German weather stations in the Arctic during World War II
The Arctic and North Atlantic are known as Europe's "weather kitchen." This is where cyclones and anticyclones form, determining the weather across much of the European continent. Accurate and timely weather forecasts are crucial for military operations, especially aviation и fleetWith the outbreak of World War II, Germany lost the information on weather conditions in the northern regions that had previously been provided through international exchange.
As a result, Germany was forced to create its own system for collecting meteorological information in the northern regions of the Eastern Hemisphere. These responsibilities were assigned to the meteorological services of the Navy (Marine-Wetterdienst) and the Air Force (Wetterdienst der Luftwaffe). This became a difficult and dangerous task.
The following main methods were used to obtain this information:
1. Weather ships and submarines
2. Weather reconnaissance aircraft
3. Manned or automatic ground or floating weather stations secretly located in enemy territory.
The collected information allowed German meteorologists to obtain fairly accurate weather reports for Northern Europe for 72 hours in advance.
Naturally, using submarines on combat missions to collect weather data distracted them from their mission, so from August 1940 to January 1941, two submarines were assigned specifically for weather reconnaissance. This was ineffective. They lacked the necessary specialized equipment, were unable to operate in icy conditions, and were unable to cover large areas.
These boats were equipped with the following meteorological equipment:
1. Thermometers
2. Hand-held anemometer
3. Psychrometer
4. Hydrometer
5. Two aneroid barometers
6. Barograph
7. Hypsometer for calibrating barometers
8. Radiosondes.
Radiosondes were developed between 1936 and 1939 by the naval observatory in Wilhelmshaven. They measured atmospheric pressure, temperature, and humidity at various altitudes and transmitted the data via radio to the ground. The equipment was launched aboard hydrogen-filled balloons 1,5–2 meters in diameter. Hydrogen was stored in cylinders on submarines and produced chemically at ground-based weather stations by reacting aluminum with sulfuric acid.
From 1940 to 1945, the Kriegsmarine also used surface weather ships (WBS, or Wetterbeobachtungs-Schiff). The choice fell on the "plowmen" of the North Atlantic—fishing trawlers and loggers, which possessed excellent seaworthiness, long range, and experienced crews, true "sea wolves." With the outbreak of war, most of them were mobilized and used as patrol ships, minesweepers, and other such tasks. Their crews became naval personnel and received the corresponding military ranks. Sometimes, the crews consisted entirely of civilian sailors. Weather ships typically carried 15-19 crew members and four to eleven meteorologists.
This is how Admiral Friedrich Ruge described this situation in his book “War at Sea 1939-1945”:
Thus, Germany lost all data coming from the west and north, crucial for predicting our weather, which originates from the west. As mentioned above, in 1940, two of the few submarines operating in the ocean were supposed to be constantly stationed west of the operational area, reporting on the local weather.
In September 1940, the steam fishing trawler Sachsen was sent to conduct meteorological observations off the coast of East Greenland, radioing its observations from various locations for several weeks. In 1941, in connection with the planned Tirpitz raid, this vessel conducted ice reconnaissance in the Denmark Strait, and then sailed for 86 days to conduct meteorological observations in the area of Jan Mayen Island. The meteorological vessel Lauenburg, which was sent to replace it, was intercepted by the enemy while en route to the island. The meteorological vessel Hessen, which set out to sea in 1943, was forced to end its voyage due to an engine room accident. It was tossed about for a long time in a severe storm, and was then taken in tow by a submarine, which delivered it to Tromsø. In the winter of 1944/45, the meteorological ship Wuppertal was near the ice from the beginning of November to the end of January, and then disappeared without a trace, apparently lost during a storm.
In September 1940, the steam fishing trawler Sachsen was sent to conduct meteorological observations off the coast of East Greenland, radioing its observations from various locations for several weeks. In 1941, in connection with the planned Tirpitz raid, this vessel conducted ice reconnaissance in the Denmark Strait, and then sailed for 86 days to conduct meteorological observations in the area of Jan Mayen Island. The meteorological vessel Lauenburg, which was sent to replace it, was intercepted by the enemy while en route to the island. The meteorological vessel Hessen, which set out to sea in 1943, was forced to end its voyage due to an engine room accident. It was tossed about for a long time in a severe storm, and was then taken in tow by a submarine, which delivered it to Tromsø. In the winter of 1944/45, the meteorological ship Wuppertal was near the ice from the beginning of November to the end of January, and then disappeared without a trace, apparently lost during a storm.
