U-Boats and the Labrador Coast

In the movie, when the U-Boat navigates toward the opening of Hudson's Bay, it slips along the iceberg studded Labrador coast. Several years ago, a British historian wrote about research he accomplished in the National Archives in Washington about a special U-Boat mission on that coast during WWII. I'm writing this comment from memory since I don't have the specific article from Naval History Magazine.

He read the captured U-Boat logbook which mentioned actual landings by German sailors on deserted streches in Labrador. These missions were photographed. The objective was to set up remote weather stations with radio transmitters which sent the data back to Berlin. The batteries were recharged by an ingenious wind-driven generator. The information was of obvious military value to German war planners. The most clever part of these machines was that it was plastered with warnings in English from the "Canadian Weather Department" to not disturb the units if found.

Armed with copies of the log and photos, the historian made his way by boat to see if he could find any evidence of these units 60 years later. Since the locations mentioned in the log were coded military coordinates, he was forced to match scenery in the pictures with his currennt location to find a match.

He was successful. He came ashore and did find bits of one of these units. Long since picked apart by local hikers and damaged by the weather, he nonetheless was able to retrieve remanants of this little known Kreigsmarine project.

CmdrCody