World War II Day by Day

Norwegian and Arctic Seas • June 27, 1942

In March 1941, 9 months before Pearl Harbor plunged the neutral nation into World War II, the United States inau­gu­rated the “Lend-Lease” pro­gram. That program gave Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and other Allied nations resisting Axis aggres­sors, mainly Germany and Japan, vast amounts of war maté­riel to defend thems­elves. Amer­i­can fac­to­ries and farms churned out tanks, planes, bullets, bombs, shells, artil­lery pieces, plant and animal food­stuffs, and other items so desper­ately needed by Adolf Hitler’s and Shōwa Emperor Hiro­hito’s hard-pressed foes. Supplying these goods free of charge was one thing; getting them to over­seas battle­front nations was quite another. Aside from air­planes, insuf­fi­cient to carry heavy loads for long dis­tances, the alter­na­tive was a 2,500‑mile/­4,000‑km-long watery high­way between North Ame­r­ica’s East Coast and the British Isles, even farther to the two north­western Arctic ports of the Soviet Union.

The watery highway had to be kept clear of enemy dangers over­head, on the ocean’s sur­face, and beneath the waves. Escorted by Allied war­ships and air­craft, con­voys of armed cargo­men laden with criti­cal goods traf­ficked across the North Atlan­tic Ocean infested by U‑boat wolf packs and sur­face raiders. From the British Isles east­ward through the Norwe­gian and Arctic Seas to the Soviet ports of Mur­mansk and Arch­angel (Ark­hangelsk) was the shortest but most risky route for deliv­ering tanks, trucks, air­craft, ammu­ni­tion, and other vital sup­plies destined for the hard-pressed Red Army fighting on the Axis’ Eastern Front.

On this date, June 27, 1942, the 34‑ship Convoy PQ‑17, the largest and most valu­able Arctic merchant ship con­voy to date, departed Hval­fjord (Hval­fjörður), Ice­land, for the Soviet Union. Escorted by 6 destroyers, 4 cor­vettes, 3 mine­sweepers, 4 trawlers, 2 anti-aircraft ships, 2 sub­marines, 3 rescue ships, and an oiler, PQ‑17 began its Arctic run to Arch­angel. The Germans were deter­mined that PQ‑17 would not pass through their ranks un­scathed. They insti­tuted Oper­a­tion Knight’s Move (Unter­nehmen Roessel­sprung) that would add capi­tal ships—the Tirpitz (the late Bismarck’s mighty twin) and heavy cruisers Admiral Scheer and Admiral Hipper—to the inter­cepting force of hun­dreds of Luft­waffe air­craft and Kriegs­marine U‑boats, which staged from naval and air bases in German-occupied Norway.

On the morning of July 4 a German torpedo bomber struck a Liberty-built mer­chant ship that was even­tually sunk by a German sub that evening. During the same evening 25 torpedo bombers managed to damage a second Liberty ship that was sent to the bottom by shell­fire from another U‑boat. Unhappily for PQ‑17 the Arctic convoy had been nabbed and bloodied. The British Admi­ralty was beside itself over the pos­sibil­ity that a heavy-duty battle group that included the Tirpitz and other German sur­face ships would add expo­nen­tially to the may­hem inflicted by enemy air­craft and sub­ma­rines. (Oper­a­tion Knight’s Move did not leave port until the following day and was sub­se­quently ordered to return to port.) At 9:23 p.m., July 4, after a third ship went down, a divided Admi­ralty directed the con­voy to “dis­perse and pro­ceed to Rus­sian ports.” Thir­teen minutes later the mes­sage was changed from “disperse” to “scatter.” Utter dis­array ensued. Most of the escorts beat a hasty retreat to Scapa Flow, Scot­land; by July 9 the rest had dis­appeared. One catas­tro­phe after another followed in a free-for-all flight of cargo ships devoid of pro­tec­tion steaming independently and willy-nilly eastward.

A half-month elapsed before the fate of Convoy PQ‑17 was fully known. Of the 34 cargo ships that left Ice­land on June 27, 1942, with 180,000 metric tons of freight on board, German war­planes and sub­marines sank 23 ships carrying 116,000 metric tons and killed 153 sea­men. Reaching Arch­angel were just 1 Pana­ma­nian, 2 Soviet, 2 British, and 4 Amer­i­can freighters; 2 Amer­i­can freighters reached Murmansk, the Soviet Union’s other Arctic port.