Weather ships faced the daunting task of slipping through the blockade of Allied ships and aircraft and reaching their assigned duty area, which sometimes lasted for months. There was no hope of assistance in the event of accidents, illness, or enemy attacks. In addition to the aforementioned "weather victims," one must add:
WBS 1 "Hermann" (before 1942 "Sachsen") - on June 17, 1943, it was sunk by its crew off the coast of Greenland. The crew and meteorological detachment were partly taken prisoner, and partly evacuated by a German aircraft.
WBS 2 "Coburg" was crushed by ice off the coast of Greenland in May 1944, the crew was evacuated by aircraft.
WBS 3 "Lauenburg" was sunk by British ships 300 miles northeast of Jan Mayen on June 28, 1941. The British managed to capture code books, parts of the Enigma encryption machine, and other secret documents.
On November 16, 1940, the WBS 4 "Hinrich Freese" was discovered by a British cruiser off the coast of Jan Mayen Island. It ran ashore and sank.
WBS 5 "Adolf Vinnen" was sunk by gunfire from three British destroyers on the night of October 23–24, 1940. Nine crew members were killed. A raft containing the surviving sailors was recovered by a Norwegian fishing trawler.
On May 17, 1941, the WBS 6 "München" was captured southeast of Iceland by the British destroyer HMS Somali. The British obtained the Enigma encryption tables. To cover this up, they spread the news that the "München" had sunk.
WBS 11 "Externsteine" - trapped in ice off the coast of East Greenland after landing a meteorological party, captured by the Americans on October 16, 1944.
The weather ship Sachsenwald participated in the search and rescue of the crew of the German battleship Bismarck, sunk by British ships. The ship was returning to port after a 50-day tour of duty in the North Atlantic when, at 2:00 a.m. on May 27, 1941, its commander, an experienced fisherman captain and now a Kriegsmarine lieutenant, Ernst Wilhelm Schütte, received orders to proceed to the area where the battleship had sunk.
Despite stormy weather with headwinds and waves, as well as an attack by a British bomber, the Sachsenwald arrived in the designated area by 1:00 PM the next day. After a long and arduous search, only a raft with two surviving sailors was found.
Weather boats (WBS)
WBS 3 "Lauenburg"
The Luftwaffe (Luftwaffe) also had its own meteorological reconnaissance service, the Wettererkundungsstaffel (Wekusta). The Luftwaffe began conducting long-range weather reconnaissance in 1940, and after the occupation of Norway, it expanded to the Arctic. Wekusta aircraft were based primarily at Banak Air Base in northern Norway and Værnes Air Base near Trondheim. Their area of operation extended from Jan Mayen and Iceland in the south to Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land in the north, and from Greenland in the west to Novaya Zemlya and Vaygach Island in the east. Long-range aircraft such as the FW 200 "Condor," He 111, Ju 290, Do 17, and Ju 88 were used, as well as Do 26 floatplanes and the six-engine monster BV 222. There were eleven Wekusta squadrons in total, each with three to twelve aircraft. Around 200 meteorologists from these squadrons were killed during the war.
FW-200 Condor
Ju-290 aircraft
Seaplane BV 222
He 111 aircraft
Dornier Do 26 seaplane
Do 17 aircraft
An aircraft refuelling at Banak before departure for Spitsbergen, April 1941.
Luftwaffe weather service aircraft in Svalbard
Luftwaffe aircraft not only collected weather data, but also landed personnel and equipment for the weather stations they serviced, provided supplies and evacuation, and installed automatic weather stations on remote islands and floating weather buoys.
Wekusta Squadrons
However, it was impossible to rely entirely on these methods of obtaining meteorological information. Therefore, the young ornithologist and polar explorer Hans-Robert Knoespel (1915–1944) proposed deploying meteorological teams with equipment to remote Arctic locations in the fall. These teams would transmit their observations by radio before the ice began to melt the following summer. The polar winter made it virtually impossible for the enemy to capture such stations, even when they were successfully located. Hans-Robert Knoespel died in 1944 while defusing a mine at the Kreuzritter weather station, where he was its commander.
