If you’ve watched World War II
movies about German U-boats, you’ve seen them torpedo merchant ships which
explode in a huge fireball. How could anyone survive such a catastrophe?
Supply convoys consisted of slow, lightly
defended ships venturing into the war zone where they were easy pickings for
U-boats or German surface vessels and bombers. Guns were installed on merchant
ships and manned by a naval Armed Guard, but they provided scant protection.
(The Navy Armed Guard’s motto was “We aim to deliver.” Unofficially, it was
“Sighted sub, glub, glub.”) The real protection came from the escort force of
warships.
In June, 1942, convoy PQ-17 sailed
from Hvalfjord, Iceland, for Archangel in North Russia, a distance of 2,150
miles, a ten-day voyage. At this time, the German battleship Tirpitz terrified the Allies. Its mere
presence in Trondheim, Norway, caused the British to tie up a fleet of their
warships on standby to make sure it didn’t break free and wreak havoc.
First Sea Lord Dudley Pound,
Admiral of the Fleet and operational head of the Royal Navy, considered the
convoys a most unsound operation. They benefited the Russians and diverted
American aid from the British. They’d already lost two cruisers on convoy duty,
and the threat of Tirpitz endangered
more of their dwindling fleet.
On July 3, a British fighter
overflying Trondheim noted the Tirpitz
was missing from its anchorage. A decoded German message announced the arrival
of their heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper
in Altenfjord in northern Norway. Pound feared the Tirpitz was about to pounce on convoy PQ-17 and its escorts. The
next day, he issued the order to scatter the convoy.
The first message sent to the
convoy read, “Cruiser force to withdraw to westward at high speed.” The escorts
assumed this meant the Tirpitz was
fast approaching and they were to intercept it. A clarifying message read,
“Convoy is to scatter.” Each ship was to head off on its own and hope to reach
Russia.
The merchant mariners were stunned
to watch the warships speed away. Convoy PQ-17’s escort consisted of a core
escort of six destroyers and fifteen smaller ships: four corvettes, two
antiaircraft ships, two submarines, three rescue vessels, and four armed
trawlers. These ships would take the convoy all the way to Archangel.
A second part of the escort force
had four heavy cruisers and a group of destroyers that would follow the convoy
until they came within range of German bombers in Norway. Then they would turn
back.
A third layer of “protection”
included a British aircraft carrier accompanied by two battleships and a dozen
destroyers that trailed hundreds of miles behind. If the Tirpitz attacked and came far enough west that German bombers could
not protect it, the British aircraft would attack it.
That morning, the convoy had
already come under attack by German bombers. Three merchant ships sank. The
U.S. destroyer Wainwright had put up
a 4th of July fireworks display that caused half the attackers to
drop their torpedoes early and flee. Now the merchant ships were alone with
only a German long-range reconnaissance plane circling, reporting their
whereabouts.
SOS calls filled the airways as the
Germans picked off the ships: TWO SUBS ATTACKING. BEING DIVE-BOMBED. HAVE JUST
BEEN TORPEDOED. ATTACK BY SEVEN PLANES. UNDER HEAVY ATTACK.
Officers on the warships that had
abandoned the merchants listened in agony. They had now learned that the
Admiralty had scattered the convoy on flimsy intelligence, assuming the Tirpitz was near, and felt betrayed. Officers
on one British destroyer, the Offa,
had considered reporting a mechanic problem and sneaking back to protect the
merchants. One recalled, “There must always be a sense of shame that we did not
do so.”
The corvettes from the core escort
group resented being ordered to stay with an antiaircraft ship instead of the
defenseless merchants. They had reached the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya.
One corvette, the Lotus, turned back
to the sinking ships and rescued 81 men.
Only eleven of the thirty-five
merchant ships reached Archangel. (Two had turned back to Iceland shortly after
setting out.) The human casualties were surprisingly low. One hundred and
fifty-three men died out of over 2,500 in the convoy. More than 120,000 tons of
war supplies were lost.
For a complete account of convoy
PQ-17, I recommend The Ghost Ships of
Archangel: the Artic Voyage that Defied the Nazis by William Geroux. The
focus is on the three “ghost ships,” the American merchants Troubadour, Ironclad, and Silver Sword, along with the British
trawler Ayrshire, that sailed into
the polar ice to escape the Germans.