Arctic Convoys 1941 – 1945. By Richard Woodman. Pen and Sword Publishing, Barnsley, 2019.
Reviewed by Greg Swinden
There is an old saying that states ‘When you’re on a good thing – Stick to it!’ and Richard Woodman’s Arctic Convoys 1941-1945 is a good thing. First Published in 1994 it has been reprinted seven more times with the latest version in 2019. It is the ‘definitive history’ of the four long hard years of Allied convoys making the run to north Russian ports bringing nearly four million tonnes of vehicles, tanks, aircraft, artillery pieces, ammunition and other equipment and stores to keep Russia in the war against Germany.
The Russians claim that they were responsible for the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany; with the Allied campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and the Low Countries secondary in the grand scheme of things. While that is another story it is unlikely that the Soviet forces could have effectively gone on the offensive against the Germans in 1943 without the materiel brought to them by the Arctic convoys. When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, in June 1941, German forces quickly destroyed large quantities of Russian aircraft, tanks, vehicles, artillery and other equipment. Winston Churchill was desperate to keep the Soviet Union in the war and provide Stalin with his needs for materiel support; even with the Russian leader’s increasingly impossible demands for more support and begrudging, if any, thanks.
Arctic Convoys analyses the strategic, operational, tactical and personal aspects of this bitter campaign to ‘keep Russia in the war’. Many will know the tragedy of convoy PQ 17 but it was just one of dozens of convoys to Murmansk and Archangel (which then had to run the gauntlet home in the reverse QP convoys). Describing each convoy in detail Woodman analyses the good, the bad and the indifferent. Many of the early convoys sailed without loss while the later ones were subject to increasing and determined attack by German aircraft, surface units and U-Boats. The effective German use of the battleship Tirpitz, and other heavy units, as a ‘fleet-in-being’ also required the Allies to divert much needed resources to protect the Russian convoys.
Additionally the reader is constantly reminded that not only were the Germans the enemy. The weather, within the Arctic Circle, was just as dangerous with the effects of the cold and ice on men and machinery in winter and the almost constant daylight in summer offering no respite from enemy attack. At times the frequent bad weather caused the convoys to become widely dispersed allowing isolated vessels to be more easily ‘picked off’ by U-Boats and the Luftwaffe.
Woodman, as a former Merchant Mariner, describes life in the cargo vessels well but also discusses the animosity that often existed between the Royal Navy and their merchant navy brethren. At times it would appear merchant ships were left unsupported as the warships left to hunt U-Boats and German destroyers leaving the cargo vessels actually more exposed to attack. Additionally the distant escorts, heavy units provided in case Tirpitz and her escorts entered the fray, remained far too distant to be of use. There is a fine line between staying with the convoy and preventing the enemy closing or keeping the threat as far away as possible; and at times the Royal Navy did not always get it right as evidenced by the debacle of Convoy PQ 17.
Woodman’s history of the Arctic convoys does raise a major issue. Despite the heroic actions and heavy losses incurred by the Allied navies and merchant marine (it was not just a British affair with ships from Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway, Greece, Poland and the Netherlands involved and manned by mariners from virtually every Allied nation) was the Arctic convoy route really worth it?
Losses were heavy in ships and men and a great quantity of the cargo never made it through. The Arctic route is the best known supply route to Russia, mainly because of the heavy losses incurred, but it was not the most important! Of the 16,366,747 tonnes of equipment and food shipped to Russia less than a quarter moved via the Arctic Sea. Another quarter moved via the longer, but often much safer southern route, via the Cape of Good Hope to the Persian Gulf and then to Russia by road through Iran and Azerbaijan (noting the German advances only reached as far east as Stalingrad). More importantly over half of the cargo, mainly from the United States and Canadian west coasts, went via the Pacific Ocean route. The ships proceeding via the Sea of Okhotsk, unloading at Vladivostok, and the cargo then moved west via the trans-Siberian railway. Yes a longer but a much safer route even with a belligerent Japan to the south (noting Russia did not declare war on Japan until mid-1945).
In the years following the end of World War II some senior Russian officials begrudgingly admitted that without the 16 million tonnes of war materiel, provided by the west, they would have struggled to defeat the Germans. Additionally the loss of life would have been much heavier than the already staggering estimate of 26 million Russian dead. In mid-1941 Britain was forced to use the northern Arctic convoy system in order to keep Russia in the war. However after the United States had joined the conflict, and the tide of the war had turned against the Axis powers, in 1943, enabling the Mediterranean Sea transit to replace the need to go via the Cape of Good Hope, why did Britain persist with the Arctic convoys vice the longer but much safer routes via the Persian Gulf and Vladivostok?
The answer was of course a political one, vice a military one, even with senior British officers often questioning the value of the Arctic convoys. Richard Woodman has done an excellent job describing the Arctic Convoys from Churchill’s political decision-making to the stokehold of tramp steamer at Murmansk. That the Arctic convoys helped win the war is of no doubt but was it worth the ‘Butchers Bill’.
About the Author: Richard Martin Woodman was born in the United Kingdom in 1944 and went to sea as a 16 year old deck cadet in the Merchant Navy. After qualifying as watch-keeping officer he served in a variety of ships (including trawlers, square rigged sailing vessels, cargo-liners and ocean-going weather ships). He spent 11 years in command at sea and retired in 1997.
Since then he devoted his time to writing full-time with a mixture of nautical fiction novels and non-fiction studies including a five volume history of the British Merchant Navy and three books studying convoys in World War II. He also serves on the Corporate Board of Trinity House (a charity dedicated to safeguarding shipping and seafarers) and still finds time for yacht sailing.
Richard Woodman was awarded the Marine Society’s Harmer Medal in 1978; the Society for Nautical Research’s Anderson Medal in 2005 and was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) in the 2014 New Year Honours List for his service to Trinity House.
