever since its all-too-brief heyday.
These later models met with some success in Western markets, resulting in the Zeiss Jena name becoming quite well known among diesel modellers outside East Germany. The company went on to manufacture a range of quite highly-regarded model diesels under the Jena name, which reflected the engines' city of origin. However, its manufacturers were by no means unknown in the West! In fact, the Carl Zeiss company was one of the longest-established and most highly respected industrial enterprises in Europe at the time when it first entered the model engine business, albeit having built up its reputation in a totally unrelated field. By the mid 1950's, when model engine manufacturing activities in Iron Curtain countries began to come under regular scrutiny from elsewhere, the "U-Boat" had sunk without trace (pun intended!). As a result, information regarding East German model engine production in the early post-war period was scanty in the extreme, hence going largely unreported in the English-language modelling media. At the time in question, East Germany was very much a bulwark of the Communist bloc lying behind the impenetrable barrier of the Iron Curtain. This highly unusual and hence very interesting engine is little-known outside of its native Germany, due in large part to the fact that it was manufactured for a relatively short period (probably of only a few months) around 1950 in what was then East Germany. This was the first model engine produced by the Carl Zeiss company of Jena, East Germany. In this article, we turn the spotlight on one of the near-legendary products of the early post-war German model engine industry-the Zeiss Pioneer 1 diesel of 2 cc displacement, affectionately known as the "U-Boat".
Background Model Engine Production Commences at Carl Zeiss Jena The Zeiss Pioneer-Description Model Identification Fuel Supply Complexities The Zeiss Pioneer 1 on Test The Later Years Conclusion
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