Sarah Palin is the other whom Yoda spoke about.
Convoy PQ-17, the war’s worst disaster convoy, sailed from Hvalfiord, Iceland, on 27 JUN 1942 at 1600 hours, local time.
To famous actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., USNR, Admiral Giffen’s flag lieutenant aboard the cruiser USS Wichita CA-45, the ships of PQ-17—thirty-five of them, along with three rescue ships and two fleet oilers—waddled out of harbor “like so many dirty ducks.” Fairbanks (among others) felt profound misgivings about the voyage ahead. USS Wichita was assigned to the Cruiser Support Force that would accompany the convoy, and Fairbanks would keep a diary of his experience.
“No honors or salutes were paid to them as they passed, such as there are for naval vessels. But every one who was watching paid them a silent tribute and offered them some half-thought prayer.”
Hardly were the ships clear of Hvalfiord when one of them ran aground, holed itself, and had to return to port. More than one superstitious seaman saw this as an ill omen….
Northabout Iceland the ships would sail, and then steer northeast, across the dreary, heaving wastes of the Norwegian Sea, one of the most inhospitable expanses of water in the world. They would pass the wastrel, volcanic rock of Jan Mayen Island, and then aim northabout German-occupied Norway, passing far north of the British Isles on the most savage, the most grueling, and the most hated ocean lifeline of the war.
Since it was summertime and the Arctic pack ice was in retreat, the ships of Convoy PQ-17 would steer north of that humped upthrust of desolation known as Bear Island, roughly halfway between Norway’s North Cape and the Spitzbergen Islands. They would thus put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine bases in northern Norway.
After running the Bear Island gauntlet, the ships would pass into the desolation of the Barents Sea, more inhospitable, if possible, than the waters of the Norwegian Sea, and to their southeast would lie the extreme northwestern coastline of Russia. Past Petsamo with its rich nickel mines—formerly Finnish territory—they would sail, and then they would arrive at Kola Inlet, the entrance of the port of Murmansk, terminus of most Russian convoy runs.
The ships of Convoy PQ-17 were destined, however, for the port of Archangel, farther to the southeast in the White Sea, for the Luftwaffe had lately burned between one-third and one-half of Murmansk and put the port temporarily out of commission….
THE BACKGROUND
”The Russian convoy is and always has been an unsound operation of war.”
--Rear Admiral L.H.K. Hamilton, RN, 30 SEP 1942
”These Russian convoys are becoming a regular millstone around our necks.”
--Admiral Sir Dudley Pound RN to Admiral Ernest J. King USN, 18 MAY 1942
The Royal Navy had never been enthusiastic about the Russian convoys. By North Atlantic standards, they were expensive and infrequent, and they were also undersized, difficult to operate, difficult to protect. But they had come to represent a symbol of aid to Stalin that had to be kept going, come what may, for political reasons.
Stalin was a problematic ally throughout the war. Never graceful about cooperating with the Murmansk convoy runs, or with his Western allies generally, Stalin had mostly complaints and demands for his allies and suppliers, instead of thanks, in his struggle against his former partner, Hitler. Nor was cooperation with him regarded with complete enthusiasm in Great Britain or the United States. Many in both nations regarded Stalin and Hitler as two sides of the same coin. They had seen Stalin make out like a bandit as Hitler’s partner, and they were aware that had Hitler not double-crossed him in 1941, he would have bent over backward to remain Hitler’s partner (as indeed he was bending, up to the very moment the invasion began).
Stalin and Hitler had partitioned Poland together. They had a reciprocal trade agreement that gave Hitler raw materials and Stalin, technology. Hitler had stood by, giving Stalin his way in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Stalin had taken a slice of Romania (Bessarabia and northern Bucovina) with Berlin’s acquiescence, if not its blessing. And when Stalin crushed Finland in the Winter War of 1939-40, Hitler had not interfered (and had indeed offered his services as arbiter).