Hans-Robert Knoespel, 1938
To provide comfortable accommodation for polar explorers, Knoespel developed the so-called "Knoespel-Würfel." These were standardized prefabricated living modules measuring 3,0 x 3,0 x 2,2 meters. The walls, roof, and floor were made of double-layered fiberboard panels filled with insulation, mounted on a lightweight frame. This design facilitated the transportation and assembly of the meteorological station buildings.
In October 1943, Knoespel proposed the creation of a training center to help future participants in Arctic meteorological expeditions adapt to life in polar regions. The idea was approved, and he was appointed head of the center.
The school was located in abandoned army buildings at Goldberghöhe (in the Riesengebirge mountain range in the Sudetenland, known as Krkonoše in Czech) and was renamed Ausbildungsstation Goldhöhe. In May 1944, the center closed, and future Arctic meteorologists began attending 10-day courses at the Mountain Training School in Fulpmes (Hochgebirgskampfschule Fulpmes) in Tyrol.
Ausbildungsstation Goldhöhe training center
Training center in Tyrol
From 1941 to 1945, 15 ground-based weather stations operated in the Arctic regions (Bear Island, East Greenland, Spitsbergen and the Franz Josef Land archipelago): 10 Navy stations, 3 Air Force stations and two Abwehr stations.
German Arctic weather stations during World War II
After Denmark was occupied by German troops in 1940 to prevent a British invasion, power in the country remained in the hands of the Danish government, but the Greenlandic authorities declared themselves a self-governing territory.
On April 9, 1941, despite protests from the Danish government, the Danish ambassador in Washington and the American government signed an agreement allowing the US to station troops in Greenland. In June, the Greenland Patrol, composed of US Coast Guard and Navy ships, was formed to guard the island's east coast from possible German incursions. This occurred despite the fact that the US was still neutral! The Americans' primary goal during this period was to secure the rich cryolite deposits in southwest Greenland, the raw material for aluminum production.
In turn, the Greenlandic authorities created the North-East Greenland Sledge Patrol, consisting of 15 local Danes and Inuit, supplied by the American army, who patrolled the coast on dog sleds.
Greenland Sled Patrol, 1940
In early September 1941, the Sledge Patrol reported to the US Coast Guard ship Northland that a group of suspicious individuals had landed near Franz Josef Fjord. On September 12, 500 miles south, Northland spotted the fishing trawler Buskø, flying a Norwegian flag. When questioned, the Norwegians reported landing a group of people with a radio.
US Coast Guard ship Northland
American sailors quickly combed the coast and found a hunting lodge with three rather friendly "German agents." The "agents," along with the trawler (confiscated by American authorities), were taken to Boston for further investigation. To this day, the Coast Guard remains proud of this "first military prize" of the coming war (after all, the United States was still neutral).
However, Frode Skarstein, a researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute – Polar Environment Centre, refutes this in his article “A cursed affair: how a Norwegian expedition to Greenland became the USA’s first maritime capture in World War II.”
The Buskø was chartered by Norway's Svalbard and Arctic Ocean Research Survey, the predecessor of today's Norwegian Polar Institute, to deliver various supplies to seven Norwegian hunters stationed there, separated from their homeland since 1939, as well as a new group of five hunters and to conduct scientific research in Greenland. At German request, it also carried one Norwegian with meteorological equipment and a radio, who was to regularly send weather data back to Norway.
The Americans had no choice but to accuse the Norwegians of illegally staying in Greenland without “appropriate immigration documents.”
In August 1942, the Kriegsmarine made another attempt to establish a weather station on the east coast of Greenland (Operation Holzauge). On August 12, a group of 19 men under the command of Lieutenant Hermann Ritter, including meteorologists led by Dr. Gottfried Weiss, was landed from the trawler Hermann (formerly the weather ship WBS 1 Sachsen) from the trawler. The station was located on Sabine Island and operated without problems until March 11, 1943, when it was discovered by the Greenland Sled Patrol (Nordøstgrønlands Slædepatrulje).
On March 13, the Germans began pursuing the patrol, which had abandoned all its equipment, including sled dogs and sleds. On March 25, they captured the sled patrol base in Eskimonæs and burned it. In a brief skirmish, one patrol member was mortally wounded and two others were captured.
