80 years ago today, the only (known) World War II military installation conducted by Germany in North America was erected.
On 22 October 1943, the Type IXC/40 submarine U-537 (Kptlt. Peter Schrewe) of the 10. Flottille out of Lorient in occupied France arrived at remote Martin Bay (Naukjuke Bay) at the northern tip of Labrador with a special cargo– Wetter-Funkgerät Land (Weather Radio for Land) No. 26.
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Type IXC/40 submarine U-537 at anchor in Martin Bay, Labrador, Dominion of Newfoundland (now Canada) on 22 Oct 1943. Crewmen can be seen on deck offloading components of Weather Station Kurt into rubber rafts. The photo was taken ashore from the Hutton peninsula by one of U-537’s crew. (Photo Bundesarchiv via ww2dbase)
Manufactured by Siemens, WFL-26 consisted of a variety of meteorological instruments, a 150-watt Lorenz 150 FK-type transmitter with a 33-foot antenna on a tripod base, a shorter pole with instruments, and ten interconnected 220-pound canisters with nickel-cadmium and dry-cell high-voltage batteries.
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Schematic of a German WFL manufactured by the Siemens-Schuckert corporation. It had been designed by Drs. Dr. Ernest Ploetze and Edwin Stoebe. The schematic was saved by Siemens employee Franz Selinger who would supply it to the Canadian government in 1980
Under the direction of embarked passenger Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer and Siemens technician Walter Hildebrant, U-537’s crew spent two windswept days in Canadian waters shuttling canisters ashore and erecting what was to be known as Wetterstation Kurt (Weather Station Kurt) on top of a small hill with a good view of the horizon some 400 yards in from the beach.
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German Weather Station Kurt set up on the Hutton Peninsula, Labrador, Dominion of Newfoundland on 22 October 1943. You can make out the “Canadian Meteor Service” and WFL-26 markings (Bundesarchiv)
To camouflage the nature of the station, rather than being marked “Secret Nazzi Weather Stuff,” the canisters were carefully sanitized to only have numbers and fictional “Canadian Meteor Service” markings. At the same time, empty packs of Camel cigarettes and other North American items were salted around the site.
On the 24th U-537 continued on its way, with Sommermeyer verifying Kurt was up and running, broadcasting readings on 3940 kHz every three hours.
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Civilian technician Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer aboard U-537 in the Labrador Sea listening to signals transmitted by Weather Station Kurt broadcasting from the Labrador coast, 24 Oct 1943. (Bundesarchiv)
However, for unknown reasons, Kurt, which had planned to transmit for at least six months if not a year, halted its readings after just a month and the Germans never made an effort to revisit the site to affect repairs.
The first time anyone in Canada found the site (and reported it) was when government geomorphologist Peter Johnson came across it in 1977 while researching the area as part of the two-year Torngat Archaeological Project which cataloged 450 km of coastline and just under 350 sites along the Labrador Coast, thinking it was an old Canadian Weather Service or RCN installation.
A German researcher, Franz Selinger, formerly of Siemens, seeing images of the station, alerted Ottawa as to the likelihood that the mysterious station was the lost Herr Kurt.
Still, it wasn’t until 1981 that the Canadian Coast Guard responded to it and examined the damaged and rusting site in an expedition led by Department of National Defence historian W.A.B. Douglas. Reportedly, some parts were missing, but the canisters, tripod, and mast, and some of the old dry-cell batteries were left to identify.
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Canadian Coast Guard shore party made the first examination of the remnants of German Weather Station Kurt on the Hutton Peninsula, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada on 21 Jul 1981, 38 years after it was deployed. Photo via ww2dbase
Partially recovered and restored, WFL-26 is on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
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Kurt, is still quiet but no longer beach litter.
As for U-537, she arrived back at Lorient uneventfully on 8 December 1943 and, was dispatched to the Far East to operate with 33. Flottille out of Penang. She was lost on 10 November 1944 east of Soerabaja, sunk by the Gato-class fleet boat USS Flounder (SS-251), taking all hands to the bottom of the Java Sea.