Fire & Ice Arctic Convoys 1941-1945

By Richard Porter, Simon Lister and G H Bennett

The Arctic convoys run to the ports of Northern Russia from 1941 to 1945 combined the man-made and maritime horrors of the Battle of the Atlantic with the unforgiving ferocity of one of the most inhospitable of the world's climates. Maintaining that lifeline through the waters of the Arctic circle was essential to the development and maintenance of the Anglo-American alliance with the Soviet Union. With the massive campaign on Germany's Eastern front hanging in the balance in 1941 to 1942, the German Armed Forces deployed significant numbers of submarines, bomber and torpedo aircraft, together with heavy ships such as the Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, against the slow-moving Allied convoys of merchant ships and their escorting forces. The challenge to maintain this lifeline placed a heavy burden on the resources of the Royal Navy. Here, in a contemporary battle summary, prepared by the Naval Staff of the Royal Navy, and supported by academic analysis and an extensive photographic section, those challenges and difficulties, the tragedies and the triumphs of the Arctic convoys, are laid bare.

A Shared Strategic Goal. The Arctic Convoys reflect the need to be able to work with enemies who become allies, and vice versa, and understand the strategic circumstances and imperatives that drive those choices. This strategic perspective and agility characterised Churchill’s approach to Stalin and the Soviet Union. It is notable that British co-operation with the Soviet Union started before the US had entered the war, and continued to the end, reflecting British strategic national interests throughout. The intent and comradeship forged through the existence of a common foe survived the many operational set-backs and doubts on both sides, and speaks clearly to the need in these matters to have a clear, shared strategic goal and enduring commitment to its achievement.

The Arctic convoys demonstrate the utility of seapower to deliver significant strategic effects even while operations had to be conducted at the limits of human endurance in the harshest of climates, at the geographical extremes of the global battlefront what Churchill is credited with calling ‘the worst journey in the world.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Honeywill
• Release date: Jan 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781838010782

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Britannia Royal Naval College

Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, Devon, UK

A majestic landmark, which towers above the harbour town of Dartmouth in Devon, Britannia Royal Naval College was designed by royal architect Sir Aston Webb to project an image of British sea power. A fine example of Edwardian architecture, the College has prepared future generations of officers for the challenges of service and leadership since 1905.

The Britannia Museum opened in 1999 to safeguard the College’s rich collection of historic artefacts, art and archives and promote greater public understanding of Britain’s naval and maritime heritage, as a key element in the development of British history and culture. It also aims to instil a sense of identity and ethos in the Officer Cadets that pass through the same walls as their forbears, from great admirals to national heroes to royalty.

1. Arctic Star Ushakov medals.jpg

Foreword

Vice-Admiral Sir Simon Lister KCB OBE

There is a real skill to summarising complexity, as any reader of the superlative Oxford Very Short Introduction series will attest. This Britannia History on the Arctic Convoys is of the same high standard – a masterpiece of brevity, relevance and accessibility; it brings to life the strategic context, the flow of events, and the titanic struggle for survival, let alone operational success, in northern latitudes. I am a little surprised, but grateful, for the chance to offer a foreword.

My own contact with Russia was inspired through the window of Russian language and culture that in turn led to two diplomatic appointments in Moscow, both falling at pivotal times for that society. This personal investment was initiated at school, nurtured at Dartmouth, and brought to maturity at the Defence School of Languages in the middle part of my career in the Royal Navy. Language has created both a lifelong interest in Russia, and a modest understanding of that nation; after a long naval career, I have come to understand Russia as an occasional and powerful ally, but more frequently, as a persistent and credible threat to our national security.

Visit the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Murmansk, and we quickly become aware of the sacrifice made by Allied Servicemen in the second war in this theatre. Dig a little deeper, and we find that Murmansk was established at the end of the first war at the insistence of the British to provide support to Russian allies in that war. After both conflicts, Anglo-Russian relationships rapidly deteriorated, part of a cycle that has repeated itself since Chancellor first established diplomatic and trading relations with Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Four centuries before the Arctic Convoys were established, valuable goods and services were flowing in each direction through the Barents and White Seas when the connection flourished, but were interrupted when relationships soured or the weather took charge. Our maritime forebears knew precisely what it took to survive and prosper inside the Arctic Circle.

