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The US and UK supplied the USSR with vast amounts of military materiel during the Second World War via the Arctic convoys.
For this episode of the History Extra podcast.
Hugh C Bagmontefiore, author of the new book Battle of the Arctic The Maritime Epic of World War II, chats with David Musgrove to explain just how important this campaign was in shaping the outcome of the war, detailing the many horrors faced by the merchant sailors who made the difficult and dangerous journey from Iceland to Russia.
David's first question was to ask Hugh to explain the context of the convoys.
Most people who know about history, World War II, history will know about the Battle of the Atlantic.
That was the battle that was fought to supply Britain.
And the Battle of the Arctic is the battle that was fought to supply goods to the Soviet Union during World War II.
It was in the context of Arctic convoys being sent to the Soviet Union from Iceland or from the north of Scotland, because Stalin asked Britain and America to supply aid after the Germans attacked in June 1941.
When the Germans attacked, the Russians were in a very vulnerable position because they didn't really have enough modern equipment to defeat the Germans.
And that's the context in which Stalin asked whether the Allies could supply modern arms to the Soviet Union to replace the old arms that were destroyed by the initial German attack.
The convoys ran from August 1941 until 1945.
There were about 40 Arctic convoys.
And they were attacked on the way to the Soviet Union as they passed north of Norway by the Germans.
And around 800 shiploads were sent in these 40 convoys.
And around 58 of the merchant ships were sunk there, which is not bad in a way, because 58 equates to about 90 getting through.
So it was overall a very successful campaign.
Thank you.
That's a very good summation.
So just in terms of the actual arena, you mentioned Northern Scotland, you mentioned Iceland, you mentioned Norway and Russia.
So we're basically going across the top here, right going originally from the west coast of iceland, near reykjavik, a place called haval fjord, and ending up in archangel during the summer, in northern russia and mamansk, when archangel was frozen up during the winter but, as you say, going north of.
And which are the protagonists in this battle?
So we've got the UK, we've got the US, we've got the USSR, and we've got Germany.
Those are the main people involved?
Yes.
But there were merchant seamen from different nations like Poland and Holland and Norway and Sweden.
So there were people from all countries and also from South America who were involved.
But the ships were actually mostly owned by America or Britain or the Soviet Union.
There were a smattering of ships owned by other countries like Poland.
You've written this really great, fascinating book.
Can you just tell me what you've done that's new or different, or has brought new light to the topic in your research?
One of the things I thought was missing from previous books about the Arctic convoys and there have been many books about it is that no one seems to have really picked up the fact that it really was a campaign, a battle that rivaled some of the famous battles that we've all come to know about, like Normandy or Dunkirk or Stalingrad.
There really was a series of battles where the sailors involved had to endure terrible torments.
And in doing so there was all the drama, the courage and the heartbreaking tragedy that you get in all battles.
This hasn't really been realized.
And in my book I've tried to bring out what happened after the ships were sunk, when the sailors were in lifeboats in the Arctic open lifeboats in the Arctic, in freezing conditions, naturally.
Also when they arrived in Russia, an alien place, where they were sent to hospitals where the treatment was completely primitive.
There were operations, amputations that were done without general anesthetics.
And also, even those who weren't in the hospitals were treated in a very harsh way.
They weren't greeted or congratulated on enduring the terrible torments they'd endeared on the way.
They were shunned.
So if they went to the theatre, for example, if they tried to speak to anyone, everyone in the theatre ran in the opposite direction.
So they were left all alone and they were not spoken to in the streets often.
So it was a very hard place for them to exist after they arrived.
And Even worse than that was that some of the people who were shipwrecked ended up on deserted Arctic islands, where they were literally there for several months and had to shoot polar bears that were trying to stalk them.
It was a very harsh time.
Let's go back to the start of the convoys.
So we got the ships massing in Iceland or perhaps northern Scotland.
And what they're doing is, as you said, Stalin has basically said if you want me to fight Germany on the Eastern Front, then the West needs to supply material and provisions to me so I can carry on that fight.
