WW2 German weather station in Labrador

WW2 German weather station in Labrador Does anybody recall any details of the German unmanned weather station that was planted on the coast of Labrador in 1943 or 1944? This came to light in about 1983 or '84 when a helicopter from a Canadian icebreaker, acting on a tip from a researcher in Germany, found it.

Does anyone have any info on what was found on the site of the weather station? An old shack, rotting communications gear?

Regards, Lock

i believe it was an unmanned station. all that was found was the transmitter.

> Does anybody recall any details of the German unmanned weather station > that was planted on the coast of Labrador in 1943 or 1944?

It was designed to provide the basics of wind speed and direction, temperature, and probably sunlight (via a photocell). It ran for a year until the batteries ran out and was a valuable tool for German weather forecasting in the North Atlantic. By the it was too dangerous to try to set up another.

Ken Armstrong

Full colour photographs of the site and equipment can be found in the article by Alex Douglas entitled 'The Nazi weather station in Labrador', THE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC Vol. 101, No. 6 (December 1981/January 1982), pp. 42-47. The equipment, Described in Michael Hadley's U-BOATS AGAINST CANADA, was out in the open, not in a shed. It consisted of ten canisters set up out in the open near the northernmost tip of Labrador. The canisters contained the sensors and equipment, and a couple of antennae or aerials for measuring weather and transmitting data. According the Douglas, 'Every canister had been opened, and the contents lay strewn aboiut for a distance of 100 feet or so. Batteries and radio parts seemed to have been systematically dismantled. Parts of the transmitter, name plates and trade marks of various pieces suggested that the equipment had been deliberately smashed.' Douglas speculates that the destruction may have been carried out by 'personnel sent to discover and destroy the station during the war.' Incidentally, each canister weighed about 100 kilos. The transmitter, battery-powered, had an output of 150 watts, broadcasting on the high-frequency band, between 3,000 and 12,000 Khz.

Olaf Janzen

On 6 Nov 1997, Lock Bar wrote:

The following information is from the wonderful website www.pinetreeline.org :

U-537 left Kiel, Germany on September 18, 1943. She made a brief stop in Bergen, Norway and headed out to sea again on 30 Sept. The boat went on patrol in the western North Atlantic under Kptlt. Peter Schrewe. Its task was to set up an automatic weather station on the coast of Labrador. U-537 carried a scientist, Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer, and Wetter-Funkgerät (WFL) number 26 (the sixth in a series of 21 such stations) manufactured by Siemens. It consisted of various measuring instruments, a 150-watt Lorenz 150 FK-type transmitter and ten canisters with nickel-cadmium and dry-cell high-voltage batteries.

On October 22 U-537 arrived at Martin Bay at the northern tip of Labrador. For the next 48 hours U-537 lay at anchor while the crew manhandled the 220-pound canisters, along with a tripod and mast, into rubber boats and then onshore. The weather station was set up 400 yards inland on a 170 feet high hill. At 5:40 P.M. on October 23, having ensured that the station was functioning properly, Schrewe weighed anchor and set off for an anti-shipping patrol off Newfoundland. His patrol was uneventful and on December 8 U-537 returned to Lorient, France.

Reports indicate that the weather station sent out normal transmissions for a few days, but then there was apparent jamming on that frequency (about which nothing is known; no evidence has yet turned up that the Allies learned about the equipment).

A few more details can be found at the source here.

Hi Doublejay, welcome to the forum