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Arctic convoys of World War II

Allied oceangoing convoys From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arctic convoys of World War II
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The Arctic convoys of World War II were oceangoing convoys which sailed from the United Kingdom, Iceland, and North America to northern ports in the Soviet Union, most to Arkhangelsk (Archangel) or Murmansk in Russia. There were 78 convoys, Convoy PQ 1 to Convoy PQ 18 (outbound), Convoy QP 1 to Convoy QP 15 (inbound), Convoy JW 51 – Convoy JW 67 (outbound) and Convoy RA 51 to Convoy RA 67 (inbound). Convoys ran from August 1941 to May 1945, sailing via the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, with periods of no sailings during several months in 1942 and in the summers of 1943 and 1944.

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About 1,400 merchant ships delivered supplies to the Soviet Union under the Anglo-Soviet Agreement and US Lend-Lease programme, escorted by ships of the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, and the U.S. Navy. Eighty-five merchant vessels and 16 Royal Navy warships (two cruisers, six destroyers, eight other escort ships) were lost. The Kriegsmarine lost a number of vessels including the Scharnhorst-class battleship Scharnhorst, three destroyers, 30 U-boats, and many aircraft. The convoys demonstrated the Allies' commitment to helping the Soviet Union, prior to the opening of a second front, and tied up a substantial part of Germany's naval and air forces.[1]

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Background

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First World War

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Map of the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea

During the First World War (1914–1918), Central Powers blockades halted traffic between Imperial Russia and its Allies via the Black Sea and the Baltic. The Tsarist authorities sped up development of an ice-free port at Romanov-on-Murman (now Murmansk); supplies arriving via the Arctic came too little and too late to prevent the Allied collapse on the Eastern Front.[2] The operation of Murmansk proved and established the feasibility of an Arctic supply-line for military materiel.[citation needed]

Arctic convoys

The Soviet authorities had claimed that the unloading capacity of Arkhangelsk was 300,000 long tons (300,000 t), Vladivostok 140,000 long tons (140,000 t) and 60,000 long tons (61,000 t) by the Persian Gulf route. When surveyed by British and US technicians, the capacity of the ten berths at Arkhangelsk was assessed as 90,000 long tons (91,000 t) and the same from Murmansk from its eight berths.[3] By late 1941, the convoy system used in the Atlantic had been established on the Arctic run; a convoy commodore ensured that the ships' masters and signals officers attended a briefing before sailing to make arrangements for the management of the convoy, which sailed in a formation of long rows of short columns. The commodore was usually a retired naval officer, aboard a ship identified by a white pendant with a blue cross. The commodore was assisted by a Naval signals party of four men, who used lamps, semaphore flags and telescopes to pass signals, coded from books carried in a bag, weighted to be dumped overboard. In large convoys, the commodore was assisted by vice- and rear-commodores to direct the speed, course and zig-zagging of the merchant ships and liaise with the escort commander.[4][a]

Following Convoy PQ 16 and the disaster to Convoy PQ 17 in July 1942, Arctic convoys were postponed for nine weeks and much of the Home Fleet was detached to the Mediterranean for Operation Pedestal, a Malta convoy. During the lull, Admiral John Tovey concluded that the Home Fleet had been of no great protection to convoys beyond Bear Island, midway between Spitsbergen and the North Cape. Tovey would oversee the operation from Scapa Flow, where the fleet was linked to the Admiralty by landline, immune to variations in wireless reception. The next convoy should be accompanied by sufficient protection against surface attack; the longer-range destroyers of the Home Fleet could be used to augment the close escort force of anti-submarine and anti-aircraft ships, to confront a sortie by German ships with the threat of a massed destroyer torpedo attack. The practice of meeting homeward-bound QP convoys near Bear Island was dispensed with and Convoy QP 14 was to wait until Convoy PQ 18 was near its destination, despite the longer journey being more demanding of crews, fuel and equipment. The new escort carrier HMS Avenger (Commander Anthony Colthurst) had arrived from the United States and was added to the escort force.[6]

