Weather station Taaget

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Under the code name Taaget , the Abwehr , the military intelligence service of the German Wehrmacht , operated a weather station on Bear Island . The station existed from November 1944 to March 1945 and was operated by two volunteers , one of whom went missing while on duty. Taaget submitted insufficient data and is considered a failure.

Bear Island seen from the south

Weather recording in the Arctic

Bear Island location

Between 1941 and 1944 the German Wehrmacht set up several weather stations on islands in the Arctic Ocean in order to obtain information about the weather conditions there. The data obtained in this way were used for weather forecasting in Europe, the planning of the submarine war in the North Atlantic and as the basis for the conception of the naval and air force operations against the northern convoys .

On Bear Island

On the Bear Island, weather data was initially collected by unmanned weather stations, which reported their results automatically by radio. In October 1942, weather pilot Rudolf Schütze landed on Bear Island in an He 111 on behalf of the Air Force . On board he had an automatic weather station of the "Toad" model and an employee of the Air Force weather service. Two days earlier, Schütze had brought a landing party to the island that had jumped off with parachutes to build a runway. The four-man squad then needed two more days to prepare them so that riflemen could start again with the landing squad on board. In November, the Navy began to include Bear Island in its weather reporting network. For this purpose, three automatic stations were brought to the island by submarines. These were WFL devices (= country weather radio ) with the code names "Edwin" (WFL 22), "Hermann" (WFL 34) and "Christian" (WFL 29). The latter two proved to be amazingly long-lived. They were checked on July 6, 1944 by the crew of the submarine U 737 and still worked, although their operating time of six months had actually been exceeded.

Days

Most of the Wehrmacht's weather stations in the Arctic were operated by the Navy or the Air Force . The respective weather groups consisted of soldiers and scientists, the latter often being classified as special leaders . In 1944, however, the Abwehr military intelligence service pursued a completely different concept when setting up two new weather stations. For this purpose , the Abwehr recruited civilians willing to help , whom the Norwegian authorities referred to the Wehrmacht.

Initially, the company was planned under the code name "Tree Frog". Finally, a weather station was implemented on the southern tip of Spitzbergen (formerly "Laubfrosch 3") with the code name "Landvik" and a facility on the southern Bear Island (formerly "Laubfrosch 2"), which was named "Taaget". The Abwehr recruited two weather radio operators to set up this station .

  • The Norwegian Leif Utne had cooperated with the Abwehr services in Northern Norway. He was apprehended and expelled from his home town of Kiberg, near Vardø , during the occupation of Norway . Utne fled to the Soviet Union in the summer of 1940. After he had been trained as an agent there, he returned to Norway in 1942 and made himself available to the Abwehr as an undercover agent.
  • Ivan Pasijkurow came from Kursk . He was captured by Germany as a prisoner of war in Norway and spent some time there in prisoner-of-war camps. When the Russian Liberation Army , collaborating with the German side, was set up under General Vlasov , Pasijkurov joined this so-called Vlasov Army . So the defense became aware of him. Pasijkurow pretended to be a Ukrainian, a Pole and a Baltic in the course of his service.

Both collaborators were given cover names for their work, Utne was called "Ludwig" and Pasijkurov was henceforth called "Josef Balkin".

Teething problems

On November 14, 1944, the members of the Taaget weather crew left the naval base in Tromsø on board U 1163 . Two days later they reached their mission area in Sorhamna Bay. Under the orders of the commander of U 1163 , Oberleutnant zur See Ernst Balduhn, the crew of the submarine set up the weather station on a plateau near the coast. On November 22nd, U 1163 returned to Tromsø. Although it was agreed that "Ludwig" and "Josef" should start transmitting the weather data immediately, there was no contact with Taaget for an unexplained reason .