So you've got ships in the middle with loads of stuff in, and then ships around them that are going to escort them and protect them.
Tell me a bit more about what we see in these convoys.
How many ships were involved and what was the general makeup of what was happening there?
Well, I've picked a typical convoy to illustrate the answer to this.
So one of the early convoys in 1942 was called PQ-16.
The convoys were all given the prefix PQ if they were going towards the east.
During the early years of the convoys,
And this PQ-16 was one of the larger convoys.
It had 35 merchant ships.
There were about 65 men on each merchant ship.
So we're talking about 2,250-odd merchant seamen involved.
And the ships, this particular convoy was in nine columns.
The columns were spread out.
So a typical convoy might be over three or four miles of width in the sea and all around the convoy there would be the escorts, and typically the escorts for this size of convoy might be 20 to 25 escorts, destroyers and trawlers armed with aztecs that could detect submarines and corvettes and they circled them and they provided protection.
So if a U-boat tried to attack one of these convoys, they would probably be detected if they tried to come in inside the circle of the escorts.
So this was how they were protected.
If German aircraft attacked likewise, the escorts would fire at them to try and stop them getting amongst the merchant ships which were less well protected.
They had guns, but they were not such powerful guns as the escorts had.
So that was the basic setup.
And what sort of stuff would they take?
Primarily, the main thing that was valued in the early days was tanks and aircraft.
But there were also other things like aluminium.
Aluminium was used to make the tank engines that the Russians wanted to make and the aircraft, and there was also food.
A large proportion of what was taken was food.
I should say that in archangel there was a famine during the time the convoys were operating, So food was a premium.
How successful were these early convoys?
Did they get through?
Did the system work?
Well, the very first convoys, let's say the first six months from, let's say, August to February 1942, There were 13 east-going convoys and only one sinking.
So 95 ships were on these first convoys during the first six months or seven months, and totally successful, very few attacks.
But during March to December 1942, the Germans attacked very, very strongly and attacked.
So there were eight convoys in March to December 1942.
206 ships were in these convoys, and 52 were abandoned or sunk.
A very large proportion were sunk.
So things changed dramatically.
And then afterwards, gradually, the Allies had more resources.
They learned lessons.
And they were able to stop the thinkings.
So there's a period when the Germans really did have a big impact.
And there was also a period when the Allies learned their lessons.
And overall, eventually, the convoys were very successful.
So overall...
Some 800 ships went from Scotland and Iceland to the Soviet Union, and just about 90 of them arrived there.
So it was very successful overall.
And that is kind of amazing when you consider the sorts of challenges that these convoys face, which you sort of enumerate in your book.
So you've got enemy ships, you've got enemy planes, you've got enemy subs and you've got just the outright terrible conditions that exist in the Arctic.
What was the worst challenge that these convoys faced, do you think?
I have to give a nuanced answer to that because it changed at various points.
It started off being the surface fleet, the German surface fleet, with tar pits and the surface destroyers that were the biggest threat.
But then when the aircraft torpedo aircraft was supplied by the Germans so that they could attack, they became the biggest threat.
And then when the aircrafts were taken away, the U-boats became the large threat.
So overall, the number of ships that were sunk, most were sunk by the U-boats in terms of numbers.
41 were sunk by the U-boats.
37 were sunk by aircraft.
But at different stages, there were different threats that were the most dangerous.
I mean that's interesting because when you think of the Battle of the Atlantic that we talked about earlier, we naturally think of the Wolfpack and the U-boats being the worst challenge.
But I suppose this is a slightly different theatre in the sense that There was land a bit closer, so the Germans could use northern Norway perhaps for getting planes into the theatre.
That's right.
The planes were very important.
And it was made even more important by the fact that they had long-range reconnaissance planes that could circle the convoys for long periods.
And one of the great challenges was to try to shoot down those planes, because if they didn't have those planes, the Germans would be much less effective.
And so what happened was the crucial thing that changed everything was when resources were available to provide aircraft carriers, escort carriers that could accompany the convoy all the way to the Soviet Union.
And when that happened, there was a dramatic change because they shot down the circling planes.