First Protocol

The Soviet leaders needed to replace the colossal losses of military equipment lost after the German invasion, especially when Soviet war industries were being moved out of the war zone and emphasised tank and aircraft deliveries. Machine tools, steel and aluminium was needed to replace indigenous resources lost in the invasion. The pressure on the civilian sector of the economy needed to be limited by food deliveries. The Soviets wanted to concentrate the resources that remained on items that the Soviet war economy that had the greatest comparative advantage over the German economy. Aluminium imports allowed aircraft production to a far greater extent than would have been possible using local sources and tank production was emphasised at the expense of lorries and food supplies were squeezed by reliance on what could be obtained from lend–lease. At the Moscow Conference, it was acknowledged that 1.5 million tons of shipping was needed to transport the supplies of the First Protocol and that Soviet sources could provide less than 10 per cent of the carrying capacity.[7]

The British and Americans accepted that the onus was on them to find most of the shipping, despite their commitments in other theatres. The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, made a commitment, to send a convoy to the Arctic ports of the USSR every ten days and to deliver 1,200 tanks a month from July 1942 to January 1943, followed by 2,000 tanks and another 3,600 aircraft more than already promised.[8] In November, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Admiral Emory Land of the US Maritime Commission and then the head of the War Shipping Administration that deliveries to Russia should only be limited by 'insurmountable difficulties'.[7] The first convoy was due at Murmansk around 12 October and the next convoy was to depart Iceland on 22 October. A motley of British, Allied and neutral shipping loaded with military stores and raw materials for the Soviet war effort would be assembled at Hvalfjörður in Iceland, convenient for ships from both sides of the Atlantic.[9]

Signals intelligence

Bletchley Park

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Photograph of a German Enigma coding machine

The British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) based at Bletchley Park housed a small industry of code-breakers and traffic analysts. By June 1941, the German Enigma machine Home Waters (Heimish) settings used by surface ships and U-boats could quickly be read. On 1 February 1942, the Enigma machines used in U-boats in the Atlantic and Mediterranean were changed but German ships and the U-boats in Arctic waters continued with the older Heimish (Hydra from 1942, Dolphin to the British). By mid-1941, British Y-stations were able to receive and read Luftwaffe W/T transmissions and give advance warning of Luftwaffe operations. [10][11]

In 1941, naval Headache personnel, with receivers to eavesdrop on Luftwaffe wireless transmissions, were embarked on warships and from May 1942, ships gained RAF Y computor parties, which sailed with cruiser admirals in command of convoy escorts, to interpret Luftwaffe W/T signals intercepted by the Headaches. The Admiralty sent details of Luftwaffe wireless frequencies, call signs and the daily local codes to the computors, which combined with their knowledge of Luftwaffe procedures, could glean fairly accurate details of German reconnaissance sorties. Sometimes computors predicted attacks twenty minutes before they were detected by radar.[10][11]

B-Dienst

The rival German Beobachtungsdienst (B-Dienst, Observation Service) of the Kriegsmarine Marinenachrichtendienst (MND, Naval Intelligence Service) had broken several Admiralty codes and cyphers by 1939, which were used to help Kriegsmarine ships elude British forces and provide opportunities for surprise attacks. From June to August 1940, six British submarines were sunk in the Skaggerak using information gleaned from British wireless signals. In 1941, B-Dienst read signals from the Commander in Chief Western Approaches informing convoys of areas patrolled by U-boats, enabling the submarines to move into "safe" zones.[12] B-Dienst had broken Naval Cypher No 3 in February 1942 and by March was reading up to 80 per cent of the traffic, which continued until 15 December 1943. By coincidence, the British lost access to the Shark cypher and had no information to send in Cypher No 3 which might compromise Ultra.[13]

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Convoy organisation

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Ice forms on a 20-inch (51 cm) signal projector on the cruiser HMS Sheffield, part of an escort of an Arctic convoy to the Soviet Union.
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Routes of the northern allied convoys. 1941–1945