U 992

Finally, U 992 , which was patrolling the Norwegian coast, was ordered to Bear Island. Oblt. ZS Falke, commander of the boat, should investigate the reason for the missing reports and, if possible, establish contact with Taaget . To be prepared to technical deficiencies to correct, the German U-boat took first in Narvik new batteries and two from the Air Force made available motor generators for the weather station on board. In addition, the chief electrical engineer Hermann Friedrich was instructed in setting up the power supply for the weather station.

U 992 left Narvik on January 14th and reached Sørhamna Bay on January 25th. Commandant Falke used cannon shots to draw attention to the presence of the boat and the next morning had Friedrich and three other crew members from U 992 put across to the island. The men, who also carried generators and batteries, climbed the steep slope near the beach with the help of the climbing rope left there by the crew of U 1163 the previous month. On the plateau between Sørhamna Bay and Walrus Bay, Friedrich met "Josef". He also found that a lot of equipment landed by U 1163 , fuel and provisions, was lying unsecured in the snow.

Together with “Josef”, who presented himself to the crew members of U 992 as a Polish citizen, which Friedrich did not find credible, the men from U 992 went to the station about a kilometer away, where they also met “Ludwig”. Both men were well, but the station's generators were unusable and the batteries were dead. The actual reason for the previous failure of the Taaget weather station, however, was identified by the U 992 crew members as the disturbed communication between the two men of the station crew : While "Josef", despite his time in Norwegian prison camps, only understood Ukrainian and a little German, "Ludwig" spoke although he had been trained in Russia for two years, supposedly only Norwegian. Chief electrical engineer Hermann Friedrich got the impression that the two men didn't understand each other well, not just linguistically.

“Since neither of them spoke to each other, there were no meals, no regular daily routine. The "Pole" told me that he wouldn't see his buddy for days. Both had shotguns, carbines and pistols and hunted a lot. "

- Hermann Friedrich E-chief machinist for U 992

Friedrich and the three crew members of U 992 set up the technology they had brought with them in the station within three days, recharged the batteries and restored the power supply. On the last day, Commandant Falke invited “Ludwig” and “Josef” to dinner on the submarine. According to the impression of the submarine crew, the two of them washed up for this invitation for the first time in two months and took the opportunity to look in a mirror. At around 9 p.m. the two weather broadcasters were brought back to shore and the submarine continued its operation. From now on, Taaget regularly sent weather data.

business

The German radio station in Bardufoss was responsible for receiving the messages from Taaget , where the corresponding data arrived from the end of January. Based on certain irregularities, the radio operators there were able to determine that it was not "Ludwig", who was familiar with the technology, but mostly "Josef" who submitted the reports. The Norwegian evidently went on extensive hunting trips, as evidenced by a calendar that he deposited in the center of the island and was later found. "Ludwig" had entered two visits here on February 3rd and 11th. Use was later found in other places on the island, which can probably be traced back to the activities of "Ludwig".

collection

Bear Island map

On April 7th, Taaget reported with a request for an evacuation. Allegedly the Norwegian crew member was missing during a hunting trip and the remaining Ukrainian was unable to continue operating the station on his own. The U-boat command ordered U 668 under the command of Lieutenant Wolfgang von Eickstedt to the Bear Island to pick up the survivors.

Due to the bad weather conditions, the dense fog and, in addition, heavy drifting ice, von Eickstedt was only able to find the agreed pick-up point in the south of the Bear Island through extensive coupling . Once there, he had signal cartridges fired. Since the Ukrainian to be evacuated did not show himself, after a while von Eickstedt had the cliffs near the coast bombarded with flak to draw attention to the presence of the submarine. Finally, a figure appeared on the high plateau between the Walrus and Sørhamna Bays, gesturing to the boat crew to indicate that U 668 was to enter Sørhamna Bay. It was about "Josef" who asked to be brought on board immediately. For his part, Von Eickstedt decided to visit the weather station. When they arrived there, the crew members of U 668 found that the gun, as well as the personal documents and even the uniform of the missing Norwegian were in the hut.