On the other hand, the British and French were preparing to intervene on Finland’s behalf when hostilities abruptly ended, and American support for Finland was widespread and vocal. Stalin’s behavior as Hitler’s ally was swept under the rug after 22 JUN 1941, but it should always be remembered that cooperation (there was never cordiality) on both sides of this unnatural alliance was forced throughout the war. And along with cooperation were forced the Russian convoys, such as PQ-17.
”They had begun in August 1941 under British escort and responsibility. Only two of a hundred and ten ships had been lost on this route up until March 1942. Then, as the sun began to rise above the horizon for longer than a few moments at a time, the Nazis moved Luftwaffe squadrons to Norwegian airfields in the far north. Losses began to mount with PQ-13 when five ships were lost out of nineteen. It was not only Nazi air power that perturbed the men who had to make this journey and the men who had to send them out. Hitler’s ‘intuition’ had perceived that the British would make a landing in Norway, and he had moved the remaining big ships of the German Navy to Norwegian waters…
--Capt. Henry H. Adams USNR, 1942: The Year that Doomed the Axis
THE SETUP
By the time of PQ-17, the Germans had a good picture of how the British typically managed the Russian convoys. The Germans knew the convoys were given a close escort, mostly of destroyers and corvettes, intended primarily to deal with U-boats and aircraft. The Germans also knew that the British provided support forces that maneuvered independently of the convoy. Close support was typically provided by a cruiser squadron. In the case of PQ-17, this force was commanded by Rear Admiral L.H.K. Hamilton, RN.
The Germans also knew that a Home Fleet task force, usually containing an aircraft carrier and a couple of battleships, provided distant cover, trailing the convoy from a flanking position, ready to intervene if heavy German warships emerged from their Norwegian bases to attack the convoy. In effect, the convoy served as the bait of a trap for the German warships. Such was the case with PQ-17.
However, there was a caveat. The British were unwilling to risk their heavy ships in the comparatively remote waters of the Barents Sea, east and southeast of Bear Island. If the trap could not be sprung before the convoy entered the Barents Sea, the support forces would be withdrawn, leaving the convoy only with its own close escort to see it to its destination.
THE FORCES
In the spring and summer of 1942, several US Navy warships were pinch-hitting for the Royal Navy, due to the latter’s shortage of ships. The Home Fleet’s flagship and prototype of her fast battleship class, HMS King George V, had been seriously damaged in a collision in May, and was thus unavailable for the PQ-17 operation. To reinforce the Home Fleet’s only remaining modern battleship (HMS Duke of York), the USN loaned the RN one of its own new battleships, USS Washington BB-56. She would be included in the Distant Support Force on the PQ-17 operation, along with HMS Duke of York and the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, veteran of the Bismarck episode the previous year. A number of USN cruisers and destroyers were on duty with convoy escort, including Douglas Fairbanks’ vessel, USS Wichita CA-45.
Formidable German forces were ready to ambush Convoy PQ-17. The linchpin of these forces was the Bismarck’s sister ship Tirpitz (eight 15-inch guns) and a consort,
heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper (eight 8-inch guns). These ships were ordinarily based at
Trondheim, halfway up the Norwegian coast. Farther north, at Narvik, were stationed the Kriegmarine’s two remaining pocket battleships, Admiral Scheer and Luetzow (six 11-inch guns apiece). The specter of a convoy being bushwhacked by such a squadron was not a pleasant one; in savaging Convoy HX-84 in 1940 during her five-month raiding cruise, Admiral Scheer had shown what heavy surface raiders could do to convoys, given the chance.
The Germans had a plan to launch their forces upon Russian convoys, a plan known as
“The Knight’s Move.” Upon discovery of a suitable convoy victim, the German warships would be moved up to bases near the North Cape (Altenfjord and Vestfjord), from which they would sortie to the attack. In view of Hitler’s standing order for “no unnecessary risks,” however, the plan depended on the absence or withdrawal of the heavy Allied forces providing distant cover for the convoys. It had to be possible for the German ships to pounce, strike, and get back safely to port before any enemy heavy forces could intervene. If this could not be assured, then the German ships would be held on tether.
