Weather Station Kurt: A WWII-era German Weather Station in North America

Weather Station Kurt, located in far northern Newfoundland and Labradour, Canada is the only known World War II military installation conducted by Germany on the North American continent, built in 1943.

German Weather Station Kurt set up on the Hutton Peninsula, Labrador, Dominion of Newfoundland on 22 October 1943 (Bundesarchiv)



Based on how weather patterns move across the world, mostly from west to east in the Northern Hemisphere, having accurate weather data provided the Allies an inherent advantage in the European theater, and the weather station was a German attempt to gather their own weather data to counteract this Allied advantage, using telemetry systems and radio transmitters. Several other weather stations in the arctic were planned, with at least two others planned to be deployed on land in North America, but this was the only successful (or at least discovered) weather station.

Empty American cigarette packets were left around the site to deceive any Allied personnel that chanced upon it, as well as stamping the equipment with the name of a non-existent "Canadian Meteor Service", the equivalent of Environment Canada.

Nonetheless, the weather station functioned for only a month before it permanently failed, after only three individuals had any knowledge of the station's existence.

After the war, it was forgotten until its rediscovery in 1977, when geomorphologist Peter Johnson chanced upon the area upon conducting unrelated research. Today, the station is on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, ON.


Canadian War Museum Weather Station Exhibit

Thanks as always for reading!

Location: Hutton Peninsula, Division No. 10, Subd. E, NL A0P, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Choum Tunnel: The Monument to European Stupidity in Africa

Image
Scars of European colonization are located all across Africa, although some are more obscure and strange than others. With that in mind we come to the Choum Tunnel , built in Mauritania when it was controlled by the French. At first glance, it seems like an ordinary railway tunnel, however, one look at the local geography and you'll find yourself asking what its builders were possibly thinking with creating the project. Choum Tunnel in Mauritania. Unknown photographer. The Mauritania Railway was being built in the early 1960s, and was planned to connect Nouadhibou to Zouérat to exploit the iron ore reserves at Zouérat. That route still exists today in largely its original state, with the exception of the tunnel. Image: Ammar Hassan via Atlas Obscura The easiest route required running a short section of track through the then-Spanish controlled Western Sahara , but rather than pay Spain for the land and other concessions, the French engineers instead chose to tunnel under a hill sp
Read more

Railroad Vocabulary: A List of Words and Phrases Used in the Industry - Updated February 2024

Image
As somebody who enjoyed watching trains, but was not an employee of the railroad industry ( at least growing up ), when I would interact with railfans and historians, there was often a lot of technical jargon that applied only to the railroad industry thrown back and forth that made it difficult for a newcomer to understand what they were talking about. For example, what is a dinky? It's actually a passenger train. This non-inclusive language seems to keep the loop closed to members of the community, and to uncouple (no pun intended) that technical jargon and help make it easier for people to communicate with people in the industry, I am creating a list of railroad vocabulary that I'm hoping will make the industry more transparent.  BNSF 2361 . Image: Matt Flores While I ultimately believe that such technical jargon has no place outside of perhaps technical communications between employees, I know quite well that I alone am not going to stop people from communicating in a non-i
Read more

We asked ChatGPT to write an article on Abandoned Railroads - Here's the Result

Image
We live in an incredibly interesting age of information - made even more interesting by one of the most advanced chatbots that exist. Chatbots have been around for awhile now, but there are very few that have captured the amount of information and artificial intelligence that have been shown by ChatGPT . To demonstrate this, I asked it to write me an article on abandoned railroads with 1200 words in it. After this paragraph, you'll see what ChatGPT wrote. I will provide relevant links in its paragraphs and make any errors that I can see in brackets "[]". What I've noticed is that ChatGPT is great when it comes to general ideas about a particular historical topic, but largely gets facts, dates, and context wrong. Thus, we're still a little ways away from being taken over by computer overlords . Otherwise, thanks as always for reading my material, the rest is by guest blogger ChatGPT! Abandoned railroads are railways that are no longer in use or service. This can ha
Read more