The crew secured the meteorological equipment and supplemented the submarine's provisions with canned goods that were buried in the snow in front of the station. A part of the crew also explored the island and advanced as far as the abandoned mining village of "Tunheim", about 15 kilometers away, where a well-preserved steam locomotive was found. The boat reached the naval base in Narvik on April 17, 1945.

In the course of his deployment, Taaget had passed on data for hardly more than a few weeks, and a human life had been lost in the course of this. This venture is therefore considered a failure.

Another fate of the crew

"Josef" was first brought to Narvik on board the Avisos Grille , where he reported to Reinhard Suhren , the commander of the submarines Nordmeer ; then his track is lost. In a book published later, he reported that after a brief conversation with Abwehr agents, he had gone into hiding under a false name in Norway. It was only 50 years later that he dared to return to the former Soviet Union under his real name.

Later representation

The Russian collaborator Ivan Pasijkurov from Kursk, a member of the Vlasov Army , who had operated the Taaget weather station under the code name “Joseph Balkin” on behalf of the German defense during World War II , published a life report decades later with the title “Lost Years” ( Tapte ar ), in which the events are presented somewhat differently. Pasijkurov describes himself in this book as a loyal supporter of Stalin who tried to sabotage the Germans' weather forecast as far as possible. There was constant tension between him and “Ludwig”, who was also often drunk, then threatened “jokingly” with his pistol and, for his part, removed the ammunition from “Joseph” shortly after landing on Bear Island. In favor of extended hunting trips, "Ludwig" - although he was much more familiar with the equipment - often left him alone with the tasks of collecting and transmitting weather data. Only during occasional meals together would the constant tension sometimes have eased due to the Norwegian cooking skills. At the beginning of April 1945, “Ludwig” finally forced “Josef” to row out into the Walrus Bay together with a rubber dinghy. In the open water, "Ludwig" then capsized the boat by violent movements and drowned. "Josef" saved himself on land with the last of his strength and was able to drag himself to the station. After a few days in complete exhaustion, he found the strength to inform the Bardufoss radio station.

Aftermath

On May 25, 1945, the Norwegian destroyer Stord reached Bear Island and took possession of the area again for Norway. The crew of the Stord explored the island only superficially and did not discover the two WFL "Hermann" and "Christian" in the north of the island. One of the devices was found again in June when the crew of a Norwegian weather station set up in Tunheim - a former mining village on the northeast coast - explored the island more thoroughly. During these explorations, “Ludwig's” calendar was also found in Krillvasshytta in the middle of the island. The second WFL device, however, has disappeared. It is believed that an unknown Soviet expedition found and dismantled the WFL sometime between August of the previous year and June 1945.

In 1985 a German-Norwegian expedition used the Kystvakt frigate Senja to visit the places where German weather stations had existed. The place where the Taaget had been established forty years earlier was also visited. Only a few beams and boards lying around were left of the former hut.

Other Wehrmacht weather stations in the Arctic

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rupert Holzapfel : German Polar Research 1940/45 (PDF; 1.6 MB). In: Polar Research. 21, No. 2, 1951, pp. 85-97.
  2. ^ A b Franz Selinger: From Nanok to Eismitte. Meteorological ventures in the Arctic 1940–1945. Convent Verlag, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934613-12-8 . Page 294–295
  3. ^ A b c Franz Selinger: "From 'Nanok' to 'Eismitte'. Meteorological ventures in the Arctic 1940-1945 " Convent Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934613-12-8 , page 300
  4. ^ Wilhelm Dege: War north of 80: The last German Arctic Weather Stations of World War II. University of Calgary Press, ISBN 1-55238-110-2 , pp. 24-25.

literature

  • Uwe Schnall (Ed.): Writings of the German Maritime Museum Volume 53 Franz Selinger: "From 'Nanok' to 'Eismitte'. Meteorological ventures in the Arctic 1940-1945 " Convent Verlag GmbH, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934613-12-8
  • Wilhelm Dege: Trapped in the Arctic Ice: Weather Troop Haudegen - the last German Arctic station of the Second World War. Convent Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-934613-94-2 .