The mission of the station's crew started in September that year and lasted until July 1944, when they were summarily evacuated after most of them consumed raw polar bear meat and fell sick.
Motivated by repeated losses of such boats, beginning in 1941, and under direction of Hans-Robert Knoespel, the erection of meteorological stations on land was planned and executed.
To prepare members of the meteorological mission for the conditions in the deployment area, the Kriegsmarine's weather department was training candidates in a camp named Goldhöhe (Czech: Zlaté návrší) in the Giant Mountains in Silesia.
Diverging from established practice, the mission was not named after its team leader, but after H. Schatz, who was heading training operations at Goldhöhe.
With the polar night ending, Schatzgräber added measures of high-altitude / jet stream winds, that were conducted and reported by radio balloons.
As Blankenburg had also been the one who had consumed the greatest amount of raw polar bear meat, he was the first to report pain in his legs and a high fever after a few days.
Only in 1990, an expedition conducted by the Norwegian Polar Institute could secure and disarm the mines, building on the original maps of the Schatzgräber weather troop.