Battle of the Atlantic · United Kingdom and United States vs Germany
Convoy PQ 17
27 June 1942 – 28 July 1942
An Arctic convoy of 35 merchant ships bound for Archangel was ordered to scatter on 4 July when the Admiralty believed Tirpitz was at sea. Stripped of its cruiser and destroyer cover, the convoy was picked off by U-boats and aircraft over the following week. Twenty-four were sunk, the worst convoy loss of the war.
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Day by day
— PQ 17 sails
Thirty-five merchant ships leave Hvalfjord for Archangel with a close escort of six destroyers, corvettes, trawlers and two anti-aircraft ships under Commander Broome. Rear-Admiral Hamilton's four cruisers cover them to the east of Bear Island, and the Home Fleet under Admiral Tovey, with Duke of York, Washington and the carrier Victorious, waits further west; none of them may go far into the Barents Sea, where the German airfields are. The ice edge is far north in high summer, so the convoy can be routed well clear of Norway, but the sun never sets and there is nowhere to hide.
— Scatter
The convoy is shadowed from 1 July and attacked by torpedo bombers on the 4th, losing three ships. That evening the Admiralty, believing from silent intelligence that Tirpitz has sailed for it, signals in three messages of rising urgency: the cruisers are to withdraw at high speed and the convoy is to scatter. Broome takes his destroyers west with Hamilton, and thirty-odd merchant ships are left alone in the Barents Sea. Tirpitz did sail, briefly, on the 5th, and was recalled without firing a shot.
— The killing
The U-boats and the Ju 88s and He 111s hunt the scattered ships one at a time through the long daylight, and twelve go down on the 5th alone. Some captains run north to the ice and creep east along it; others make for the Matochkin Strait in Novaya Zemlya and try to work down the coast in fog. Of 35 ships that sailed, 24 are sunk, with 153 men and most of the tanks, aircraft and lorries in their holds.
— Archangel
The survivors come in over the following fortnight, some by way of Matochkin Strait and the Russian coast, and eleven of the thirty-five reach Archangel. It is the worst convoy loss of the war and it stops the Arctic convoys until September. The German heavy ships never came near the merchantmen; the damage was done by the order that took the escort away.
