Arctic convoys

Arctic convoys transported matériel from UK and Icelandic ports for the Soviet war effort via the Norwegian and Barents seas. A total of 4.43 million tons was shipped by this route, 22.7% of the total Soviet Lend-Lease supplies. The loss rate of matériel was 7%, while the loss rate of eastbound merchant ships was 7.8% and 3.8% for empty westbound ones, far higher than any other route for Allied convoys. The first convoy, which sailed from Scapa Flow in Scotland on 21 August 1941, carried Hurricane fighters and essential raw materials. It was not allotted a lettered codename, but the next one, which sailed in September from Iceland, was codenamed PQ1—the letters apparently originating from the initials of an officer working in the British Admiralty.

Early shipments proved of little use, but the supplies of US trucks, boots, and telephone equipment shipped up to the beginning of 1942 were, almost certainly, of critical importance to the USSR during the fighting that summer in the German–Soviet war though Soviet historians were only just beginning to acknowledge the part played by Lend-Lease before the USSR was dissolved in December 1991. Although the tonnage delivered was small at first, the convoys were—apart from the strategic air offensive against Germany—the only weapon Churchill possessed with which to counter Stalin's demands for a Second Front (see Grand Alliance).

The available routes were severely restricted by climatic and geographical factors, and their crews had to face heavy weather conditions and extreme cold. Though the long (or total) winter nights gave them some chance of escaping undetected, ice forced them closer to the Norwegian coastline and so within easier operational range of German forces based there.

Eastbound convoys normally kept as far from Norway as the prevailing ice conditions allowed and made either for the ice-free port of Murmansk or the White Sea ports of Archangel and Molotovsk. Each had a close escort of destroyers and smaller warships, and a distant escort of cruisers which were later replaced by a larger number of destroyers. Escorts were drawn predominantly from the Royal Navy, but also included US and Soviet ships, the latter not being as much in evidence as the Admiralty would have liked. Allied air patrols were also an essential element in protecting the convoys, though their range was limited, as were British and Soviet submarine patrols, part of whose task it was to watch the entrances of the Norwegian fjords containing, at different times, major German surface units. After PQ12 escaped an attack by the German battleship Tirpitz in March 1942, distant cover by main units of the Home Fleet was also available to counter any threat that might develop from them. Later, when the convoys increased to 30 or more merchant ships, air cover was provided by aircraft from CAM ships and escort carriers, and anti-aircraft (A-A) ships were also deployed.

The Germans, confident of an early victory after launching their invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA), took no interest in the early convoys and up to mid-March 1942 only two ships were lost. However, when they realized BARBAROSSA was not going to bring them a quick victory, they began, from December 1941, to increase their air and sea strength in northern Norway. This quickly became known to the Admiralty through ULTRA intelligence, and eastbound and westbound convoys were ordered to sail simultaneously so that both could be given adequate cover.

PQ13 was the first convoy to have appreciable losses. After sailing on 20 March 1942 it was attacked not only by aircraft and U-boats but by destroyers from Kirkenes in northern Norway. ULTRA intelligence gave due warning of this and one destroyer was sunk and two damaged by the cruiser Trinidad, but the convoy still lost five ships. Air attack now became increasingly lethal. On one day alone, 27 May 1942, no fewer than 108 aircraft attacked PQ16 from which seven ships were eventually lost. It was such heavy losses, and the sinking of two escorting cruisers and a number of other escorts, that led the First Sea Lord, Admiral Pound, to comment that the convoys were ‘a most unsound operation with the dice loaded against us in every direction’. But he failed to persuade Churchill, who was under immense political pressure, to discontinue them.

