German Arctic Weather Stations During World War II: From Greenland to Novaya Zemlya
On September 26, 1944, the trawler WBS 11 "Externsteine" departed Tromsø, Norway. In early October, it landed a 12-person weather team on Lille Koldeway Island, Northeast Greenland (Operation Edelweiss II). Near the landing site, the trawler became trapped in ice and was unable to move. Shortly before, the US Coast Guard's newest icebreakers, the "Eastwind" and "Southwind," equipped with floatplanes, had begun patrolling the area.
The US Coast Guard icebreaker Eastwind, a hunter of German weather stations in Greenland (1944)
Seaplane Grumman J2F Duck
Soon after the landing of the Edelweiss II, a Grumman J2F Duck patrol aircraft from the icebreaker Eastwind discovered the German camp, and on October 4, an American landing party of 200 men captured the weather party without resistance.
The Edelweiß II weather station personnel surrender to the US Coast Guard (Greenland, 1944)
On October 14, the Externsteine was also discovered, camouflaged with sheets and other available materials. The icebreaker Eastwind, which approached on the night of October 15-16, artillery Fire from a range of 3700 meters forced the enemy to surrender, but they managed to destroy all classified documents. The trawler was later incorporated into the U.S. Coast Guard.
The weather ship WBS 11 "Externsteine" trapped in the ice of Greenland
Americans aboard WBS 11 "Externsteine"
Arctic weather stations of the Wehrmacht 1941-1945
Since our readers will be interested to learn about German weather stations in the Soviet Arctic, especially Schatzgräber (Treasure Hunter) on Alexandra Land (Franz Josef Island), we will describe them in more detail.
The island was discovered by the expedition of Englishman Benjamin Lee Smith and named in honor of Queen Alexandra of Denmark. Alexandra Land covers an area of 1130 square kilometers. The highest point on the island is the Lunny ice cap, at 382 meters. The highest point of the ice-free land is 68 meters. Most of the territory is covered by two ice caps: Lunny and Kropotkin. The land free of ice caps contains numerous lakes.
The island's climate is typically Arctic. Average annual temperatures reach -12°C, with average July temperatures around 0°C and January temperatures around -24°C (winter minimums reach -52°C), and wind speeds reach 40 m/s. Precipitation ranges from 200-300 mm to 500-550 mm (in the ice cap accumulation zone) per year (according to Wikipedia data as of 2021).
The decision to establish the station was made by the Navy's meteorological service in the summer of 1943. On September 19, the weather ship WBS 7 "Kehdingen," escorted by the submarine U-387, departed the Norwegian port of Tromsø and headed for Alexandra Land. On board was a 10-person meteorological team under the command of Lieutenant Makus. It included three meteorologists and a technician led by Walter Drees, who had worked at the Knospe station (West Spitsbergen) in October 1941, two radio operators, and two naval sailors.
The Kehdingen also carried various equipment, prefabricated personnel quarters and food supplies for two years.
Before departure, all future polar explorers underwent special Arctic survival training at the Ausbildungsstation Goldhöhe training center, located in the Silesian mountains.
The sea crossing was uneventful, and on September 22, the expedition reached the designated landing area on the shore of Severnaya Bay, located in the southeast of the island. The landing of personnel and the unloading of equipment, gear, and provisions were hampered by fast ice, resulting in the loss of a motorboat, important documentation, and some cargo. The crews of the weather ship and submarine were helping the meteorologists assemble a living quarters and other equipment for the future weather station when the submarine, on ice reconnaissance, discovered ice floes approaching the bay, threatening to block access to the sea.
On September 30, the "Khedingen" and U-387 urgently left Severnaya Bay, leaving the weather team to finish the job themselves. The station, invisible from the sea, was located 500 meters from the shore at an altitude of 50 meters above sea level. In addition, an emergency shelter with food supplies, a radio, and tents was set up five kilometers away from the station.
On October 17, the station began taking meteorological measurements, and from November 1, it began regularly sending radiograms containing the collected data, including from radiosondes. From November 1943 to July 1944, 739 weather messages were transmitted, 125 radiosondes, and 39 pilot balloons were launched.
The Franz Josef Land State Nature Reserve Museum houses numerous artifacts from the German weather station, including photographs depicting scenes from the daily lives of its staff. In addition to their duties, the polar explorers spent their short breaks hunting, skiing down a glacier, reading, and listening to records.
Interestingly, just 150 km from the German station, in Tikhaya Bay, there was a Soviet weather station, but none of them knew about such a proximity.
With the end of the polar night, which lasted from November 9 to February 2, the decision was made to establish an emergency station at Cape Nimrod with a radio, two weeks' worth of food, warm clothing, sleeping bags, and fuel. All of this was planned to be carried in groups of two or three.
In May, a four-engine Focke-Wulf 200 Condor, piloted by experienced polar pilot Oberleutnant Stanhke, airdropped food and equipment for the weather station in two flights. The pilots also surveyed the surrounding area for a suitable landing site in the event of the station's evacuation.
Misfortune struck unexpectedly. On May 30, meteorologist Gerhard Wallik and corporal Werner Blankenburg shot a polar bear. Blankenburg, who was serving as the cook, decided to treat the winterers, who had been eating canned food for about eight months, to some fresh meat by preparing a traditional German dish, Hackfleisch (minced or ground raw meat with a little salt). It was a tragic mistake.
The cook, who ate the largest amount of raw bear meat, began to feel pain in his legs within a few days, and his temperature rose to 40-41°C. Within a month, the other polar explorers also fell ill, with the exception of vegetarian paramedic Gerhard Hoffmann.