My first contact with the Arctic Convoys was through Dervish ‘91, the fiftieth anniversary of the first convoy. Celebrated by many veterans visiting Murmansk and Archangel, I had the privilege to meet these modest, resilient and courageous men, intent on commemorating their comrades and their achievements, which, for many of them, had received insufficient recognition after the war. The convoy story, brought so clearly to life in this book, is one of strategic intervention, of extraordinary national and individual sacrifice, of operational collaboration fashioned rapidly with constrained resources, and of heroism in the face of extreme weather and high intensity combat. I suspect that a little research would show that these elements are the enduring qualities of naval warfare. This booklet therefore has much to tell us about the human capabilities needed to fight and win in these circumstances. I will single out the four that stand out for me.

A Shared Strategic Goal. The Arctic Convoys reflect the need to be able to work with enemies who become allies, and vice versa, and understand the strategic circumstances and imperatives that drive those choices. This strategic perspective and agility characterised Churchill’s approach to Stalin and the Soviet Union. It is notable that our co-operation with the Soviet Union started before the US had entered the war, and continued to the end, reflecting British strategic national interests throughout. The intent and comradeship forged through the existence of a common foe survived the many operational set-backs and doubts on both sides, and speaks clearly to the need in these matters to have a clear, shared strategic goal and enduring commitment to its achievement.

Leadership of Effective Collaboration. The collaboration and integration at a working level that was achieved in a short space of time was remarkable, given the suspicion and gulf of political outlook that existed at the outset. A British squadron of ‘T’ Class submarines operated from Polyarnoye for the duration of the war, and was sustained with Russian engineering support. When the Russians discovered that their own submarine atmosphere hydrogen removal device was much needed in the Royal Navy, the technology was immediately transferred (and was in use in the Oberon class some 50 years later). Meanwhile, the Russians were experiencing difficulties with their heavyweight torpedoes, and they approached the Royal Navy for assistance – it was immediately forth-coming. The Naval staff based at Polyarnoye formed a football team and competed in the Northern Fleet Football league, winning against the Harbour Defence team but losing to the Coastal Defence team. Wounded sailors arriving in Murmansk, a shattered city with little left standing, were treated by dedicated Russian doctors who understood the effects of frostbite and extreme exposure. Genuine collaboration and integration delivered a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. Wise leaders understood this and drove teamwork hard, recognising that the rewards far outweighed the effort.

The Power of Deterrence. Deterrence is rooted in the tangible threat of loss following attack – and the need to disrupt it – appears throughout the North West Russia campaign. The effect of the Tirpitz presence in a Norwegian fjord on the progress of the campaign fully justified the extraordinary efforts by both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to destroy her. The bravery and technical ingenuity shown by the ‘X’ craft crews, the Hurricane and Lancaster pilots operating in extreme conditions reflect the importance then and now of disrupting an enemy that presents a threat, even at long range when alongside. As I write this foreword, building the latest version of HMS Glasgow, a few miles from where her wartime predecessor was built, we reflect on the purpose of this new ship – to hold the latest generation of Russian submarines at risk in the North Atlantic. The deterrent effect of a ship which is able to hold the enemy at risk is an enduring and valuable aspect of naval power.

