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Arctic convoys

 

In spite of the first successes, Atlantic routes became highly dangerous: in the biennium 1941-42 the german submarines sank more ship than England could build (87). The U-boot seemed to be a pack of wolves behind easy quarries, from theis bases in Norway. But U-boot was not the unique german naval force: at the beginning of 1942, to maximize their presence in nordic waters, they started building an important fleet from the norwegian ports. The fear of the british admiralty was directed maily to half a dozen of new units: among them, the pocket battleship “Lutzow”, the Scharnhorst mounting cannon of 11,1’’ with a 2,000 crew, and the Tirpiz, twin ship of the Bismark, a naval fortess of 35,000 tons with 16’’ cannons.
 
The 1942 was definitively the worse year for allies (88): during that year the Royal Navy lost the cruisers Edingurgh and Trinidad, plus five destroyers, four minesweepers, one sub and one armed vessel. The losses in civil goods were also huge, with approximatively eighty freights sunk in a dozen of convoys. Particularly tragic was the episode of PQ17; it sailed from Reykjavik the 27th of june 1942, but it was intercepted by german u-boots, which started a deadly attack. In the desperate attempt of reducing the losses, the british admiralty gave order to disperse the convoy, but it resulted in no help. Twenty-two allied ship were lost, from a total of 35, from 5 to 10 june . It was one of the most successful attack in the North Atlantic, which costed the Allies 430 tanks, 210 airplanes, 3,350 jeeps and other units plus 100,000 in other supplies.

Also the Icelandics came been involved they in spite of from the precarietà of the waters that habitually furrowed: in the war years 32 fishings boat came attacked, of which 18 sunk, and 138 murdered sailors. The Icelandic boats moreover drew in except 1.655 are shipwrecked of various nationalities (89).

 
Even if the offensive role of the logistic bases in Iceland was not yet developing an offensive role, much more important was the role of strategic defence. Iceland became the gathering point for the allied artic convoys, with the use of a large amount of meanings, covered by air and naval defences. In this way, they maintained an open cannel of communication between USA and UK, and with Russia. In 1942 not less than 19 convoys reached the russian ports of the north.
 
Allied tried to push the german fleet closer to the continental coasts, in France, Norway and Germany itself, while RAF got more aggressive in bombing the naval bases in Saint-Nazaire, Brest, Brema and other harbours.
 
 
convoglio PQ17
Il convoglio PQ17 avvistato dalla Luftwaffe il 1 luglio 1947
 
 
The germans had no safe points in a large area, from the american continent to the Great Britain, so they could not count on air patrol. The strategic naval block tried by the nazis caused great damages to the allies, but in the long run it got less efficient: the germans had one single arm in the North Atlantic, the U-boots, while the allied had an integrated system: aviation, navy, radar, sonar (90), and the defence of logistic bases with troops.
Slowly, the allied were able to change the balance of powers, and the german successes of 1942 were not repeated, with a negative trends everytime more evident for the Axis, not only in this area.

 

 
 
 U-Boot affondati nel Nord Atlantico da attacchi aerei, 1939-1945 D. Brown, C. Shores, K. Macksey, The history ofthe air warfare, Inghilterra, 1976
(in attesa di una migliore risoluzione)
 
 
Note al testo:
87: Cfr. Maldwyn Jones, Storia degli Stati Uniti, Bompiani, Milano 1999, p.462.
88: Per uno studio completo sulle perdite da entrambe le parti vedi anche Ruegg, Russia 1941-45, World Ship Society, UK, 1992.
89: Cfr in allegato B il "tributo di sangue" islandese.
90: La tecnologia sonar venne impiegata anche per i cosiddetti sistemi SOSUS, ovvero lunghi cavi sottomarini dotati di idrofoni in collegamento con stazioni di intercettazione.   
 
 
 

 

 

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