BAMOS November 2025
22 Article
The incredible story of " Weather Station Kurt "
Dick Whitaker( weathersmart @ optusnet. com. au)
Automatic Weather Stations are one of the cornerstones of modern weather prediction, so it may be a surprise to learn that early versions of these instruments were operational some 80 years ago, during the Second World War.
In the late 1970s, a retired German technician, Franz Selinger, began writing the history of the Siemens Company and discovered old files indicating that during World War II, Siemens had manufactured a type of weather station called Wetter-Funkgerat Land( WFL), and eventually built 26 of these.
The Germans needed weather information from the Atlantic Ocean to plan their U-Boat operations and intended to install WFL units at various locations that would transmit weather data back to Germany by radio.
Then, further research revealed the amazing story of one of these units that had occurred during the war and had been almost totally forgotten in the mists of time.
The WFL Unit“ Weather Station Kurt”
In 1943, the German submarine U-537 departed from Kiel carrying a normal combat crew, as well as a meteorologist, Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer, and a Siemens WFL unit codenamed“ Weather Station Kurt”.
“ Kurt” was highly advanced for its time. It was powered by an array of nickel-cadmium batteries and collected standard meteorological variables, such as temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed. These data were then sent in Morse code via a 150-watt shortwave radio transmitter. It was designed to operate for several months before new batteries were required.
In a James Bond-style operation, the submarine U-537 secretly arrived in a remote area of northern Labrador called Martin Bay and successfully installed“ Kurt” on a rocky outcrop before departing without detection. It is believed that this was the only enemy landing in North America during the Second World War.
“ Kurt” was designed to transmit weather information in code every three hours. While it did at the start, the data flow ceased after only a few days due to a potential technical malfunction or radio jamming by the Allied forces.
“ Kurt” was then forgotten, but following Selinger’ s research, a possible location was revealed. In 1981, the Canadian Coast Guard investigated the region, and to everyone’ s amazement, rediscovered“ Kurt” standing alone on the rocky knoll where it had been installed 38 years before. The instrument was then restored, and it is currently located in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa( Figure 1).
Figure 1: Weather Station“ Kurt”, on display in the Canadian War Museum. Credit: WikipediaCommons