On September 30, 1943, the submarine U-537 departed from Bergen, Norway, carrying a specialised crew headed by Dr Kurt Sommermeyer of the Third Reich, and Kapitanleutnant Peter Schrewe. Their mission was so secret that it would remain undiscovered for forty years, and would mark the only German military incursion into North America in the Second World War.
On October 22, following a long journey across the Atlantic, U-537 safely reached North Labrador, Newfoundland, despite being caught in a storm, and being left both unable to dive or use its quadruple anti-aircraft cannon. Aboard the Submarine was the automatic weather station Wetter-Funkgerat Land-26, nicknamed Kurt, intended to be set up in Martin Bay, a site chosen specifically as it was believed that it reduced the risk of the station being discovered by Inuit.
The weather station was extremely important, as the data it provided would be vital to the Luftwaffe, and especially, the Kreigsmarine, as it would inform them of the weather conditions hours in advance, and allow the High Command to plan their strategy and targets accordingly for the day. It was necessary for such a station to be positioned to the west, because of the in the movement of Earth’s weather and currents in the Northern Hemisphere.
In this regard, the Allies, had a large advantage, as they had a large network of weather stations all across the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, which provided much more accurate, and detailed weather forecasts and reports than those of the Axis powers. While the Germans did have some mobile weather stations based on U-Boats, planes, and ships, these stations were easily destroyed, and when they transmitted reports, breaking their radio silence, the Allies were able to locate the stations and track them. More permanent stations positioned in remote areas in the Arctic, suffered from mainly the same issues.
This led to the development of the Wetter-Funkgerat Land automatic weather stations. 26 were eventually manufactured by Siemens, and designed by Dr Ernst Ploetz and Edwin Stoebe. The machine had an array of measuring instruments, a 150-watt transmitter, a 10m tall antenna, and a selection of huge, 220lbs, or 100kg nickel-cadmium batteries would send out two-minute transmissions every three hours and could work for up to six months. The majority of this equipment was kept secure inside large canisters.
As well as constructing the weather station and testing it, the crew left a large number of false items with the intention of misleading anyone who might find the station. Among these items were empty American cigarette packets, and drums reading ‘Canadian Meteorological service’. The crew also painted the equipment to make it blend in with the surroundings.
After only around 30 hours setting up the station, and repairing the Submarine, the crew left for Lorient, France, reaching the port safely on October 31, marking the end of the only successful German military operation in North America.
After a few days, however, the quality of the signals and reports began to deteriorate, and at around the three week mark, the signals disappeared entirely. Although another automatic weather station would be sent the following year, the submarine carrying it, U-867 would be scuttled near Bergen, Norway on September 19 1944, by which point, weather stations were far from a priority in the ailing Reich.
The station remained like this, frozen, and undetectable for the next 40 years, until, in 1979, a Geomorphologist, named Peter Johnson stumbled upon the site, while working in the area as part of an Archaeological dig. He named the area Martin Bay 7, believing it to be an old Canadian military installation.
There were a few signs, however that this was not the case, such as the tins reading ‘Canadian Meteorological service’: no such agency existed at the time. Additionally, the region Newfoundland and Labrador didn’t become a part of Canada until 1949; in 1943, the region was a part of the Dominion of Newfoundland.
Despite the site’s rediscovery, it would take another year before the site was actually realised to have been a German Weather station, attributable to the secrecy of the operation, and the limited number of scientists and soldiers involved.
In 1980, a retired engineer by the name of Franz Selinger, who was writing a history of Siemens stumbled across some of Dr Sommermeyer’s old papers. Amongst them, he found a picture of the station and the U-boat, which didn’t match the other German stations across the Arctic.
Although he believed the location shown in the picture to be Labrador, the Canadian authorities had no knowledge or proof of the event. Finally, after discovering that the submarine was U-537, he located the submarine’s logbook in the Freiburg archives, which confirmed that the Submarine had travelled to Labrador as he had originally theorised.
Therefore, he passed on his findings to Dr Alec Douglas, a naval historian of The Directorate of History, in the Canadian Department of National Defence. Douglas journeyed to the site, the next year, and discovered Kurt. Although a number of components were littered around the site, and the canisters had been opened, the station was intact. The station was then disassembled and transported to its current location as a part of the collection of the Canadian War Museum, in Ottawa.
To this day, nobody knows why the station stopped functioning. Perhaps it was discovered by local Inuit, which might explain the open canisters, or maybe the antenna failed. Very little information remains to aid the search for answers.
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uboat.net – U-boat Operations – Weather station Kurt erected in Labrador in 1943
Weather Station Kurt | World War II Database (ww2db.com)
automatic weather station | Canadian War Museum
The Type IXC/40 U-boat U-867 – German U-boats of WWII – uboat.net
The Type IXC/40 U-boat U-537 – German U-boats of WWII – uboat.net