The patients suffered from severe headaches, meningitis symptoms, and increasingly severe muscle pain. Their faces, shoulders, and legs were severely swollen. Furthermore, their buttocks, abdominal and neck muscles, arms, and eyes became inflamed. They experienced skin problems similar to hives, diarrhea, and vomiting, resulting in severe dehydration. One of the polar explorers fell into a pre-coma.
Reports of the illness were transmitted to the mainland, and doctors at naval hospitals in Tromsø and Oslo diagnosed trichinellosis. Trichinellosis is an acute infection caused by the roundworm Trichinella. Bears and pigs are sources of infection, among others. Modern Russian biologists studying the polar bear population on Franz Josef Island have found that 90% of the animals are infected with these parasites.
Given the grave condition of the meteorological station personnel, a decision was made to send a plane with a doctor and the necessary medications to Alexandra Land, despite Drees's demand for immediate evacuation.
On July 7, a Condor aircraft (commanded by the aforementioned Oberleutnant Stanke) departed Banak Air Base with a doctor on board. The plane arrived at its destination after six hours of flight. The plan was for the doctor to parachute out near the weather station, but Stanke decided to land on a section of the coast he had already scouted, a few kilometers away. It's unclear what prompted this decision. Perhaps he lacked confidence in the doctor's abilities as a parachutist, or perhaps he feared that the polar explorers' condition would require their immediate evacuation.
View of the Kladoiskatel weather station from Oberleutnant Stanke's plane, May 1944
During landing, one of the landing gears collapsed, making takeoff impossible. The next day, the rescue party reached the weather station on foot. An examination of the sick revealed that their evacuation was inevitable. Drees was in the most critical condition, frequently losing consciousness and losing his mind.
A request was made for spare parts and tools to repair the landing gear, and on July 9, a six-engine BV 222 flying boat dropped everything needed on the island. The landing gear repairs were completed the following day. All that remained was to prepare the aircraft for takeoff.
Just imagine: sick polar explorers, suffering from food poisoning and a critically high temperature, reached the plane and built a ramp using local driftwood, which took 12 hours. The plane, with 13 people on board, left the island, leaving behind their personal belongings and equipment, and arrived safely in Trondheim, Norway, on July 11.
A group of German meteorologists from the Treasure Hunter station are transporting a friend who is unable to walk.
The Germans planned to send a new meteorological team to Alexandra Land in the fall of 1944, but this idea was soon abandoned. They decided to send U-387 there to evacuate the most valuable equipment and install a WFL-type automatic weather station.
U-387 departed Narvik on October 9th, heading for the island. Eighty miles from Alexandra Land, the submarine encountered ice, forcing its crew to resort to a backup plan—installing a WFL 32 Erich on Novaya Zemlya. On October 15th, an automatic weather station was installed and operational on Severny Island, near Cape Bear Island north of Inostrantsev Bay, within eight hours.
The Schatzgräber station was discovered by Soviet pilots in 1947 and used by Soviet meteorologists in the 50s. A new weather station was later built there, and the German structures were demolished. However, researchers continued to find various artifacts from the "Treasure Hunter" project at the site: warm clothing, meteorological observation instruments, books, empty flour and sugar sacks bearing the German eagle and swastika, and so on.
Interestingly, minefields laid by German polar explorers to protect against possible attack remained here until the summer of 1990. At that time, members of the Norwegian Polar Institute expedition handed over to the Soviet authorities a map of these fields, drawn by Rudolf Garbaty, a member of the "Treasure Hunter" expedition.
In August 2016, taking advantage of warm weather that cleared the area of the former German weather station of snow, a group of employees from the Franz Josef Land Federal Nature Reserve conducted the first detailed study there.
Among the remains of living quarters, warehouses, and the emergency airstrip, approximately 600 different items were found and cataloged, including the remains of naval uniforms, rifle cartridges, hand grenades and antipersonnel mines, fuel drums, meteorological manuals, astronomical tables, and other specialized literature, magazines, and books, including a copy of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." Canned goods were also found, including cans of Portuguese sardines, labeled for sale in the United States.
The remains of the Kladoiskatel weather station on Alexandra Land, as seen today
A package of flare cartridges found at the site of the Kladoiskatel weather station in 2016.
For decades, the most fantastical "information" about "Schatzgräber" has appeared in Russian books, media outlets, various internet forums, and even in quite serious publications, most of which could only have been conceived in a sick mind. The most popular: a Nazi submarine base with shelters carved into the rock, repair shops, fuel depots, and other amenities.
And although the Nagurskaya border outpost and the Arktichesky Trelistnik military base are located nearby, no one has ever seen such a substantial submarine base. And what would be the practicality of such a base in an area covered in ice for most of the year and located far from the war zone? Besides, it would have been technically impossible to accomplish.
And they also seriously placed an SS laboratory there, engaged in the development of secret weapons or the search for some sacred truths. All these stories akin to the fables about Spanish submarines transporting gold to the USSR, or the subglacial cities of the German Nazis in Antarctica.
Modern Russian and foreign researchers have not found evidence for speculative theories about the Schatzgräber base.
"We have prepared a complete plan of the station, geo-referencing all objects, including technical ones, that are believed to be of German origin, dating back to the Great Patriotic War," said Evgeny Ermolov, a senior researcher at the local State Nature Reserve. "Based on this data, we can dispel some of the myths that have formed around the station over the years."
To be continued ...
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