I’m reading a book about Quebec nationalism that makes a one-sentence mention of an event I had never heard of before.
Apparently the Germans established a weather station (presumably unmanned) in Labrador during World War II and the station’s existence was not detected for 40 years. A search on the internet didn’t turn up much, especially regarding the long period of time before the station was discovered.
Does anyone know the Straight Dope on this?
This page from the Meteorological Service of Canada seems to have the most information about the incident of the mentions I could find. The station at “the northern end of Labrador” was automated, not manned, and its signals were jammed after two weeks. I don’t know how long it took the Canadians/Allies to physically locate and occupy the site, but there is a picture of what I presume is the station in question, so they seem to have found it at some point.
I seem to remember that they found it around 1985 - but I’m going by fuzzy mememory, so would defer to anyone with more info. (Bear in mind, Labrador’s a big place, with a very low population density, so it’s not surprising something as small as a weather station could be undiscovered for so long.)
“it’s not surprising something as small as a weather station could be undiscovered for so long.”
Couldn’t they just triangulate the signal?
might just have been a question of resources: jamming prevented it from working, and once the batteries ran down, why worry about it? there was a war on, and they had better things to do than physically destroy it. by the time the war was over, the report on it was probably just filed away and forgotten.
Another decent link to this here
so from Colin’s link, it looks like the Allies didn’t even know about it - could the jamming have just been general purpose?