Military Linguists and their contribution to Operational Capability. Speaking the language of our allies and potential foes is a crucial capability to foster for the long term. During the Arctic Convoys, units quickly assembled linguists to assist. Just twenty years after the revolution, both sides were able to find sufficient interpreters to enable joint operations after a fashion. How challenging must have been those first encounters, before the standard procedures and specialist terminology had been exchanged and put to use? I have a naval linguist dictionary from the period, and can only imagine the value of this book to those attempting to bring allies together across the intermittent communications of the time, across the cultural divide, under the eye of Soviet political officers, intent on ensuring that Communist doctrine was not subverted by contact with the British. Interpreting at the 2001 Dervish ceremonies for the dwindling but stoic surviving veterans of both sides, I was struck by the vital role my wartime interpreter predecessors had fulfilled. This wartime period of collaboration was made effective by their efforts, and I am certain that linguists, expert in the specific military and naval lexicon of potential ally or foe, are an essential part of the deployable capability of the future Royal Navy. Linguists, stay current and step forward when the time comes, as it surely will.

I close by reflecting on my profound hope that the Russian people will, over time, pivot more to the West, repositioning themselves to enjoy the growth and prosperity that will come from more collaborative relations with their neighbours. It is a pivot I hope they will make without prejudicing their rich heritage, culture and identity. In the last four hundred years, during those brief periods of collaborative activity, the Royal Navy has played a vital role. The naval community should be ready for the next pivot when it comes, and do all it can to make it endure. I can think of no better way to honour the sacrifice made by many of our predecessors during their service in the Arctic Convoys.

Introduction

G. H. Bennett

Preamble

The following introduction was written before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Writings on the Arctic convoys have been deeply affected by the politics of Anglo-Russian relations which have ranged from the wartime alliance from 1941 to 1945, to the bitter antagonisms of the Cold War era, and to a period of exploration of shared understandings about past relations from 1989 to 2022. The Russo-Ukrainian war marks another evolution in the relationship between Russia and the United Kingdom that will, no doubt, impact on the scholarship of the Arctic convoys especially with some Russian nationalists inferring that Russia fought alone during the Great Patriotic War. One feature of that future evolution is already clear with the Russo-Ukrainian war serving as a powerful reminder of the importance of logistics as the determining factor in modern war. The Russian invasion of 24 February 2022 saw a vast army deployed across a large battlefront that is but a fraction of the size of that along which German and Russian armies fought between 1941 and 1945. The failure of the Russian military to achieve its initial military goals, because of a highly effective Ukrainian defence, and Russian difficulties in supplying its forces in the field along stretched supply lines, constrained by an inadequate road network, with complicating weather conditions, was a powerful echo of some of the factors at play in the fighting along the Eastern Front during the Second World War. The Russian withdrawal from Northern Ukraine in early April 2022, in order to regroup, re-equip and re-engage along the front in Luhansk and Donetsk placed the emphasis squarely on resupply with the West supplying Ukrainian forces with tanks, artillery, anti-tank and anti-air rockets along with other military equipment, and the Russians looking to China and beyond for resupply. The bigger the war, and the more drawn out the fighting, the more pivotal logistics, and the industrial output behind it, becomes. What was true between 1941 and 1945 can be glimpsed in May 2022 as the Russo-Ukrainian war moves into its next terrible phase.

Introduction

The organisation and defence of 78 convoys from the North Atlantic to the North Russian ports between August 1941 and May 1945, carrying badly needed supplies to the Soviet Union, offered the British and Americans a multi-faceted challenge.¹ The problems ranged from the complexities of inter-Allied coalition politics between powers of very different political and economic systems, to the human and nautical difficulties resulting from operating at the edge of the Arctic Circle in long hours of dark in the Northern Winter, or perpetual daylight in June-July at the height of the summer. The journey from British/Icelandic waters to North Russia, and back again, via a Northern route in Summer as the ice receded and a Southern Route in Winter (as long hours of darkness offered some relief from air attack), was difficult and dangerous even before the intervention of the German Armed Forces. Driven by ideological factors, the fighting on the Eastern Front following the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 turned to absolute war in which 22 million Soviet citizens would lose their lives with a front-line stretching hundreds of miles from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In the hope of intercepting the convoys, the fjords of Norway after 1941 became the operating bases for some of the surviving heavy ships of the Kriegsmarine such as Tirpitz and Scharnhorst. They would be supported by bomber and torpedo bomber units of the Luftwaffe, together with a substantial force of Kriegsmarine submarines (some 240 would operate from Norwegian waters between 1940 and 1945 with forces at Hammerfest and Kirkenes specifically intended for use against the Arctic convoys). In popular understandings of the war at sea in Britain and the United States the life and death struggle to fight through the Arctic Convoys to their destinations in Russia has assumed almost mythic proportions: On their success depended the outcome of battles such as Stalingrad that would turn the tide of battle in the East against the German Armed Forces. The challenges faced on the Murmansk Run have come to epitomise the difficulties of defending convoys from sustained enemy attack, the challenges of harsh seas and extreme climates, and the heroism and determination of the sailors who maintained the global supply lines that allowed the Allies to win victory by 1945.

