Early in the Second World War, Germany invaded and occupied many of its neighbouring countries in mainland Europe. Germany and the Soviet Union had secretly signed a non-aggression pact agreeing that they would not attack each other, but Germany invaded the vast country in June 1941 and soon pushed deep into Soviet territory. With this turn of events, the Soviets joined the Allied powers and agreements were quickly reached to send supplies in order to assist them in their fight against the invaders. The western Allies knew that if the Soviet Union fell, Germany could then turn its full military might to the West.
The Soviets desperately needed weapons, fuel and supplies, especially after their country’s most-industrialised areas had been captured by the Germans. Getting these supplies to them, however, would not be easy. Land transportation routes were cut off and the best sea routes were blocked by the enemy. Shipping supplies to the Soviet Union via the Indian or Pacific Oceans was a very long trip. That left the Soviet seaports on the Arctic Ocean as the fastest way to deliver goods—but it was also the most dangerous.
Beginning in the late summer of 1941, a total of forty-one Allied convoys sailed to the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangel during the war. The Arctic convoys delivered millions of tons of supplies from the United States, Great Britain and Canada, including aircraft, tanks, jeeps, locomotives, flatcars, rifles and machine guns, ammunition, fuel and even boots.
The first series, PQ (outbound) and QP (homebound), ran twice-monthly from September 1941 to September 1942. The route was around occupied Norway to the Soviet ports and was particularly dangerous due to the proximity of German air, submarine and surface forces and also because of the likelihood of severe weather
The second series of convoys, JW (outbound) and RA (homebound) ran from December 1942 until the end of the war. Outbound and homebound convoys were planned to run simultaneously; a close escort accompanied the merchant ships to port, remaining to make the subsequent return trip, whilst a covering force of heavy surface units was also provided to guard against sorties by German surface ships, such as the Tirpitz. These would accompany the outbound convoy to a cross-over point, meeting and then conducting the homebound convoy back, while the close escort finished the voyage with its charges.
Dubbed by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of Britain, as “The Worst Journey in the World”, the toll taken on the Arctic convoys was horrendous. 104 Allied Merchant ships were sunk, along with eighteen British Navy warships. The human losses were 829 merchant mariners and 1,944 navy personnel. The Soviet Union lost thirty merchant ships and an unknown number of personnel, and there was almost no let-up from the high-level bombing by the Luftwaffe, low-level U-boat attacks with torpedoes and ship-to-ship surface gunfire. The Germans lost five warships, thirty-one submarines and many aircraft.
‘Tales from the Arctic Convoys’ (kindle edition) is now available via Amazon and features the stories from veteran Royal Navy seamen from: HMS Victorious, Edinburgh, Belfast, Sheffield, Rhododendron, Punjabi, Eskimo, Wrestler, Scylla, Ulster Queen, and Faulknor, and Merchant seamen from: ST Chiltern, MT Marathon, SS Rathlin, Empire Gilbert, Chulmleigh, and Steam Merchants Ocean Viceroy and Ocean Voice.