However, the Allies, and most particularly the British Admiralty, did not know of this tether, or the orders it embodied. They naturally assumed that once the German ships were in position to attack, they in all likelihood would attack.
THE DISASTER
Plodding across the Norwegian Sea from Iceland, PQ-17 had a relatively uneventful journey. They were snooped by U-boats and Luftwaffe aircraft, beginning on July 1, and on July 2, U-boats attacked, only to be driven off by the close escort under Commander John E. Broome RN. Two air attacks developed on July 3, but again, no ship was hit. Admiral Hamilton’s Cruiser Support Force moved into position north of the convoy, while the distant covering force began moving up from Iceland, trailing the convoy at a distance calculated to minimize the risk of its discovery. Admiral Sir John Tovey, commanding, calculated that a German surface strike would be unlikely to materialize before the morning of July 4, with PQ-17 in the vicinity of Bear Island. By that time, his distant support force would be positioned on the far side of the convoy, well within carrier striking distance.
Meanwhile, at the Admiralty in London, they were receiving ominous news from their own reconnaissance forces. The German ships in Norway were on the move, hugging the Norwegian coastline on their way up to their advance bases near the North Cape. Trondheim was verified “empty” on July 3, and this meant that the biggest bogey of all, Tirpitz, was on her way.
Poor weather hindered further British reconnaissance efforts, but the Admiralty believed that all four German heavy ships were on their way northward. They could not know that one of the pocket battleships (Luetzow, a “hoodoo” or “eightball” ship ever since her name was changed from Deutschland) had run aground in Narvik Fjord and was thus out of the operation, and there was no definitive report as to the whereabouts of the other German ships. As July 3 passed into July 4, and PQ-17 plodded steadily on, passing Bear Island, apprehensions mounted in the Admiralty.
They expected that if the Germans were going to mount a surface ship attack, they would hit the convoy east of Bear Island, but as the hours wore on, there was still no word of German ships. July 4 wore on; U-boats were reported in growing numbers about the convoy, and heavy air attacks began arriving. Meanwhile, the Admiralty finally received intelligence (possibly from the Norwegian Underground) to the effect that pocket battleship Admiral Scheer had joined Tirpitz and Admiral Hipper in Altenfjord. Analysts made hasty calculations. The German ships could attack PQ-17 as early as 0200 hours local time on July 5. But would they attack? Why not? What else were they there for? A decision had to be made, and quickly.
Just after 2100 hours local time, the nerves at the Admiralty snapped. Three radio signals arrived in rapid succession and burst like bombshells on the bridges of the Allied ships.
Secret. Most Immediate. Cruiser force withdraw to westward at high speed…”
“Secret. Immediate. Owing to threat from surface ships, convoy is to disperse and proceed to Russian ports.”
“Secret. Most Immediate. My 21.12B of the 4th. Convoy is to scatter.”
To Admiral Hamilton and Admiral Tovey, these signals could and did add up to only one thing: the German battle fleet was in PQ-17’s immediate vicinity and was about to launch its attack….
But at that moment, ironically, the German ships were still at anchor in Altenfjord, and the Germans saw little prospect of using them. They knew that Hamilton’s Cruiser Support Force and Tovey’s heavy support force were all too close to PQ-17 to permit even the fastest hit-and-run sortie. So the crews of the German ships continued to fret at tether, and their commanders, echeloned all the way back to Naval Group North at Kiel, waited for some sign that “Knight’s Move” could be safely executed.
There was only a limited window of opportunity. By 1700 hours local time on July 5, the convoy would be so far to the east, so near its destination, that a sortie could not catch it in time.
And then came the news that the convoy had scattered, and that the support forces were hightailing it westward. At 1500 hours local time on July 5, the German battle squadron sortied, on its way into the Barents Sea, determined to get in on as much of the forthcoming feast as it could.