And the Germans realized they just couldn't risk having these planes circling anymore, because they were just being shot down.
And that completely changed everything.
It changed the ability of the aircraft to find the convoys reliably.
And you get kind of German pilots writing in their accounts that How long are we going to survive?
You know, they were terrified.
They became terrified rather than the people in the convoy being terrified.
And what about the role of Bletchley Park and the codebreakers?
Were the Allies getting good intelligence about the makeup of the Germans, different to what happened at the Atlantic?
Because in the Atlantic there was a massive space to divert the convoys to and, as you said, in the Arctic there was the ice pack that was north of the convoys route and you couldn't really divert the convoys far enough away to avoid being found.
So the ability to by Bletchley Park and the codebreakers to know where the U-boats were lurking had a limited effect, because if the U-boats didn't find the convoys, the aircraft did, and then the aircraft could tell the U-boats where to go.
So it was a very different situation in terms of the co-breakers.
But the co-breakers did have an effect, because one of the early convoys that was attacked in March 1942 was a convoy called PQ-12.
And Tirpitz went out to attack this convoy.
And the co-breakers had a coup.
Because what happened was they read the messages very quickly of the commanders who were in touch with the Tirpitz.
And they heard that the Tirpitz was going to meet up with destroyers at two particular points.
And once they knew the two points, they knew exactly where to find Tirpitz and the surface fleet.
And so they sent out their aircraft to ambush them.
And they successfully ambushed them, but the pilots involved weren't trained well enough and the planes they were flying were not powerful enough to inflict damage.
But they very nearly hit with their torpedoes, torpedoes.
And afterwards the German equivalent of the Admiralty, were very nervous about sending out their surface fleet.
So the codebreakers did have this effect that they had been very nearly successful.
And that had a reigning in effect on the German command.
You've mentioned Tirpitz there a couple of times.
That's a very sort of significant vessel in the stories.
Can you tell us a little bit more about it?
Introduce us to Tirpitz?
Well, Tirpitz was like the Bismarck, which people might have heard of as well, was one of the biggest warships that was around.
And the great worry for those in the convoy or those protecting the convoy was that if Tirpitz got within say, 20 miles of the convoy, it could fire at the convoy from a distance and pick off the ships one by one, even before the British ships protecting the convoy could effectively fire back at Tirpitz.
So it was a very significant threat and everything had to be done to stop that ship getting within shooting distance of the convoy.
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What I want to know Hugh, is a bit more about what it was like being a merchant sailor in these convoys, because you can imagine reasonably well, I suspect, what it was like being on a naval ship and being a sailor on an armed ship.
But these convoys, as you said, maybe they had some arms, but they were very lightly armed, I would imagine facing quite difficult conditions generally.
You know the weather there freezing, cold ice everywhere.
It can't have been much fun and they must have felt very vulnerable.
Can you give us a sense about just how grim conditions were for the merchant seamen involved here?
I suppose, like anyone on a long voyage, one of the big enemies was the monotony of it.
Because, although I've described all the attacks, that was one of the things they had to cope with.
There was also the terror of when winds were hurricane or up to hurricane force and the seas were beating down on the ship's decks.
It was also terrifying.
Ships were sunk just by the conditions, also the seamer on board.
Sometimes they couldn't wash because the Water in the pipes was frozen.
There was ice lining the walls and dripping on top of them when it melted.
It wasn't safe to touch any metal when they were out on the deck.
If they made that mistake, their skin would be ripped off their hands because it got stuck to the metal.
And there was also the danger that if the rough seas that swept over the decks swept you into the water, you were told beforehand that you wouldn't survive more than five minutes in the freezing cold waters.
Like you say, the guns were inadequate to beat off a committed attack and you also had the extra difficulty that you had to live with shipmates who were wild.
Some of the merchant seamen, They were bald.
They often drank a lot.
And they were often fighting each other.
So it was a scary time to be on a merchant ship in a long voyage with people who were quite rough.
Having said that, you have to say there was a good side to being a merchant seaman compared with being in the Royal Navy, because it was much laxer, the discipline, less of a spit and polish situation.
