During the era of World War II, in the middle of last century, the German armed forces in Europe were at a disadvantage regarding weather patterns coming across the Atlantic into the continent. The Allied forces had an advantage in that they could readily obtain current weather information from Canada and the United States, as well as from Greenland and Iceland, thus enabling reliable weather forecasting in England.
In an attempt to obtain reliable
weather information from across the Atlantic, the German authorities developed
a plan whereby they also could have access to this needed information. Under the concept of the project
Wetter-Funkgerat Land, Weather Radio for Land, WFL, they would plant small
radio transmitters at suitable locations in North America and upon suitable
islands in the North Atlantic.
A total of 20 or 30 of these weather
reporting portable automatic radio stations were constructed and assembled by
the German company Siemens radio manufactory, based upon a design developed by
Dr. Ernst Ploetze and Edwin Stoebe. Each
weather radio station contained weather measuring instruments, a telemetry
system, and a 150 watt FK type transmitter manufactured by the Lorenz radio
company. All of the equipment for each
station was stowed into 10 metal cylinders for easy transportation to desired
locations.
The clandestine weather radio
station destined for installation in Canada was identified as WFL26 which would
operated on 3940 kHz and it was estimated that its almost one ton of batteries
would provide power for 6 months of operation.
This automatic radio station was configured to broadcast weather
information in telemetry codes for 2 minutes, every 3 hours.
On September 18, 1943, German
submarine U537, commanded by Captain Peter Schrewe, left Kiel in Germany on its
first combat patrol. On board was this
weather radio station WFL26, the 6th of 21 that were manufactured. Also on board were two German
meteorologists/radiotricians from the Siemens company, Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer and
his assistant Walter Hildebrandt.
On the voyage across the Atlantic,
submarine U537 was damaged when it struck an iceberg during a mid autumn
storm. Because of the damage, the
submarine was no longer able to submerge, and it had lost its antiaircraft
gun. Nevertheless, the submarine continued
on its dangerous and lonely journey.
On October 22 (1943), the submarine
arrived at the coast of Northern Labrador, which at the time was part of the
separate British territory of Newfoundland, though these days it forms part of
the Canadian province of Newfoundland-Labrador.
Two days later, the submarine arrived at Martin Bay right on the
northern tip of Labrador, as far away as possible from roving bands of local
Inuit hunters.
The radio station was assembled and
set up on the top of a 170 ft high hill,
some 400 yards inland, and at the same time the damaged submarine was
repaired. Much of this work was
performed during the hours of darkness in this northerly location.
Weather Radio Station WFL26 was
identified with the station logo and the name of a non-existent organization,
the Canadian Meteor Service. As a
camouflage cover up, a few empty American cigarette packs and matchbooks were
thrown around.
In just 28 hours, the project was
completed, the radio station was actively functioning, the submarine was
repaired, and they began their departure from the North American shores of
Labrador. The submarine lay underwater
in the Labrador Sea for a while, and they monitored the initial transmissions from weather radio station
WFL26.
To begin with, the station was noted
on air with a good signal, though the first broadcast was observed to be 3
minutes late. However, on successive
days, the signal began to deteriorate, until the station went completely silent
just 3 weeks later.
Another monitoring report states
that there were jamming transmissions on the same shortwave channel, 3940
kHz. However, it is suggested that this
was not deliberate jamming because the station was still unknown to the
Allies. It is probable that the channel
was in use at times by other legitimate users who knew nothing about this new
clandestine weather station on the north coast of Labrador.
On three separate occasions as
submarine U537 was departing the western areas of the Atlantic, they successfully
repelled and escaped from attacks by single planes from the Royal Canadian Air
Force. The submarine successfully
reached the shores of occupied France at Lorient on December 8 (1943), at the
end of 70 days at sea.
The silent weather radio station lay
abandoned and exposed near the edge of Martin Bay for many years, and there is
no record of any human sightings of this station until the year 1977. It was then that geologist Peter Johnson with
an exploratory team happened to come across the derelict radio station, but,
thinking that it was an abandoned Canadian station, they simply left it as it
was.
Then it was that a retired Siemens
engineer in Germany named Franz Selinger began research for the writing of a
history of his radio company. He came across
a reference to weather radio station WFL26.
He contacted Canadian Department of Defence historian Mr. W. A. E.
Douglas, who then organized a team to visit the area in northern Labrador in
1981.
This exploration party travelled to
Martin Bay on board a Canadian Coastguard ship, and the Siemens historian Franz
Selinger was also with them. They found
the station that was still there 38 years after it was first installed, though
some of the canisters had been broken open and the internal components had been
strewn around.
The remaining equipment was salvaged
and retrieved, and it is now on display in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
(AWR-Wavescan/NWS 459)