However, there are considerable conceptual and methodological issues that have prevented a proper appreciation of the Arctic convoys. The Arctic convoys cannot be viewed as a simply an offshoot of the Atlantic Convoys. Indeed, the primary purpose of the establishment of that convoy route was political: To cement an alliance between Britain and the Soviet Union which would be joined later by the United States of America. Once established in 1941, the primary impetus to maintain the supply route to the North Russian ports came from inter-Allied politics, and the need to maintain a functional, if difficult, relationship with the Soviet Union. So strong was this impetus that the convoys continued to run all the way to 1945, despite the changing fortunes of war, despite significant losses of ships, crews and cargoes, and despite the wider impacts of the Russia Run on other theatres of operations such as the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Considerations about the value of Allied aid to the outcome of the land battles being fought on the Eastern front were secondary to the political needs of inter-allied politics and a thorny relationship between Uncle Joe Stalin and the west. Similarly, the wider strategic value of the Arctic front against the Germans, drawing significant forces away from other theatres, was not as fully recognised as it might have been at the time and, indeed, subsequently.

The outcome of some of the convoy operations between the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 until the end of the war has added a further layer of complication in trying to arrive at a balanced analysis of the organisation, conduct and value of the Arctic convoys. Even before 1945 there were questions, and no little controversy, both domestically and internationally about the handling of the Arctic convoys. Post-war research, especially after the British records were opened to public scrutiny in the 1970s, has not stilled the controversy, with the politics of the Cold War adding a further level of antagonism to the debate on the Russia Run. The significance, or otherwise, of Anglo-American aid to the Soviet Union became something of a political football between the historians of East and West during the cold war although there has been a growing consensus on the value of that aid since the 1990s and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The naval challenges in maintaining the supply lines to North Russia are fully set out in the Naval Staff’s Battle Summary No.22 ‘Arctic Convoys 1941-45’ reproduced in this volume which was a work in progress from 1943 until the version reproduced here which dates from 1954. It is important to understand the contexts in which this history was produced, and evolved, and how that context began to shape the historiography of the Arctic Convoys. When the initial study was produced in 1943 it was driven by the urgent operational need to try and learn the lessons from a series of convoy battles, especially PQ 17, PQ 18 and convoy JW 51B. By 1946 the convoys to Russia were both a testament to the endurance and professionalism of sailors, but also a source of controversy and some potential embarrassment. The mauling of Convoy PQ 17 in July 1942 with only 11 merchant ships out of 34 reaching North Russia had been a disaster with the convoy scattering in the expectation of imminent attack by German heavy ships that were not there. If controversy surrounded the fate of PQ 17, stilled in the midst of war by censorship and the need to fight the war to a successful outcome, then an additional layer of awkwardness over the Arctic Convoys swiftly built up after May 1945 as a result of the developing cold war. In the context of the cold war the swift deterioration in relations between the Soviet Union and her former allies made the vast quantities of material sent to Russia between 1941 and 1945, at vast cost and considerable sacrifice, seem painfully ironic, if not rather embarrassing. The United States and Great Britain had helped to facilitate the survival, the growth and eventual dominance in Eastern Europe of the very rival against which they might have to fight the next war.

