The concise encyclopedia of world war II 2 volumes (greenwood encyclopedias of modern world wars) ( PDFDrive ) 343

Convoys

interception by powerful warships such as “Tirpitz,” “Scharnhorst,” “Lützow,”
“Hipper,” and “Admiral Scheer.” Arctic convoys were twice suspended as naval
demands in other theaters drew escorts away from the passage around northern
Norway in 1942, to even more desperate duty around Malta, then to protect the
TORCH landings in North Africa. A third suspension of Arctic convoys was instituted from March to November 1943, as the U-boat war in the Atlantic crested
and Allied navies were stretched to escort ship-bound armies from North Africa
to Sicily, thence to Italy.
Northern convoys also faced greater danger from German aircraft over longer
stretches of their routes. As soon as feasible they were provided with anti-aircraft
escort ships and a few catapult-launched fighters. So important were the early
Arctic convoys that some British aircraft were allowed by Moscow to base on Soviet
territory. Arctic convoy escorts included surviving ships of several conquered northern nations, including Norway. Some were British warships with exiled Norwegian
or other European crews. But most ships—surface escorts and merchantmen—were
British. A few Soviet surface escorts joined some convoys. Several Soviet submarines also patrolled in support of British submarines, on the watch as late as 1943
for German surface raiders hiding at anchor in Norwegian waters. Some Soviet
Navy submarines traveled across two oceans to get to the Barents Sea from their
prewar assignment with the Soviet Pacific Fleet. They traveled down the west coast
of North America to cross through the Panama Canal, resupplied at U.S. and British bases along the way, passing through the Panama Canal into the Atlantic and
thence to Soviet bases around the Barents Sea.
Loss rates on the treacherous Arctic routes in Europe were higher than any
other convoy route, at nearly 8 percent. That aggregate figure for shipping losses
meant further loss of many thousands of fighters, tanks, trucks, and huge amounts
of raw material produced by the Western Allies and shipped out as Lend-Lease,
sunk before it reached Soviet ports. Half a world away, American Lend-Lease convoys traveled up the Pacific coast of the United States before plying the rough
and frigid waters of the Bering Sea, en route to Vladivostok. Many convoys made
long legs of either northern route shrouded in the 24-hour blackness of northern winter nights. During summer, however, they were illuminated 24 hours per
day as they passed over pale seas lit by the midnight sun. Losses on the northern
Pacific route were insignificant compared to the high Atlantic, in part because
the Imperial Japanese Navy preferred to hoard its highly capable submarines for

fleet actions rather than disperse them as commerce raiders. Japan also respected
U.S. and other neutral ships heading into Soviet ports before December 1941.
Thereafter, the IJN feared the consequence of provoking Moscow by attacking
U.S. Lend-Lease convoys, and abjured. That meant a great deal of war matériel
was transhipped to Soviet Pacific ports, thence by the Trans-Siberian Railway to
the Eastern Front where Russians used it to kill German soldiers. As with Atlantic convoys, as more and better small escorts became available in the Pacific later
in the war they reinforced convoy protection. Escort carriers proved invaluable in
both theaters. Lasting improvement in Allied convoy security arrived in the north
once German air power was mostly bled out of Norway by transfers of Luftwaffe

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