Convoy PQ-17: Unprecedented Arctic Disaster

Above: In this painting by English-born combat artist Robert Bailey, Luft­waffe Junkers Ju‑88 bombers press home their attacks against freighters and tankers in Convoy PQ‑17, destined for the north­western Soviet port of Arch­angel in July 1942. Convoy PQ‑17 was dec­i­mated by U‑boats of the famed Eis­teufel (Ice Devil) squa­dron and Norway-based Luft­flotte 5’s Ju‑88 bombers, Hein­kel He‑111 tor­pedo bombers and He‑115 tor­pedo float planes, and Junkers Ju‑87 Stuka dive-bombers during a series of catas­tro­phic enemy day­light attacks that lasted from July 4 to 10, 1942. Carrying sorely needed war matériel for the Soviet Front, the Anglo-Amer­i­can con­voy, under British com­mand, lost 24 of its 34 freighters and tankers after a con­tro­ver­sial com­mu­nique from the British Admi­ralty late on July 4, 1942, ordered the Soviet-bound con­voy escort to “scatter.” The order doomed Convoy PQ‑17. With­out the mutual pro­tec­tion pro­vided by sailing in an escorted con­voy, lone and armed mer­chant­men became easy prey to enemy air­craft and U‑boats that beset them. Less than a third of PQ‑17’s mer­chant ships were suc­cess­ful in running the gauntlet of U‑boats and German bombers.

Left: British and American escorts and Allied merchant ships assemble at the Ice­landic naval base used by Allied mili­tary and com­mer­cial vessels at Hval­fjord (Hval­fjörður) before the June 27, 1942, depar­ture of Con­voy PQ‑17. The sea voyage to the north­western Soviet ports of Mur­mansk and Arch­angel was the shortest route for sending Allied sup­plies to the Soviet Union. But it was also the most dan­gerous owing to the large con­cen­tra­tion of enemy forces in neighboring German-occupied Norway.

Right: Making the dangerous passage across the North Atlantic and through the Nor­we­gian and Barents Seas to the Soviet port of Mur­mansk, the armed British mer­chant ship SS Coul­more weathers heavy seas, May 20, 1943. Just over 10 weeks earlier, on March 10, 1943, on a voyage from Phila­del­phia to London with gen­eral cargo, Coul­more was tor­pedoed and damaged by U‑229 south of Ice­land. There were 7 survi­vors. The ship was towed, recovered, and back in ser­vice when this photo­graph was taken by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Left: Steaming eastward in a tight convoy, Canadian merchant­men and escorting war­ships remain on high alert. Attacks from German U‑boats, surface vessels, or air­craft were a con­stant threat. The success­ful destruc­tion of PQ‑17 was the result of German signals intel­li­gence and cryptologic analysis. War­time British Prime Minister Win­ston Chur­chill recalled the PQ‑17 dis­aster as “one of the most melan­choly naval episodes of the whole of the war.”

Right: Difficult as it is to see, a swarm of German air­craft sweeps down from a cloudy sky to attack an Allied convoy en route to Murmansk.

Left: Victims of a German air attack, two Allied ships in PQ‑18 billow smoke while sailors aboard the escort carrier HMS Avenger look on, Septem­ber 1942. Hit by an aerial tor­pedo, the U.S. ammu­ni­tion ship SS Mary Lucken­bach (fore­ground) was basic­ally vapor­ized along with the entire crew. Escorted by ships of the Royal Navy, Royal Cana­dian Navy, and the U.S. Navy, about 1,400 mer­chant ships delivered essen­tial war­time aid to the Soviet Union under the U.S. Lend-Lease pro­gram and the Anglo-Soviet Agree­ment between August 1941 and May 1945. Eighty-five mer­chant ves­sels (roughly 6 per­cent of those involved in this mer­can­tile traffic) were lost during the period. In spite of fear­ful losses, Arctic con­voys demon­strated, first, the West­ern Allies’ commit­ment to helping the Soviet Union defend itself against a common enemy prior to the West opening up a second front in Normandy, France, in June 1944 (Oper­a­tion Over­lord). Secondly, Arctic con­voys tied up a sub­stan­tial part of Germany’s naval and air forces, mili­tating against their deployment to Western Europe.

Right: One of approximately 8 Eisteufel U‑boats that deci­mated Convoy PQ‑17, U‑255 enters its home port of Narvik, occu­pied Norway, on June 20, 1942, flying four vic­tory pen­nants—one for each kill—in addi­tion to one trophy flag taken from the stricken Dutch mer­chant­man Paulus Potter. Besides admin­is­tra­ting a coup de grâce to the Dutch freighter on July 13, 1942, U‑255 skipper Kapitaen­leutnant Rein­hart Reche dis­patched 3 Amer­i­can mer­chant ships and hun­dreds of civil­ian sea­man and U.S. Navy Armed Guards to an ice-cold watery grave­yard by tor­pedo and artil­lery fire: SS John Wither­spoon, SS Alcona Ranger, and SS Olopana on July 6, 7, 8, 1942, respec­tively. Reche reckoned the gross regis­tered tons of the four sunken vessels to be over 25.5 million tons.

The Near-Destruction of Convoy PQ-17, July 4–10, 1942