U-boat Weather Reporting

[Randi]

Hello, I am Jerry Mason, retired USN pilot, amateur historian of the U-boat War and Administrator of the U-boat Archive website. Thank you very much for the Old Weather Forum. I find the many links to sources of information very helpful in my work. I enjoy transcribing/translating U-boat Kriegstagebuch (war diaries) you can see some examples here. These diaries included weather reports typically every four hours. The notation is not standard but many U-boats use the Beaufort notations and looking into that is how I found the Old Weather Forum. Some of my notes on weather entries are here.

Thank you all for your kind replies, I have access to almost all U-boat Kriegstagebuch (war diaries) and would be happy to look into a particular boat/patrol. I also have a copy of the Short Signal codebook for sending weather reports and a few other weather related documents. For Clewi, I have translated about 150 KTBs apart from those on the publicly available pages of my website. There are a number of arctic patrols with atrocious weather and the North Atlantic was often worse with some storms at Force 10 and 11. Most weather KTB entries are short and not standardized from boat to boat but sometimes there is the text of a weather report. It might be interesting to look at a boat assigned to weather reporting duty. I will have a look at that. Back to work for me now.

To Janet, thank you for letting me know of the escort logs. They would certainly be of interest to me. To Randi, a number of U-boats had mascots some of which went on patrols- mostly cats and dogs. One U-boat even had an aquarium. You might enjoy looking at this U-953 website U-953 had both the dog Rin-Tin-Tina and a cat named Peter as mascots. Best regards, Jerry

Hello all, I have just finished translating a Kriegstagebuch (war diary) of U-508 for the boat's first patrol. The boat deployed two weather buoys off England before crossing the Atlantic for the rest of its patrol. The boat also carried a meteorologist to supervise the deployment. This man was later transferred to a U-boat tanker to find his way home. He was referred to in messages as "wetterfrosch" literally "weather frog" which was confusing to me until a German friend pointed out that a meteorologist was sometimes called this because it was thought that frogs could predict the weather. The buoys were about the size of a torpedo, 50 cm in diameter and 7 meters long, and transmitted barometric pressure and temperature 5 times a day by Morse code. The deployment took place on 4 and 6 July 1942 on pages 7 and 8 of the diary. This link talks about the buoys and has a photo of one being loaded onto a U-boat

I recently made a presentation on U-boat Weather reporting to the local Ham Radio Association. You can download the presentation here: uboatarchive.net/Presentations/Presentations.htm The presentation covers U-boat weather equipment, automatic weather stations on sea and land and manned weather stations. The presentation had a video embedded. I kept is separate for downloading because it is a big file. Regards, Jerry

I recently made a presentation on U-boat Weather reporting to the local Ham Radio Association. You can download the presentation here: uboatarchive.net/Presentations/Presentations.htm The presentation covers U-boat weather equipment, automatic weather stations on sea and land and manned weather stations. The presentation had a video embedded. I kept is separate for downloading because it is a big file. Regards, Jerry

Hi Jerry, welcome to Old Weather!
That's an amazing subject to present on. I went through both powerpoints and the video. They are breathtaking - quite astonishing.
I, for one, never thought about u-boats being that involved in weather records. I noticed that there's an ice report included as well. Our scientists pop by the forum very often, but I will drop them a note to highlight your entry.
Thinking about it, it makes perfect sense to have good weather reports on the routes taken by the allied vessels.
But even so I was surprised by the whole station set-ups and the time they spent there. The video showing them set up the station made it look relatively easy, but the snowstorm scenes told a different tale.
The technical details were amazing.
Thank you very very much for getting in touch. Will you be doing some work on OW as well please Jerry?
With best wishes,
Joan (AvastMH)

Hi Joan, I am glad you enjoyed the presentation. U-boats were part of the solution to the big disadvantage German Armed Forces found themselves in after they lost access to weather reports from neutral Denmark and Norway in April 1940. Most of my work these days is the translation of the war diaries of U-boats. For example, here is the war diary of U-307 for the patrol on which the Haudegen weather station (discussed in the presentation) was established: uboatarchive.net/U-307/KTB307-9.htm I just finished the war diary of U-537 for the patrol on which the boat deployed automatic weather station "Kurt" in Labrador (discussed in the presentation): uboatarchive.net/U-537/KTB537-1.htm (see page 16). This work takes up my time so I can't work directly on Old Weather but I am always happy to answer any questions that involve U-boats.

