Arctic Convoys of WW2

After Germany invaded Russia on June 22nd, 1941—injecting some 4.2 million Axis troops across the soon-to-form Eastern Front, Russia was caught flat-footed and unprepared, allowing German tanks to cross halfway to Moscow before the Soviet’s managed a coordinated defensive response. Realizing that Great Britain would most likely fall to the Nazis without the help of Russia, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill put aside his longstanding objections to communism, culminating in the Soviet-British Mutual Assistance Pact of July 12th, 1941, which combined with FDR’s Lend-Lease Act to support Russia’s war effort with a steady supply of weapons and essential materiel.

Seasonal Route

The most direct sea route was around northern Norway to the Soviet ports of Murmansk and Archangel, which proved to be especially dangerous during the summer months, when 24 hours of daylight exposed merchant and naval ships to constant attacks by German U-boats and Nazi warplanes stationed in Norway. The vital route left the British with little choice but to ply the icy waters under the near total blackout conditions of the region’s six-month-long winters, forcing brazen seamen to ply the treacherous waters of the Norwegian and Barents Sea. Fierce storms sent mountainous, ice-laden waves crashing down on ships, buckling funnels and bridges while sweeping men overboard as they chipped away at ice formations that threatened to sink their ships under its crushing weight. Endless cold sapped crewmen of their strength, frequently leaving them without sleep for days at a time.

Suicide Run

Nicknamed “The Suicide Run” by sailors, the first convoys sailed in September of 1941, initially coded PQ for outbound and QP for homebound, which changed to JW and RA respectively after 1943. Fighting both “The Weather War” and the threat of enemy attacks, the worst Allied losses occurred shortly after June 27th, 1942, when convoy PQ-17 sailed from Hvalfjord (Haalf your door) Iceland to the Russian port of Archangel. Located by German forces on July 1st, the convoy’s exposure prompted the British admiralty to scatter the ships due to fears of attack from the German battleship Tirpitz. Instead, German U-boats and aircraft sank 24 out of 35 ships, at a cost of 153 lives. Of the 78 arctic convoys that witnessed some 1,400 ships participate in suicide runs, more than 100 Royal and merchant ships were lost, all at a cost of over 3,000 lives, making the arctic convoys of WW2, some of the most gutsy missions of the Second World War.