You could dress how you like and behave more or less like you wanted to.
There was no age barrier.
There were some people who were over 70 on these convoys, and some of them weren't able-bodied.
So you have a case of one person who was a.
When the people didn't like what he cooked, they would throw his wooden leg into the harbor.
Oh, it was a motley crew on a merchant ship and i imagine they would be multinational polyglots, or would they all be from from one nation on any given ship?
Yeah, there definitely was a mix.
Even on an american ship you might find people from all sorts of nationalities.
Some of the bravest sailors were Norwegians, for example.
They would be in command of a ship and they were very good sailors.
Do we get a sense of what the sort of the dynamic was between these merchant sailors, perhaps some of these more rough and ready characters and, as you said, the spit and polish members of the Royal Navy in the US Navy?
Did they get on well?
Did they rub on well together?
Or did they kind of ignore each other?
There was a sense of camaraderie between the sailors.
I mean, some of them, for example, were very committed towards Russia.
So they would band together.
And A lot of the sailors loved women and drink.
So there was a big bonding about that kind of longing to reach the next port and what they were going to do together.
So there was a kind of camaraderie about it, that they were all in the same boat, metaphorically speaking as well as literally speaking.
Now look, we can't really talk about the Battle of the Arctic and the Arctic convoys without talking about Convoy PQ-17, which I think if anyone knows anything about this theatre of the Second World War, they'll know about this event.
So can you just...
Drop us into that story and tell us what happened and why it matters.
Well, the problem with PQ-17 was that the codebreakers had not been able to identify whether the Tirpitz which we've talked about before had set out to attack the convoy.
There was a blackout.
This happened because the settings for the enigma code were reset every 24 hours and there happened to be a blackout just at the crucial moment.
There was a tussler at the Admiralty as to what had happened.
On the one hand, there was the head of intelligence, Norman Denning, who had said that he believed there was no immediate threat from Tirpitz, because he believed Tirpitz was still at Altenfjord, the northern German base.
Whereas Admiralty Dudley Pound, who was the leading admiral, he decided that there was a risk and therefore that there was a threat.
A lot hung on.
Who was right?
Because if Tirpitz was grounded it would be stupid to disperse the convoy which Pound was contemplating.
In those circumstances, if the escort was no longer with the scattered ships, those ships would be at the Germans' mercy.
The aircraft and the U-boats would be able to attack them without any constraint.
But if Tappet's had set out there was a need to scatter the ships as quickly as possible, because if the Tirpitz caught them together, it could sink not only the merchant ships but also the escorts.
After the war, Denning recalled being asked by Pound whether he could be sure that Tirpitz had not sorted, and he replied that he couldn't be 100 certain.
But he went on to point out that the reason why he felt that Tepes was not at sea was that the co-breakers had not intercepted or broken a message saying that the U-boats had been told to keep away.
He'd learned that when Tebbets was at sea, U-boats were told to keep out of the way for obvious reasons, so they wouldn't get sunk by the battleship.
He'd also seen a message that had been intercepted by the co-breakers saying that the german aircraft crews had had spotted a battleship near the convoy.
Actually there was no battleship near the convoy but just cruisers.
But they thought was a battleship nearby.
And denning said well, if they thought was a battleship nearby, there was no way they were going to send out turpets.
And finally, There was no message saying that the location of the home fleet that was some distance away had been identified.
And again Denning said well, if they don't know where the home fleet is, they're never going to send out Tirpitz.
The problem for Denning was that none of these indications were completely foolproof, because the absence of signals in the arctic i mean that could just be because of the arctic conditions that stopped signals being intercepted and the phantom battleship that the germans were saying they'd seen was gradually losing weight because one of the aircraft crews had begun saying that they couldn't see a battleship.
They were just saying they saw four cruisers.
So there was another difficulty for Denny, which was that Pound had previously been burnt by taking a risk.
He'd sent out capital ships to the Far East, and they'd been sunk.
And he'd sent them out without air cover.
And he was never going to take a similar risk again.
So...
