![]() The German base on Alexandra Land was not lost completely to history: after the war, some of the structures were used by the Soviet military until Russia’s Nagurskoye air base was built on the island in the 1950s.Ī team of German military specialists also visited the islands in the 1980s to remove the minefields that had been planted around the wartime base to protect it from an assault, Ermolov said.īut he added that this summer was the first time that the site has been comprehensively studied and recorded since it was abandoned. "Earlier it was only known from written sources, but now we have real proof," Ermolov said. In response to the medical emergency at Alexandra Land, a daring rescue flight set out from a German air base at Banak, in Norway, in July 1944, to carry a doctor to the island and to bring back the stricken weathermen, according to the German historian Franz Selinger.īut the large FW-200 "Condor" aircraft damaged a wheel when it landed and a second aircraft had to be sent from Banak to airdrop a replacement wheel so that the first aircraft could take off with the medical evacuees.Įrmolov said the researchers had to search a very large area, but they were fortunate to find traces of the emergency airfield, including the remains of fuel barrels, tents, batteries, crates, smoke bombs and signal flares made in 1941. It is no surprise that they wanted some fresh meat, and so they killed polar bears, because that's all there was," Ermolov said.īut he added that the weathermen failed to cook the bear meat properly, and almost everyone who ate it suffered a bout of trichinosis, a painful and unpleasant roundworm infection caused by eating contaminated meat. "Some of the supplies and equipment sank, and so the diet for the weather over the winter was rather limited. The waters of the bay beside the weather station began to freeze as the winter approached, and several boats filled with supplies and equipment were crushed by ice, the researchers said. īut sardines weren't the only thing on the wartime menu in Alexandra Land. The research team also found supplies of canned food at the base, including sardines from Portugal, curiously labeled in English that they were for sale in America. ![]() These artifacts have been sent to the Arctic National Park museum in Arkhangelsk for further study, the researchers said.Įrmolov said the very dry and almost microbe-free environment of Alexandra Land also helped to preserve many wood, leather and cloth objects at the sites, as well as many remains of books and documents, including German naval manuals, meteorology textbooks, astronomical tables, weather records, magazines and a copy of Mark Twain's classic novel "Tom Sawyer." Potluck polar bear ![]() About 10 German meteorologists and laborers were stationed on the island from 1943, as part of a secret network of Arctic stations to give advanced warnings of weather conditions over the northern oceans and northern Europe, which the German military considered essential to their strategic operations.Įrmolov said the research team recovered more than 600 objects from the remains of the base station buildings, an emergency supply depot near the base station and an emergency aircraft landing strip. ![]()
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