Did you know the Nazis managed to install an automatic weather station on the coast of Labrador during WWII and that it remained undiscovered by Canadians for more than 30 years?
The secret German mission remains one of the only known enemy operations to actually take place on North American soil during the second World War and highlights just how much an impact the weather had on the war.
In October 1943, German U-boat U-537 sailed undetected to Martin Bay, off the coast of Labrador in what was then the British Dominion of Newfoundland.
There, a crew led by civilian meteorologist Kurt Sommermeyer rushed to set up what was, at the time, an incredibly sophisticated weather station.
Disguised in camouflaged steel drums were a thermometer, anemometer, barometer, and more, powered by batteries and a wind generator. The system was designed to collect weather data at set intervals, which would be sent over the ocean in encrypted Morse code via a shortwave radio transmitter.
The station serves as a sort of precursor to the automatic weather stations we’re used to seeing in modern times.
Unfortunately for the Germans, though, the station stopped operating fully after just a few days.
A photo taken by German forces in 1943 shows a weather station complete with instruments to measure temperature, wind speed, air pressure, humidity and more. (Source. CC0 1.0)
SEE ALSO: The unbearable weather conditions of First World War
As Naval Museum of Alberta curator Bradley Froggatt explains, the Nazis were likely aiming to gain an edge in the Battle of the Atlantic. Access to weather information in the Atlantic was crucial to planning Allied operations, and having access to that same information likely would have helped German U-boats, ships, and aircraft plan attacks.
“Because Germany was blockaded early on in the war, they had limited resources for predicting weather. They had weather stations but didn’t have access to the information the allies had, especially when it came to the convoys,” he says, referencing the many shipping convoys that sailed from North America to Britain during the war.
“The key thing with the Germans is they want to kill the convoys, because if they starve England, they can’t fight that war.”
Perhaps most remarkable about the story, the station remained unknown and undiscovered by Canadians until a geographer doing research in the area stumbled upon it in 1977. Even then, the fact that it was a Nazi installation wasn’t verified until a few years later, following a tip from a German researcher. The Canadian government visited and dismantled the site. It now sits as a permanent exhibit at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
Summing up the importance of meteorological knowledge on the battlefield, Froggatt references a quote from the famed Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu.
“Know the enemy; know yourself; your victory will never be endangered. Know the ground, know the weather; your victory will then be total.”