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Dowding predicted that the convoy would get to Murmansk unscathed. He told his ship captains that the convoy would be “no joyride,” but there would be cover from the British and American fleets. Meanwhile, PQ-17 got organized at Reykjavik with Commodore Jack Dowding in charge as convoy commodore, flying his broad pendant on the freighter River Afton. president, served as gunnery officer on one of the destroyers, USS Mayrant.
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Beyond that would be Tovey’s main fleet, consisting of the battleships HMS Duke of York and USS Washington, and the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, two cruisers, and 14 destroyers. Accompanying him were the heavy cruisers HMS Norfolk, USS Wichita, and USS Tuscaloosa it would be the first time Americans had directly participated in running an Arctic convoy. The close escort would be supported by a distant cover group, forbidden to go beyond Bear Island, under Rear Admiral Louis “Turtle” Hamilton, aboard the heavy cruiser HMS London. That plane could be launched off its catapult, but when out of fuel, the pilot had to parachute back-there was no possibility of recovery.īroome was one of the Royal Navy’s more colorful characters, a witty cartoonist, and a skilled and resolute fighting sailor. All Broome had for air defense was a single CAM Merchant ship, Empire Tide, with its lone Hawker Hurricane fighter.
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The only thing lacking was an aircraft carrier because most of the escort carriers that would make history had still not been completed.
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The covering force for Convoy PQ-17 was a comprehensive group: three minesweepers, four trawlers, and a close escort group under Commander Jack Broome with six destroyers, four corvettes (one of them Free French), and two submarines. If the German ships sailed, the convoy would retreat or, at worst scatter, to avoid being caught all together. They decided that the convoy would only go straight through if the German ships were known to be in harbor or if the weather was bad. The British had a similar problem-they did not want to engage German surface ships without air cover. After the Bismarck fiasco, he was not taking any chances with his precious battleships. Yes, the fleet could sortie, but it could only engage if it had air superiority. When Adolf Hitler read this ambitious plan, the man who admitted to being a coward at sea got cold feet. The German Navy planned Operation Rösselsprung, or Knight’s Move, which would see the super-battleship Tirpitz, the pocket battleships Lützow and Admiral Scheer, the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, and a brace of destroyers sortie from Altenfjord in Norway to attack the passing convoy as soon as it was located. But 15,000 tons had just been allocated and delivered, and now the big ships could take part. They were a veteran team that had already savaged British and American convoys to Russia.Īlso on hand were groups of U-boats to knife the convoys and track them, but the next convoy would face the biggest stick of all, the long-dormant German surface fleet, which had been unable to sail due to the perennial shortage of fuel oil. The big punch was his 103 Junkers Ju-88 bombers, but he also had 42 Heinkel He-111 torpedo bombers and 30 Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers. The primary tool was General Hans-Jurgen Stumpff’s Luftflotte 3, which consisted of 264 aircraft. Convoy PQ-17 would help to resolve that-its cargo included more than 300 tanks.īut the Germans were equally determined to stop the convoys, and from their Norwegian bases, they were well placed to do it. With Leningrad besieged, German tanks driving on his oilfields in the Caucasus, and most of his industrial regions in Nazi hands, he needed Allied supplies badly. Stalin was the most desperate of the three Allied leaders that month. Japan had conquered most of Southeast Asia and was taking dead aim at Australia. Hitler’s panzers were advancing through Russia. Convoy PQ-17 would sail into one of the greatest disasters and controversies of World War II.īy June 1942, the Allies’ fortunes were at their lowest ebb of the war. Now, on June 27, 1942, a total of 33 British and American merchant ships set sail from Reykjavik, Iceland, bound for the Soviet port of Murmansk through the icy, U-boat-infested Barents Sea. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had made the promise to Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and Admiral Sir John Tovey of the Royal Navy had to keep it: to sail three convoys loaded with critical supplies from Britain to Russia every two months, with 25 to 35 ships in each convoy.