I, too, just went through the presentation. Excellent. I loved the video! As a former surface and upper air observer and meteorologist I very much enjoyed looking at the various pieces of equipment.

Thank you!

Wow, that video is fascinating. 8)

Hi Joan, I am glad you enjoyed the presentation. U-boats were part of the solution to the big disadvantage German Armed Forces found themselves in after they lost access to weather reports from neutral Denmark and Norway in April 1940. Most of my work these days is the translation of the war diaries of U-boats. For example, here is the war diary of U-307 for the patrol on which the Haudegen weather station (discussed in the presentation) was established: uboatarchive.net/U-307/KTB307-9.htm I just finished the war diary of U-537 for the patrol on which the boat deployed automatic weather station "Kurt" in Labrador (discussed in the presentation): uboatarchive.net/U-537/KTB537-1.htm (see page 16). This work takes up my time so I can't work directly on Old Weather but I am always happy to answer any questions that involve U-boats.

I can see that this project takes up your time Jerry. It is a tour de force for sure.
I looked through a lot of the website. I was particularly attracted to the series of letters at this section: http://uboatarchive.net/U-505A/U-505ChatelainReport.htm with the story of the capture of U-505 slowly being extracted in altercating letters. The photos here http://uboatarchive.net/U-505A/U-505Photographs.htm were utterly fascinating.
This memo was a cracker - the final message humorous but vital (in both parts ;D) http://uboatarchive.net/U-505A/U-505GalleryMemo.htm

The details weather reports are absorbing. And I can see that you've had poor images to cope with just as we do at times. Having your transcription is a treat for us

I'll put an extra note out in our Editing Room because I'm sure they'll be very interested. We edit the events for each log (weather and events that is) and because 'Type What You See' is not so all-encompassing as it is on the main weather section of OW, they have an interest in the history of ships that should make your work very attractive.

Do have a look around the Editing Room : http://forum.oldweather.org/index.php?board=16.0 If you cannot access it let me know - I think that there may be an extra bit of logging in required there (sorry to be hazy on this one). Their considerable work appears here: http://www.naval-history.net/OWShips-LogBooksWW1.htm including the reports from ships involved in conflicts like the Battles of Jutland, and of the Falkland Islands.

Best wishes for all your work with the U-boats. I hope we'll hear back from the scientists with reference to their weather reports.
Joan

Not to belabor the topic of U-boats but weather reporting took its toll on both sides during WWII. The US Coast Guard maintained weather reporting ships in the North Atlantic. Not surprisingly, one of these, the USS USS MUSKEGET (WAG 48), was lost with all hands when it was torpedoed by U-755 on 9 September 1942. The MUSKETET's weather reporting station was only 20 nm from a U-boat patrol line occupied by 8 boats. You can read U-755's war diary here uboatarchive.net/U-755/KTB755-1.htm (see page 19). You can read about the US Coast Guard Weather Patrol here uscg.mil/history/articles/USCGatWar-WeatherPatrol.pdf In 2015 NOAA posthumously award the Purple Heart medal to four civilian
U.S. Weather Bureau Observers lost on the MUSKETET nws.noaa.gov/om/coop/newsletters/15coop-fall.pdf

Hi Jerry,
Well I guess that some of those US ships will be appearing (or perhaps have already appeared) here. Has anyone ever pulled together those German weather reports please?

Looks like fog was a bit of a problem: 30.08.43 Before God one cannot see 100 meters. Wind and sea slowly but steadily abate.
Found the Muskeget story on 9 Sept 42

The Coast Guard report will take some digesting. But I was attracted to the picture of the medical operation where the German and US doctors worked together. And the purple heart event was remarkable after so many years, very pleasing to know how valuable their skills were to the allied shipping.