After the first convoy, Operation Dervish in August 1941, Arctic convoys were labelled PQ (outbound) and QP (return), ran from September 1941 to September 1942. The convoys ran twice monthly, with interruptions in the summer of 1942, when the series was suspended after the disaster of Convoy PQ 17 and again in the autumn after the final convoy of the series, Convoy PQ 18, because of the long daylight hours and the preparations for Operation Torch in November 1942. When the convoys resumed they were called JW (outbound) and RA (return) and ran from December 1942 until the end of the war, with interruptions in the summer of 1943 and in the summer of 1944.[14] Convoys began at Iceland (usually from Hvalfjörður) and sailed past Jan Mayen Island and Bear Island to Arkhangelsk when the ice permitted in the summer months, shifting south as the pack ice increased and terminating at Murmansk, a warm water port. From February 1942 Arctic convoys assembled and sailed from Loch Ewe in Scotland.[15]

Outbound and the reciprocal return convoys ran simultaneously with a close escort to the destination, then making the return journey with unloaded ships. A cruiser covering force sailed near the outbound convoy as far as Bear Island then transferred as the outbound and returning convoy crossed. A heavy covering force of aircraft carriers, battleships with cruiser and destroyer escorts guarded against sorties by German heavy ships like Tirpitz.[citation needed]

The route skirted occupied Norway to the Soviet ports, limited by Polar ice from extensive diversions to the north and risked interception by Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft, bombers and torpedo-bombers, U-boats and ships. Storms, gales, fog, snow and hail were common, hiding the ships but also dispersing convoys, increasing the risk of interception. Currents and layers of cold and warm water, reduced the effectiveness of Asdic and ice could cause severe damage to ships and put them at risk of capsize. The difficulty of ships in convoy of keeping station and of navigating in storms and constant darkness in winter was replaced by the danger of constant air and sea attacks in the permanent daylight of the Midnight sun that at Murmansk lasts from 22 May to 22 July.

Convoy formation

Convoys had a standard formation of short columns, number 1 to the left in the direction of travel. Each position in the column was numbered; 11 was the first ship in column 1 and 12 was the second ship in the column; 21 was the first ship in column 2.[16]

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Other supply routes

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Persian Corridor

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Map US Lend Lease shipments to the USSR

The Arctic route was the shortest, most direct and quickest route for supply convoys to the USSR, though it was also the most dangerous. Some 3,964,000 long tons (4,028,000 t) of goods were sent via the Arctic of which 93 per cent arrived. The route constituted about 23 per cent of the total aid to the USSR during the war. The Persian Corridor was the longest and only all-weather route to the USSR but was not operational until mid-1942. Thereafter it saw the passage of 4,160,000 tons of goods, 27 per cent of the total.[18]

Pacific Route

The Pacific Route opened in late summer 1941 but the Attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) meant that only Soviet-flagged ships could be used on the route. As Japan and the USSR observed a strict neutrality towards each other, only non-military goods could be carried.[19] A total of 8,244,000 tons of goods went via the Pacific, 50 per cent of the total.[20] A branch of the Pacific Route began carrying goods through the Bering Strait to the Soviet Arctic coast in June 1942. From July to September, small Soviet convoys assembled in Providence Bay, Siberia to be escorted north through the Bering Strait and west along the Northern Sea Route by icebreakers and Lend-Lease Admirable-class minesweepers. A total of 452,393 tons passed through the Bering Strait aboard 120 ships.[21] Part of this northern tonnage was fuel for the airfields along the Alaska–Siberia Air Route. Provisions for the airfields were transferred to river vessels and barges in the estuaries of large Siberian rivers.[22] Remaining ships continued westwards and were the only seaborne cargoes to reach Archangel while the Arctic convoys were suspended during the summers of 1943 and 1944.[21]

Aftermath

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Analysis

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Arctic convoy at sea

Cargo included tanks, fighter aircraft, fuel, ammunition, raw materials and food.[23] The early convoys in particular delivered armoured vehicles and Hawker Hurricanes to make up for shortages in the Soviet Union.[24] The Arctic convoys caused changes to naval dispositions on both sides, which arguably had a big impact on events in other theatres of war. As a result of early raids by destroyers on German coastal shipping and the Operation Archery the Commando raid on Vågsøy, Hitler was led to believe that the British intended to invade Norway again. This, together with the obvious need to stop convoy supplies reaching the Soviet Union, caused him to direct that heavier ships, especially the battleship Tirpitz, be sent to Norway. The Channel Dash in early 1942 was partly undertaken for this reason.[25]