The repercussions of this awkwardness around the Arctic convoys manifested itself in various ways. It was not until 1950 that the Admiralty published the official dispatch on ‘Convoys to North Russia, 1942’ in The London Gazette, with the final version of the Battle Summary on the Arctic Convoys being produced in 1954, and incorporating material and perspectives based on study of the German archives.² In addition, and unusually, the updated summary incorporated clarifications and suggestions by a number of senior Royal Navy officers, together with the Air Historical Branch. The summary constituted a significant effort to frame the history of the Russian convoys, using multiple sources in case of question or controversy, and the Battle Summary sets out those sources carefully. That controversy, with suggestions of British blundering and incompetence, came with the publication in 1968 of David Irving’s book on Convoy PQ 17 which caused a sensation.³ In some quarters the book was considered little better than ‘muck raking’, and potentially libellous even if the research was otherwise diligent.⁴ A court case followed (Broome versus Cassell & Co Ltd, 1970) in which Captain Jack Broome, who had commanded the escort group for PQ 17, successfully sued the publishers of Irving’s book: The jury awarding the retired naval officer a then record of £40,000 in damages.⁵ Controversy continued to surround the Russian convoys, and PQ 17 in particular, even after the end of the cold war. The Arctic Star campaign medal, awarded to those who had served on the convoys was not created until 2012 and the following year, after public campaigning, the British Government relaxed its rules on the acceptance of foreign medals by British nationals to allow the Russian Medal of Ushakov (originally created in March 1944) to be given to British Arctic Convoy veterans.⁶

Initiating the Convoys to Russia

Relations between Britain and Russia had been less than easy from the start of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to the point at which German forces invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. That history is an important means to understanding the depth of antagonism, particularly between the British and the Russians, that continued to fuel suspicions on both sides even after the powers became allies in 1941. In 1918 during the First World War British and French forces had landed in North Russia to safeguard the military supplies which had been sent to aid the war effort of the Czar against Germany, and then subsequently the Provisional Government, from March to November 1917. Alongside those land forces, a Royal Navy force primarily made up of C-Class cruisers and V and W-Class destroyers operated in the Baltic under the command of Rear-Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair. During 1918 relations between British forces and the Bolsheviks in North Russia deteriorated to the point where they were drawn into combat operations against each other, with the Royal Navy operating against the Red Navy in the Baltic. The British Government began to consider the possibility of a campaign to overthrow the Bolsheviks with additional British troops sent to other parts of what had been the Czar’s Empire (40,000 to the Caucasus, 950 to the Trans-Caspian region, 1,800 to Siberia). Appeals to the Empire, to Allied and friendly governments resulted in the deployment of American, Canadian, Australian, Italian, Greek, Romanian and Japanese forces in Russia which were increasingly drawn into a Russian Civil War with White Russian forces also seeking to overthrow the Reds. Over 900 British soldiers were killed before the intervention was abandoned and British forces withdrawn from Archangel (27 September) and Murmansk (12 October) in late 1919. Evacuations from other parts of Russia also took place (Caucasus 24 August) and the Royal Navy was involved in evacuating anti-Bolshevik forces from cities such as Odessa in late 1919 and early 1920.