Later, one of the prisoners (according to other sources, two) managed to escape, taking Lieutenant Ritter with him. The sled patrol members were forced to make a 600-kilometer trek to Scoresbysund to report to the German weather station.
On May 25, 1943, American bombers flying from Iceland bombed the weather station. A US Coast Guard unit landing there found the station deserted—its personnel had been evacuated on June 6 and 17 by Dornier Do 26 floatplanes. The trawler Hermann was scuttled by its crew.
In October 1943, an attempt was made to establish a new weather station in East Greenland (Operation Bassgeiger). To avoid detection by the Americans or the Sled Patrol, it was decided to establish the station as far north as possible. On August 28, 1943, the WBS 2 "Coburg" departed Narvik with 18 crew members and nine meteorological team members on board.
However, the trawler never reached the Greenland coast, hampered by drifting ice. The vessel struggled forward, often aided by explosives dropped twice from aircraft. On October 16, the vessel was finally trapped in ice 8 km from the nearest land—Cape Sussi on the rocky islet of Shannon (75°20'N).
The ice-bound WBS Coburg and its crew
Using all the wood available on board, a hut ("Eislager") was built on the fast ice midway between the shore and the Coburg. On November 18-19, the ship suffered serious damage during ice shifts, and some equipment was lost. Construction of a shore camp began on November 23. It consisted of a network of tunnels and caves dug into a huge coastal snowdrift.
Equipment, meteorological equipment, and provisions had to be carried eight kilometers through ice ridges and crevasses. From January 4, 1944, meteorological measurements and radio communications were conducted only from the shore. The "Bassgeiger" party spent six months in their subsnow "habitat," where temperatures hovered around zero degrees Celsius due to the need to conserve fuel, receiving only occasional food drops from aircraft.
In February 1944, a violent storm raged at sea, causing the ice to shift. The Coburg suffered damage "incompatible with life," though it did not sink, and the ice camp was destroyed. Using salvaged timber, a "radio room" (or "Funkhutte") was built on the shore, which also served as housing for five people.
The presence of the German station did not go unnoticed. In November 1943, a member of the Greenland Sled Patrol discovered fresh tracks in the snow near Cape Sussy, but the search did not begin until April 22, 1944. Six Sled Patrol members engaged thirteen Germans but were forced to retreat after a 30-minute firefight. The weather station commander, Lieutenant Gerhard Zacher, was killed in the fighting.
To protect against possible attacks, four rifle pits were built from rocks around the "snow city." On May 6, 1944, the crew abandoned the Coburg; the ship was blown up, and all 26 members of the Bassgeiger settled together on the shore.
On June 3, the entire meteorological team was evacuated by a Ju-290 from 2./FAG 5, which landed on an ice field five kilometers from the station. On July 31, a landing party from the US Coast Guard ship Northland destroyed the remains of the weather station.
From 2007 to 2010, archaeological expeditions from Aarhus University (Denmark) conducted research in the Holzauge and Bassgeiger areas. They mapped the weather stations and collected hundreds of artifacts. Unfortunately, they discovered that souvenir hunters had reached even this far-off place, even desecrating Lieutenant Sacher's grave.
The next attempt to establish a Kriegsmarine weather station in Greenland was Operation Edelweiss. In August 1944, the weather trawler WBS 6 Kehdingen, with 25 crew members and 10 meteorological party members on board, departed Kristiansand, Norway, escorted by the submarine U-703, for the northeast coast of Greenland. On September 1, the Kehdingen was spotted amid the ice near Dove Bay, Greenland, by the U.S. Coast Guard ship WPG-49 Northland, which began pursuit.
U-703 fired two torpedoes, but they exploded upon hitting the ice. After an eight-hour chase, Northland caught up with the trawler and demanded its surrender. From the "War Diary of the Operations Department of the Naval Headquarters":
At 10:11, the Kehdingen reported that it was under attack by surface forces in square AA 2643, and at 11:06 it reported the following: “We cannot break away (from the enemy), the destruction of secret documents and the vessel is assured.”
The Germans abandoned the ship in boats and sank it with explosive charges.
German prisoners of war on board the Northland
To be continued ...
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