Andrew Lonero

83 years ago today, German soldiers landed in North America. Almost nobody found out for nearly 40 years. On October 22, 1943, the U-boat U-537 slipped into a remote bay near the northern tip of Labrador. Its mission wasn't to fight. It was to steal the weather. Weather in the North Atlantic moves west to east. Whoever knew what was forming over Canada and Greenland could predict conditions over Europe and the convoy routes days in advance. The Allies had stations all over that region. Germany had almost nothing. So Siemens built Germany a robot. An automatic weather station that could measure temperature, pressure, wind, and humidity, then radio coded reports back on its own every few hours. U-537 carried one across the Atlantic, along with a meteorologist named Dr. Kurt Sommermeyer. The crossing was brutal. A storm battered the boat and tore away part of its anti-aircraft armament. But they made it. A landing party rowed ashore with about ten canisters, each weighing over 200 pounds, and hauled them up the rocky ground while armed lookouts watched the horizon. In about a day, they had the station assembled. A tall antenna mast. Battery canisters. Instruments. They named it "Kurt," after the meteorologist. Then they disguised it. They painted the canisters with the words "Canadian Meteor Service." There was no such agency. They were betting that anyone who stumbled across it in that wilderness would assume it belonged to the Canadian government and walk away. They even left empty American cigarette packs lying around. Then U-537 disappeared back into the Atlantic. The station only worked for a short time, likely just a couple of weeks, before its transmissions stopped. U-537 never made it home. A year later, it was sunk with all hands by the American submarine USS Flounder in the Java Sea. And here's the wild part. Labrador wasn't even part of Canada in 1943. It belonged to Newfoundland, a separate British dominion that didn't join Canada until 1949. For decades, no one knew Kurt existed. Then in the late 1970s, a retired Siemens engineer researching Germany's wartime weather stations found records of the mission. He contacted a Canadian military historian. In 1981, they reached the site. Kurt was still there. Canisters scattered across the rocks. The fake "Canadian Meteor Service" markings still on them. The only armed German landing in North America during WW2, hidden in plain sight for almost 40 years. Today you can see it at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.