The intervention of British forces in Russia, concerns about Communist subversion in Britain, left a lasting legacy of mistrust between Britain and Russia. Between the Russians and the Royal Navy the enmity was underpinned by the sinking by Royal Navy units of the Russian cruiser Oleg, and submarine depot ship Pamiat Azova with the Royal Navy also suffering damage to some larger ships and the loss of a number of smaller vessels such as three Coastal Motor Boats.⁷ The murder of Naval Attaché Captain Francis Cromie by the Cheka during the seizure of the British Embassy in St Petersburg in 31 August 1918 likewise contributed to lasting antagonisms between the British and the Russians. Throughout the 1920s these were routinely fanned by fears of renewed military interventions in Russia, and Red Scares in Britain (the most notable of which involved the publication in 1924 of the Zinoviev letter, most likely with the involvement of the former head of the Department of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Blinker Hall). The evolution of Stalinism in the 1930s with its goal of socialism in one country (as opposed to revolutionary world socialism), and the entry into the League of Nations of the Soviet Union in 1934 in search of co-operation against the developing threat of Nazi Germany, did little to ease tensions between Britain and Stalin’s Russia despite an Anglo-Soviet declaration in 1935 that there was no conflict of interest between the two governments on international policy. Five year plans, the collectivization of agriculture, and Stalin’s relentless pursuit of enemies, resulted in mass starvation, trials of enemies accused of being in league with foreign enemies, and the totalitarianism of the NKVD and the gulag. The signature of the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between Russia and Germany on 23 August 1939 was seen as yet further evidence that the Soviet Union was not to be trusted. The Russian attack on Poland on 17 September in support of a German campaign which had begun on 1 September raised the question of an Anglo-French declaration of war on the Soviet Union, but the defeat of Poland on 6 October ended that possibility. The Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 re-opened the possibility of an Anglo-Russian conflict but the negotiation of a peace treaty in March 1940, by which Finland ceded a considerable amount of territory to the Soviet Union (around 8% of the country), once again shut down that danger.

Despite the troubled history of Anglo-Soviet relations, and his own virulent anti-Communism, in May 1940 the new British Prime Minister (and former First lord of the Admiralty) Winston Churchill, tried to reach out to Stalin and to warn him of the dangers of Hitler. Veteran British left wing politician Sir Stafford Cripps was sent to Moscow to try and win over Stalin. Warnings from Britain to the Soviet Union in the spring and summer of 1941, as German preparations for the invasion of Russia proceeded apace, were not heeded by Stalin who remained more wary of the British than Hitler, given the years of mutual antagonism since 1917. Nevertheless, when Germany attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June Churchill seized the chance to forge an alliance with the Soviet Union to overthrow Nazi Germany. In forging this alliance between two mutually distrustful parties, British aid to Russia, in the form of convoys, would be perhaps the vital initial underpinning as Soviet forces struggled to contain the Germans. Thus, the aid was both politically significant, as evidence of the British commitment to Russia, and also strategically important in helping Soviet forces to stand against the German onslaught. This combination of inter-Allied politics, and strategic support for Russia, would be at the heart of the convoys to Russia until 1945.

On the evening of 22 June, just hours after the German attack had begun, Churchill went on the radio to explain British policy in the light of the attack on the Soviet Union. He went to considerable pains, as a well-known anti-communist, to explain his reasons for the course Britain would now take towards the Soviet Union:

The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels in all forms of human wickedness, in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No-one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no words that I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies and its tragedies, flashes away. I see the Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land, guarding the fields which their fathers have tilled from time immemorial.⁸

Reasoning that the destruction of the Soviet Union was but a precursor to the invasion of the United Kingdom Churchill went on to say that Britain would:

give whatever help we can to Russia and to the Russian people. We shall appeal to all our friends and Allies in every part of the world to take the same course and pursue it as we shall, faithfully and steadfastly to the end. We have offered to the Government of Soviet Russia any technical or economic assistance which is in our power and which is likely to be of service to them.⁹

Two days later, on Tuesday 24 June, Sir Anthony Eden (Foreign Secretary) similarly took great pains to outline that differences between the two countries would not stand in the way of effective co-operation and that the Russians had accepted offers of British assistance:

The political systems of our two countries are anti-pathetic, our ways of life are widely divergent, but this cannot and must not for a moment obscure the realities of the political issue which confront us to-day … I can tell the House that I have now heard from His Excellency the Soviet Ambassador that his Government have accepted our offer to send military and economic advisors to Russia to co-ordinate our efforts in what is now, beyond doubt, a common task-the defeat of Germany.¹⁰

