Monday, June 28, 2010

Beachcoming Canadian history

A lively British blog, Beachcoming's Bizarre History, picks up on the story of the German robot weather station placed on the coast of Labrador by a U-boat.

Beachcombing suggests the weather wars need a history. It think it already has one: Wilhelm Dege and William Barr, War North of 80, the Last German Arctic Weather Station of World War II, published by University of Calgary Press in 2004. Alec Douglas, formerly Director of History at the Canadian Defence Department accompanied the first party to inspect the remains of the weather station and wrote an engaging account of the trip in Canadian Geographic in the early 1980s. I don't have the article to hand, but I recall the equipment had been seen many times between 1943 and 1981. No one identified it for what it was until mention of it was found in German records.
 
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