Denning was going to find it very hard to convince Pound to take a risky action that might end up with the escorts, as well as the merchant ships, being sunk.
So that was all the backdrop to what happened during the evening of the 4th of July 1942, when there was a big meeting called by Pound in the Admiralty in London.
And he went around the table and got everyone's advice as to what should happen.
And everyone said, oh, we shouldn't scatter the convoy.
But he closed his eyes, thought about it and then opened his eyes again and then said we're going to scatter the convoy.
And that's what happened.
The convoy was scattered and destroyed.
As I've mentioned, that made the ships very vulnerable.
And over the next days, 19 of the 33 aid-carrying ships were abandoned and sunk.
It was a complete disaster.
So this is a really dramatic moment, isn't it?
It was Pound's decision to do this, and it has led to a lot of contemplation since then as to what happened, why he did that.
Do we know?
You've said that he was kind of risk-averse.
Was there something else going on in his mind that made him make that fateful decision, do you think?
I think it is important to realise that It really would have been disastrous if they'd lost 25 escorts.
The whole Battle of the Arctic depended on the big enough escorts to deal with both Russia and the supplies to Britain.
So I've argued in the book that, While it did turn out that he was wrong to scatter the convoy, because Tapitz eventually turned back and never actually attacked the convoy, it did go out but it was seen from Allied submarines and then went back.
At the time, he didn't know that was going to happen.
He couldn't be sure it would happen.
And he might have only found out after Tirpitz had attacked the convoy.
So I've argued that actually, arguably, he was right to make the decision he made.
And that all the people who'd been criticizing him for many years have been very unfair because, although with the benefit of hindsight he was wrong at the time with what he knew, it was a reasonable decision.
So the fact that nobody really knew where Turfix was meant that basically he had to make a decision and he, kind of with hindsight, he made the wrong call.
But you're saying that It could have been the right call if Tirpitz had actually been skulking around and taken out all the escort ships.
That and also the fact that if you've been burnt once and then you're burnt again, it would have been terribly demoralizing for Britain that their head of the Navy couldn't keep people safe and couldn't stop a disaster happening that would change the course of the war.
So the consequences though, is that the convoy scatters, so that the ships are basically told to just split up and make their own way to Russia as best they can.
What happens to the escorts in this scenario?
Well, the escorts disappeared over the horizon and they've played no more part than larger escorts in the convoy.
And only 11 ships out of the 33 merchant ships actually made it to Archangel.
So there were some stories of heroism in the ships that did get through though.
And I'm thinking of one particular example where one trawler captain took it upon himself to lead a fleet of ships through
Can you tell me a bit more about that?
Well, who was a barrister called Gradwell, and on the way to the north, after the ships were scattered, he chanced upon three other merchant ships, or three merchant ships that were in his path, and he persuaded the captains of those ships to come with him, and they went up to where the ice was thick and and hid in the ice for several days and then only went on to russia after the worst of the german attacks had happened.
So that was one of the examples of how some of those 11 ships that got to archangel managed to survive.
So, even though there was this massive disaster, still 11 of the of the ships got through.
So that is some achievement, isn't it?
They still managed to get through despite the fact that the escort had moved away.
Well, the russians didn't see it that way.
They were furious.
They felt that britain had been cowards, that the russians were fighting on the eastern front And our navy had just run for it and left the merchant ships to fight for themselves.
Churchill tried to persuade Stalin, when Churchill went to Russia in August 1942 that it was reasonable and they couldn't risk their fleet by attacking the Germans.
But the Russians just felt, well, we're risking our men on the front.
Why can't you risk yours?
So there was not much sympathy going there.
What was the outcome of PQ-17?
Did they change the way the convoy structure worked, or did they just carry on trying to get ships through as best they could for the rest of the war?
After PQ17, Churchill and Admiral Pound decided that it was too dangerous to send convoys through to Russia during the summer, so the convoys were suspended for some time.
And then they were started again in September 1942 with PQ18.
But then the Germans attacked again with aircraft.
And there was no scattering this time.
But the aircraft were very effective.
And well together.