The Anglo-Russian alliance had begun in rather tentative circumstances, but with Russian forces sustaining massive casualties in the East, and without a foothold on the European continent, it was politically and strategically imperative to assist them on the battlefield with aid convoys, and by maintaining the strategic bombing offensive against Germany, especially after the Chiefs of Staff informed Churchill in early August that there was simply no question of launching any sort of offensive on the continent to relieve the pressure on the Russian armies in the East.¹¹ It helped that within seven days of the German attack the United States also began to give aid to the Soviet Union in the form of supplies for cash payment. In October 1941, following detailed negotiations in Moscow involving representatives of the Soviet Government and Lord Beaverbrook for the United Kingdom, and Averell Harriman for the United States, the provisions of Lend Lease Act were extended to give aid to the Soviet Union. This drew some hostile comment from certain quarters in the United States with, for example, the Baltimore News Post, carrying a cartoon image of Joseph Stalin sporting strap on angels’ wings to indicate the magical transformation in perceptions of Russia that had seemingly taken place.¹² That aid, until after December 1941 and American entry into the Second World War, would have to be carried in British ships to the Russian ports. Supplies would be delivered under an Anglo-American-Russian protocol that would run from mid-year to mid-year (First protocol was signed on 1 October to cover the period until the end of June 1942, with the second and subsequent protocols running from July to June).¹³

If getting supplies to Russia was vital in both a political and a military sense then there was the issue of how to get them there. Re-supply from the air was out of the question given the distances involved leaving the sea as the only means to deliver substantial amounts of aid. Convoys to the ports of Murmansk and Archangel in the North of Russia offered the most direct means of delivering aid to Soviet forces fighting on the Eastern front. There were, however, other means utilised that are frequently overlooked in the narrative of Anglo-American aid to the Soviet Union. For example, around half the aid by tonnage (17,499,861 long tons) sent to Russia reached the front after being landed in Vladivostock and transhipped by rail.¹⁴ A further 25% of the aid came via the Persian Gulf, transhipped through Iran and into the Southern Soviet Union or across the Caspian.¹⁵

Evolution of the Russian Convoys: The Naval Perspective

During the course of the war the Russian convoys evolved through three distinct phases. In the first phase from 1 August 1941 to March 1942 the convoy run to Russia was established and the first deliveries of aid took place. During the second period from March 1942 to March 1943 the running of the convoys was keenly contested with serious losses of ships, men and materiel to the point that the Arctic lifeline was imperilled by the German Armed Forces. In the final phase the German threat against the convoys declined markedly as Soviet forces on the battlefield dealt hammer blows to German forces as they advanced steadily westwards towards Germany and to Berlin. Throughout, the geography of the route and the ice gave ‘planners little or no choice in selecting routes and defense forces for each convoy’.¹⁶

Arctic Convoys Phase 1 August 1941 to March 1942

The first phase of Arctic convoy operations saw 13 convoys (114 merchant ships) being sent to North Russia with 100 ships making the return journey in 9 convoys.¹⁷ The first convoy (code named Dervish) consisting of just six ships left Hvalfjord on 21 August, reaching Archangel ten days later without incident. The German armies were so busy driving forward across the length of the Eastern front, capturing tens of thousands of Red Army prisoners in the process that the German Armed Forces appeared to attach little importance to the flow of Allied aid passing beyond the North Cape of Norway. On these first 13 convoys just two vessels were lost.

While Iceland was the departure point for these convoys their cargoes began their journey on the east coast of the United States and Scotland. Departing from Philadelphia, American ships bound for Russia would join with one of the convoys crossing the Atlantic, before breaking away and heading for Iceland. Here, at Reykjavik or Hvalfjord they would join British vessels that had been convoyed to Loch Ewe and Gare Loch in Western Scotland. Combined into one convoy they would then make the journey North Eastwards towards the North Cape of Norway and onwards to Russia. In some cases, the wait times for merchant ships arriving in Icelandic waters before starting the journey towards North Russia was considerable. One American vessel the ‘Gateway City rode at her anchor chain for 107 days in Iceland while the crew, who were forbidden to go ashore lest they divulge matters of military importance to Axis spies, made skiffs out of dunnage and paddled around to other ships in the harbour, including