U-boats and the Luftwaffe were already at table. While the convoy was a convoy, it was a tough nut to crack, offering determined escorts to thwart U-boats and concentrated ack-ack to discourage air attack. Individual ships, however, could offer little resistance, and the Luftwaffe and the U-boats began mowing them down on July 5.
Meanwhile, first a Soviet and then a British submarine spotted the German battle fleet and radioed its whereabouts. These signals were intercepted and created a stir at the German Admiralty in Berlin, and after discussions with Naval Group North in Kiel, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder canceled the sortie. The German battle fleet turned back to base at 2150 hours local time, leaving the table without so much as a bite, to the immense chagrin of its crews and com-manders.
Not so the U-boats and the Luftwaffe, however.
EPITAPH
”….twenty-two freighters, one rescue ship and the fleet oiler had been sunk, a total of 142,518 tons of shipping. Of the eleven British ships in the convoy, only two would ever see British shores again; three more of PQ-17’s surviving ships went down on the return convoy….
“Nor was the loss of shipping space the only consideration, for 3350 motor vehicles, 430 tanks, 210 bomber aircraft, 99,316 tons of general cargo including crated vehicles, radar sets, foodstuffs, steelplate and ammunition were also lost in the disaster….”
“The convoy cost the lives of 153 Allied seamen, all of them in the merchant ships. Of these deaths, only seven occurred before the convoy was scattered…During the whole war, 829 officers and men were lost in the north Russian convoys, in ninety merchant ships…”
--David Irving, The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17
One can only imagine what it would have cost the Germans to dispose of all that hardware, had they been forced to shoot it off the battlefield. The disaster of PQ-17 saved them the trouble. The British Admiralty, incensed and embarrassed as the facts of the disaster slowly became known, wanted to postpone further Russian convoys until autumn, when darkness would settle on the most dangerous part of the convoy route.
Stalin was furious at what he saw as British cowardice. It is a matter of record that the survivors were treated more like enemies in Soviet ports, rather than allies and survivors (see David Irving, The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17). Churchill ordered inquiries amidst bitter exchanges of recriminations. The inquiries assigned blame to no one. Admiral King, US Navy COMINCH, never an Anglophile at best, became increasingly hostile to further joint operations with the Royal Navy. Soon USS Washington and other USN ships would be withdrawn and dispatched to the Pacific. An uneasy silence was settled over the topic of PQ-17, a silence which to persist well after the end of the war.
The debate on where to place blame continues to this day. According to Capt. Henry H. Adams, USNR, former professor of naval history at Annapolis, the orders to scatter the convoy were “probably the most flagrant example of the danger of high command interfering with the decisions of the commander on the scene. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, and his staff did not and could not know the situation in the convoy, since it was, of course, observing radio silence. They should have passed on the information they had, leaving the ultimate decision to the man who knew all the circumstances. But they did not, and catastrophe ensued.”
(Henry H. Adams, 1942: The Year that Doomed the Axis)
Perhaps Alistair MacLean, however, penned the most telling comment on the debacle as a footnote to his novel of the Russian convoys, HMS Ulysses, published in 1955, when the incident was still largely silenced.
”It was a melancholy and bitter incident, all the more unpalatable in that it ran so directly counter to the traditions of a great service. One wonders what Sir Philip Sydney would have thought or, in more modern times, Kennedy of the Rawalpindi or Fegen of the Jervis Bay.”
(Both of these ships were fought to sinking wrecks against overwhelming opposition in earlier periods of the war.)
“But there is no doubt what the merchant navy thought, what they still think. From most of the few survivors, there can be no hope of forgiveness. They will, probably, always remember; the Royal Navy would desperately like to forget. It is difficult to blame either.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Picture: “Knight’s Move,” by Robert Taylor
http://www.aviationartgallery.co.uk/Images/Print-info/Knights-move-info.htm
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