As a "fleet in being", Tirpitz and the other German capital ships tied down British resources which might have been better used elsewhere, for example combating the Japanese in the Indian Ocean. The success of Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in Operation Berlin during early 1941 had demonstrated the potential German threat. As the Allies closed the Mid-Atlantic gap, the air gap over the North Atlantic with very long range aircraft, Huff-Duff (radio triangulation equipment) improved airborne centimetric radar was introduced and convoys received escort carrier protection, the scope for commerce raiding diminished.

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An Arctic convoy passing through pack ice; there is a seal on the ice in the middle distance; taken from the cruiser Scylla

Aside from an abortive attempt to interdict Convoy PQ 12 in March 1942 and a raid on Spitzbergen in September 1943, Tirpitz spent most of the Second World War in Norwegian fjords. She was penned in and repeatedly attacked until she was finally sunk in Tromsø fjord on 12 November 1944 by the Royal Air Force (RAF). Other Kriegsmarine capital ships, like Gneisenau, either never reached Norway, were chased off or were sunk (Scharnhorst). The failed attack on Convoy JW 51B, the Battle of the Barents Sea, where a strong German naval force failed to defeat a British escort of cruisers and destroyers, infuriated Hitler and led to the strategic change from surface raiders to submarines. Some capital ships were physically dismantled and armament used in coastal defences.[26] The Siege of Leningrad was one of important destinations for supplies from the convoys. From 1941, food and munitions were delivered from British convoys to Leningrad by trains, barges and trucks. Many supplies were destroyed by the Luftwaffe and by Naval Detachment K en route. Convoys continued to deliver food in 1942, 1943 and 1944.[27]

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Literary depictions

The 1955 novel HMS Ulysses by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean, and the 1967 novel The Captain by Dutch author Jan de Hartog, are set during the Arctic convoys.[28] The 1958 novel The Midnight Sea by Ian Cameron (pseudonym of Donald G. Payne, who was a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm pilot during the convoys) is set during an Arctic Convoy on the fictitious escort carrier HMS Viper in late 1944.[29] The 1967 Norwegian historic account One in Ten Had to Die (Hver tiende mann måtte dø) by Per Hansson is based on the experience of the Norwegian sailor Leif Heimstad and other members of the Norwegian merchant fleet during the second World War.[30] The 1973 Russian novel Requiem for Convoy PQ-17 (Реквием каравану PQ-17) by Valentin Pikul depicts the mission of Convoy PQ 17.[31]

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Notable convoys

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A British wartime poster about the Arctic convoys
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Memorials

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Poolewe Arctic Convoy plaque

The town of Poolewe on the north-west coast of Scotland was an important port in this route. Today there are several plaques commemorating this work. A brewery commemorates the Arctic Convoys by a special brand beer named Arctic Convoy IPA.[citation needed]

Tables

1941

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1942

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1943

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1944

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1945

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Convoy details

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Deliveries 1941–1945

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Ship losses

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Convoy losses by cause

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Allied warship losses

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German warship losses

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U-boat losses

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See also

Notes

  1. By the end of 1941, 187 Matilda II and 249 Valentine tanks had been delivered, comprising 25 percent of the medium-heavy tanks in the Red Army, making 30–40 per cent of the medium-heavy tanks defending Moscow. In December 1941, 16 percent of the fighters defending Moscow were Hawker Hurricanes and Curtiss Tomahawks from Britain and by 1 January 1942, 96 Hurricane fighters were flying in the Soviet Air Forces (Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily, VVS). The British supplied radar apparatus, machine tools, Asdic and commodities.[5]
  2. First Arctic convoy to be accompanied by an aircraft carrier, (HMS Avenger).
  3. Battle of the North Cape (26 December 1943)
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Footnotes

Further reading

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