Nazi Weather Station Investigated in the Arctic

ARKHANGELSK, RUSSIA—Live Science reports that a team led by Evgeny Ermolov of the Russian Arctic National Park investigated a World War II–era weather station, complete with a bunkhouse, emergency supply depot, and an emergency aircraft landing strip built by the German military on an island in the Barents Sea. The island is usually trapped by snow and ice for much of the year, but this August, the land was clear and the team was able to investigate the site. The last of the German meteorology team members who worked at the station were evacuated by U-boat in 1944, but others had to be airlifted off the island earlier that year after getting ill from eating improperly cooked polar bear meat. “It was quite disastrous—the expedition leader went crazy, and when they were flown out he had to be strapped down to the floor of the aircraft, so he wouldn’t run riot,” commented polar historian William Barr. Ermolov and his team recovered more than 600 artifacts, including army and naval uniforms, fragments of weapons and ammunition, fuel barrels, tents, batteries, crates, smoke bombs, signal flares, books, documents, manuals, and meteorology textbooks. After the war, the Soviet military used the base into the 1950s. To read about another discovery in the Arctic, go to “Franklin’s Last Voyage.”