By far the most disastrous convoy was the controversial PQ17 which sailed from Iceland on 27 June 1942. The Admiralty, aware of an impending attack, laid elaborate plans to safeguard it, and it was given a strong close escort of destroyers, A-A ships, and smaller vessels, and a distant escort of cruisers. But on the evening of 4 July ULTRA intelligence revealed that Tirpitz, the cruiser Hipper, and possibly the pocket battleship Lützow, with a force of destroyers, had joined another cruiser, Admiral Scheer, at Altenfjord, and that this powerful force was poised to overwhelm PQ17's cruiser escort before destroying the convoy itself. Pound consulted the Naval Intelligence Division's Operational Intelligence Centre, but this could only offer evidence that suggested Tirpitz had not put to sea. After deliberating with his staff Pound ordered the convoy to scatter and its escort to return. The individual ships were immediately pounced on by U-boats and bombers, and only 11 out of the original 37 reached their destination. After air reconnaissance had corrected an earlier error that PQ17's cruiser escort included a battleship, and had established that the British Home Fleet was too distant to interfere, the Tirpitz force sailed the next afternoon ( 5 July), but it was soon recalled when it was realized that the convoy was already being eliminated. About 3,850 trucks and vehicles, 430 tanks, and 2,500 aircraft were lost, and 153 seamen died.

With hindsight, PQ17 might have been saved if it had been ordered to reverse course when the movements of Tirpitz and Admiral Hipper were first detected by ULTRA intelligence on 3 July. It could then have remained under the cover of the Home Fleet's major units until the situation had become clearer. But what seems virtually certain is that, if the order to scatter had not been given, neither escort nor convoy could have escaped almost total destruction once the Tirpitz force had intercepted them, which it would have done on 6 July.

This catastrophe, and a dearth of escorts (which were being employed to help break the siege of Malta), forced Churchill to suspend the convoys, much to Stalin's annoyance, and PQ18 did not sail until nine weeks later. By that time the C-in-C of the Home Fleet, Admiral Tovey, had planned new tactics. Instead of eastbound and westbound convoys sailing together a Fighting Destroyer Escort (FDE) of 12 to 16 destroyers was formed which would transfer from the eastbound to the westbound convoy in the Barents Sea. Tovey also added an escort carrier to the defending force, and transferred to Soviet soil some search and strike aircraft. Although these tactics did not prevent the loss of 16 ships from the next two convoys, the Germans lost 4 U-boats and 41 aircraft.

After PQ18, the Arctic convoys were once more suspended as all available shipping was needed for the Allied North African campaign landings in November 1942. By the time the convoys were restarted in December much of the German air strength in northern Norway had been transferred to the Mediterranean, thus substantially reducing the threat. Each convoy was now given a new lettered code, JW for the outward convoy and RA for the homeward one, both starting with the number 51. Their size was such that it was decided to run them in two sections a fortnight apart so that they could be adequately escorted.

The first JW convoy was not detected and arrived intact, but JW51B was attacked on 31 December 1942 by Lützow, Admiral Hipper, and six destroyers. In the running battle which followed, known as the battle of the Barents Sea, the convoy was skilfully defended by its destroyer escort under Captain Robert Sherbrooke which, helped by the distant escort of cruisers, drove the German force off. The British lost two destroyers, including Sherbrooke's flagship, and a minesweeper, and had one merchantman damaged. However, the failure of the force, which lost one destroyer, to eradicate the convoy so infuriated Hitler that he ordered the decommissioning of all heavy ships. This was not carried out, but the German Navy's C-in-C, Admiral Raeder, resigned and Admiral Hipper and another cruiser, Köln, were recalled to the Baltic.

The next two eastbound convoys were smaller and were therefore not divided. Both reached their destination unharmed, but the two westbound convoys lost five ships. In March 1943 the battle-cruiser Scharnhorst, having escaped from Brest the previous February (see CERBERUS), joined Tirpitz and Lützow in Norway. This added threat coincided with the climax of the battle of the Atlantic, so once again the Arctic convoys were suspended while their escorts were transferred to the Atlantic, and they were not resumed until November 1943. By then Tirpitz had been crippled by British midget submarines and Lützow had returned to Germany, and the one remaining threat, Scharnhorst, was sunk in December when she tried to attack JW55B. The convoys were suspended once again between May and July 1944 because of the Normandy landings in June (see OVERLORD). From February 1944 to 16 April 1945, when the last one sailed, the convoys were no longer divided. But they were so heavily defended that U-boats, even those equipped with homing torpedoes and Schnorchels, were rarely able to penetrate the defensive screen, and only eight ships were lost. See also German surface raiders.

Bibliography

Schofield, B. , The Arctic Convoys (London, 1977).