wrenching news to the merchant fleet of cargo capacity, 3,300 trucks , 200 aircommodore: craft, 435 tanks and 100,000 tons of And then suddenly out ofthe blue came other war materiel. The crews of two this signal to scatter, which shook us all to vessels , the American Carlton and the core. We'd got no reason to believe British Earlton, were located by Gerthere was anything to scatter about, but man air and sea forces and became POWs. this could only mean one thing, thatTirpi tz Because the German Kriegsmarine and was here,shewasonthe horizon. Up went Luftwaffe were separate and indepenall our glasses, and! remember expecting dent military forces, I wondered how someone to say, there she is, there's a gun- their activities were coordinated in a flash , something like that. joint operation and whetherthere was any I hoisted the signal to scatter, there rivalry in claiming successes against Conwas nothing else for me to do, it was an voy PQ-17. I was also curious as to the order from the Admiralty. As soon as I'd consequences to each side of the other's hoisted it, I looked round to the Commo- interception and decoding of radio sigdore, he didn't seem to be repeating it. So nal s. In response to my questions, ComI thought, well, there's no time to lose , she mander Oesten wrote to me as follows might be on us, and I shot into the convoy on February 15, 1992: in Keppel , went alongside the Commo1. The British side, we now know, dore and switched on my loudhailer. I saw was in the position to decipher German wireless communicathe Commodore standtions during different ing there in the wing of the bridge, and I periods without detold him about the lay ; during other pescattering and he simriods with a delay of ply couldn't believe it. va riable interva ls Yousee, we' djustbeen ranging between 24 through the air attack, hours and so me we'd done jolly well, weeks. There were everybody was on times , also, where their toes and full of they had blackout beans, and there was periods of half a year or more. The German this sudden signal. Look, I said, this is side was convinced more or less until the true, and he sort of came to and he finally end of the war that hoisted the signal. I their coding machine "Enigma" was safe said, I'm sorry about and could not be dethis, it looks like being Jurgen Oesten, on his return Ji-om coded by the other a bloody business' and his final wartime command in 1945. side. On the other he said something like hand, the German B-Dienst (Observagood-bye and good hunting. Although the decision was not re- tion Service) was in the position to vealed to the public until after the war, it decipher and read, during longer pericaused widespread debate in naval circles ods of the war, secondary communicaand some friction among the Allies. tions from Allied tugs, airplanes, cargo Marshal Stalin was reported to have been ships, etc. This gave them enough clues, outraged. Ironically, the rightly feared for instance, to predict or report the sailTirpitz and consorts, having put to sea, ing dates of convoys and other informawere recalled on the evening of July 5 by tion concerning fleet operations. the German high command, who remem2. There was no rivalry between Navy bered the fate of her sister battleship Bis- and Air Force, and I did coordinate the marck, sunk in a running fight with British cooperation of the staffs oh both sides. ships and aircraft a year before. Submarines sank 9 ships, the air force Three ships in the convoy took tem- sank 8 ships; in addition, submarines porary refuge in an Arctic ice field, and sank another 7 ships which had been later reached Archangel safely . Several damaged by the air force . 3. Both sides had a certain respect as reached the island of Novaya Zemlya before being sunk. Only eleven vessels far as the use of capital ships in the eluded their attackers and reached Arch- Barents Sea was concerned. Both had the angel. The remaining24 ships were sunk, intention to keep the risk within reasonwith a loss of 153 seamen , 150,000 tons able limits. The British had to consider the
superior Tirpitz battleship and the shorebased German aircraft. The Germans, on the other hand, had to get Hitler's permission in order to make use of any major group of capital ships. This permission was not granted if there was,for instance, anAllied aircraft carrier in the vicinity. In this case, the Germans were prepared and had concentrated both groups of capital ships in A/ten Fjord. The British were not at all sure whether the Germans were still there. The BritishNaval Intelligence could not guarantee this to the First Sea Lord Admiral Pound on ] uly 4. For this reason, Pound decided to withdraw the cruiser group and the escort destroyers and to scatter the convoy on the 4th ofJuly. In the meantime, submarines and airplanes played hell with the defenseless scattered convoy, and the capital ships could leave the work to the submarines and aircraft. This is really all I have to say about PQ-17, and I do not intend to try to blame anybody for mistakes-neither the Germans, f or their lack of initiative in the operation of their capital ships, nor the British, for their misjudgment of the situation and f or abandoning the convoy. Despite virulent complaints from Marshal Stalin, the British and US governments elected to delay the sailing of Convoy PQ-1 8 until later in 1942, when the long Arctic nights would afford some protection for Allied convoys. As a fact of history, the PQ operation continued intermittently until the end of the war in Europe. Winston Churchill, Britain ' s wartime prime mini ster, later put his fingeron the effect of these German ships which never entered into action on the scene, remarking that "their mere presence in these waters had directly contributed to a remarkable success for them."
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SEA HISTORY 62, SUMMER 1992
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During the Cold War between the late 1940s and mid-1980s, neither East nor West were much inclined to remember their wartime cooperation. However, in recent years, even before the demise of Communism, the Russian Government struck a commemorative Medal of Appreciation, which was made available to all Allied navy and merchant seamen who made the infamous "Murmansk Run" during the dark days of World War II. D Lt. Cmdr. McCormick is author of Two Years Behind the Mast, a memoir of his experiences while serving as a US Navy gunnery officer on American merchant ships in WWII (available from NMHS) .