On one particular day during PQ 18, no less than 10 of the merchant ships were sunk.
And it would have been much worse.
There was a moment when, When the aircraft were approaching, this particular convoy was protected for the first time by an aircraft carrier.
And there was a time when the aircraft were approaching, when they hoped to find the aircraft carrier, think it and then think the rest of the convoy.
But by some lucky chance, one of the reconnaissance planes responded, being flown by the Germans.
The equipment homing in the aircraft happened to break down.
And so they never found on that day, they never found the aircraft carrier.
And so it escaped.
And that's how the tide turned.
If they'd found that carrier and sunk it Well, the rest of the convoy might have been at the mercy of those aircraft.
There were about 45 aircraft making that one attack.
And it would have been a very difficult situation for the convoy if the carrier had been sunk.
Okay, so that was a pivotal moment.
And then the convoys continued, as you sort of outlined earlier, through the rest of the war.
I want to just think about...
The broad picture, because you said at the start of the conversation that the battle of the Arctic is kind of a bit overlooked against some of the other more famous theaters of the Second World War.
Tell me what you think about the significance of the Arctic convoys.
How much did it influence the outcome of the war?
How much material got through to Russia for starters?
Well, the numbers are quite impressive.
In the arctic convoys there were about four million tons of cargo taken via the arctic to the soviet union, including a large proportion of the 5 000 tanks and 7 000 aircraft odd supplied by the british.
However, after the war, the Russians, during the Cold War they tried to argue that the Arctic convoys and indeed the other routes that were used were not a great help.
They helped, but they weren't a substantial help.
They wouldn't have made a difference.
So even though 12000 tanks, 22000 aircraft and 375000 trucks were taken, the Russians were saying, actually it didn't really make the difference.
However, I would say that that's contradicted by what happened in real time, because Stalin, whenever the convoys were suspended and it happened several times, not just after PQ-17, but also during 1943, the subsequent year Stalin and the London Soviet Union ambassador would protest very, very strongly that the Arctic convoys had to be restarted as quickly as possible.
And they said exactly what they needed.
And in fact, Khrushchev, who was an acting officer at Stalingrad, after the war, when he wrote his memoirs, he said that The convoys were very important because Stalingrad might never have been won, you know, the Battle of Stalingrad might never have been won by the State Union had it not been for the trucks, not the tanks and the aircraft, but the trucks that were used and had been supplied on the Arctic convoys. to enable the Russians to surround the Germans, which was the whole reason why the counterattack by the Soviet Union succeeded.
So there's a real example about how a crucial battle was won thanks to the Arctic convoys.
And you've got in your book.
You've got a paragraph which talks about this sort of little ditty that Britain-America fought to the last Soviet soldier, this view that really we in the West were relying on the bloodshed of the Soviets for the final victory.
So how far does What you've been talking about in terms of the Arctic convoys and the importance of what they delivered to the USSR nuance that for you, do you think?
Since the Cold War, there have been historians Russian historians who've contributed to the controversy.
And they've said, for example, there's one called Mikhail Supran who's come up and said well, the percentage of tanks that was provided during the early times, during the earliest convoys, you know, up until the end of 1942 or mid-1942, was quite substantial.
He quoted a figure of about 35% of the tanks produced up to that period were Allied, Allied tanks.
That's quite a big number.
And 17% of the aircraft supplied were from the Allies.
So, At various times during the war, you could say that the arms supplied were crucial.
And although the figures were much higher after 1942, the large supplies that went afterwards.
That was at a time when the Russians were making more of their own material.
But there's also the point that when the Russians did make their own material, they were also using, to a large extent, some of the materials supplied by the Allies.
So, for example, there's another Russian historian who said well, a lot of the aluminium that was used to make the tank engines and the aircraft was supplied by the Allies, and they would never have been able to produce so many of their own arms had it not been for the Allies.
So there is a kind of controversy that's now tipping back to saying that it was important.
That was author and historian Hugh C. Magmontafiore in conversation with David Musgrove.
His book is Battle of the Arctic, the Maritime Epic of World War II on big lives.
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