By the end of August, the British Admiralty was ready to sail convoys PQ-18 and QP-14. Because German reconnaissance aircraft were patrolling over Iceland, where most of the previous convoys had sailed from, it was decided to sail PQ-18 from Loch Ewe on the northwest coast of Scotland.
On September 2, the forty-four ships in PQ-18 under Rear Admiral E. K. Boddam-Whetham serving as a commodore set out for Arkhangelsk. In company were the two tankers Gray Ranger and Black Ranger for refueling the escorts and the rescue ship Copeland. As soon as the long line of ships cleared the Outer Hebrides, they encountered the full force of an Atlantic gale, which delayed their progress. They were thirty-six hours late at the rendezvous with the ocean escort.
The ocean escort comprised the two anti-aircraft ships (Ulster Queen and Alynbank), three destroyers, four corvettes, and four trawlers, all of which joined the merchant ships on September 7. The escort was augmented on September 9 when Rear Admiral Robert L. Burnett in command of the fighting destroyer escort, flying his flag in the anti-aircraft cruiser Scylla (commanded by Captain Ian Macintyre), joined the convoy.
For the first time the escort aircraft carrier Avenger sailed with the convoy, carrying twelve Sea Hurricane fighters and three Swordfish antisubmarine aircraft. However, the Hurricanes were of the oldest type, and as Admiral Tovey remarked to Churchill, it was ironic that transports crammed with the latest type of Hurricanes for Russia had to be protected by their outworn predecessors.
Additional cover was provided for Convoy QP-14 by a cruiser force under Vice Admiral Stuart Bonham-Carter, consisting of his flagship Norfolk, Suffolk, and London with two destroyers, which operated to the westward of Spitsbergen between September 17-20, in support of Cumberland, Sheffield, and Eclipse, which were landing reinforcements and stores for the Norwegian post at Barentsburg.
Four submarines were stationed close off the coast of Norway to intercept enemy ships going north from Narvik. These were soon joined by three more submarines, forming a shifting patrol line to cover the passage of the convoys east of Bear Island.
In addition to the Avenger’s aircraft, improved antisubmarine protection, and reconnaissance by Coastal Command aircraft from Iceland and Russia, the convoys had the support of the two squadrons of torpedo-carrying Hampden bombers based in Russia against possible attack by surface ships in the Barents Sea.
The number of warships assigned to cover PQ-18 and QP-14 totaled seventy-six, a massive accumulation of firepower, but the Germans were ready for them. As mentioned in Chapter 7, Jimmy Catanach’s Hampden of RAAF 455 Squadron crashed in Norway, and the Germans found papers referring to the radio organization for PQ-18 and QP-14. This information, when combined with an intercepted signal from the Soviet 95th Naval Flight Regiment, gave the Germans a good picture of the convoys’ routes and timetables. The Luftwaffe, whose torpedo bomber strength had increased to ninety-two, was ready and anxious to try to repeat its success against PQ-17. Also, between eight and ten U-boats formed a scouting line across the convoys’ projected paths.
German reconnaissance aircraft located PQ-18 late on September 8, but the Germans soon lost sight of it. Thanks to low-lying cloud and occasional fog banks, reconnaissance planes did not find it again until 1320 hours on September 12. However, U-boats had managed to gain and maintain contact during this period, although they were kept at a respectful distance by the Avenger’s antisubmarine aircraft, which made several attacks on them and assisted the escort ships in their attacks. It was estimated that there were now no fewer than eight U-boats around the convoy, and the destroyers had a busy time fending them off. In one of these attacks, the destroyer Faulknor sank U-88 at 2100 hours on September 12.
The following day at 0855, U-408 and U-589 avenged the loss of their comrade by sinking the freighter Stalingrad and tanker Oliver Ellsworth, in the outside starboard column. U-408 fired three torpedoes, one of which hit Stalingrad on the starboard side at the coal bunker. She sank in less than four minutes. The starboard lifeboats were destroyed by the explosion, leaving only the portside boats for crewmembers and passengers to use. Adding to the loss, one of the portside boats capsized when reaching the water. Sixteen crewmembers and five passengers were lost. Master A. Sakharov was the last to leave the Stalingrad. He spent forty minutes in the freezing water before being rescued.
One of the torpedoes hit Oliver Ellsworth (Master Otto Ernest Buford), igniting her cargo of oil. Her crew immediately abandoned ship. But the vessel still had headway, which caused both starboard boats to swamp. One of the portside boats struck a raft and sank. Due to the quick reaction of the British rescue ship Copeland and HMS St. Kenan, forty-three crewmembers and eighteen gunners were picked up; one armed guard drowned.
The U-boats had scored; now it was the Luftwaffe’s turn. The first attack came at 1500 hours when half a dozen Ju-88s dropped their bombs through gaps in the clouds from a height of about 4,000 feet, with no loss to either the convoy or themselves. This was only a taste of what was to come.
Half an hour later, thirty Ju-88s and fifty-five He-Ill torpedo bombers carried out a mass attack, the latter employing the Golden Comb technique, approaching in line abreast, 100 to 150 yards apart at a height of about 35 feet above the sea in perfect formation. Each aircraft carried two torpedoes, and all were dropped simultaneously, threatening the convoy with 170 torpedoes.
The pilots launched their torpedoes only at the precise moment when they had just enough space to pull out before crashing into the ships’ masts. Riddled by anti-aircraft fire, some of them caught fire and crashed into the sea, but none failed to press home the attack. Ships fired on the planes, the trajectories of their shells crossing the fire of the targeted ships and forming a net of fire over the sea.
Above the deafening din of the ack-ack could be heard the explosions of ships hit by torpedoes. In every ship, the crew was certain that it was quite impossible that their vessel could come unscathed through this inferno.
For Boddam-Whetham, convoy commodore, the contingency plan for massed torpedo attack was a simple 45-degree alteration of course, either to port or starboard using the appropriate international sound signal backed up by a single flag hoist. Its efficacy relied upon good lookouts, prompt response, and coordinated repetition of the signal down the columns. The commodore made his port-turn signal, but the ninth and tenth columns failed to respond due to the sheer size of PQ-18. The outer starboard ships failed to execute the turn and caught the worst of the attack.
One plane flew so close to Wacosta that the torpedo failed to hit the water and instead dropped through her No. 2 hatch, exploding inside her hull. The ship had been slowing down, her engines disabled by the terrible explosion of the ship immediately ahead. Leading the ninth column, the Empire Stevenson was suddenly enveloped in a tower of flame and smoke, which, when it cleared, left only an oily slick on the water. This was the dreadful penalty of carrying explosives. Although no one from the Empire Stevenson survived, all the crew of the Wacosta were rescued.
Similarly loaded with tanks and war materials, the Macbeth, second ship in the tenth column, succumbed to two torpedoes, while the Oregonian ahead of her capsized rapidly after three torpedoes stove in her whole starboard side. Only twenty-seven of her fifty-five-man crew were rescued by the St. Kenan, many of them in a fearful condition having swallowed oil and been immersed in the freezing sea.
Macbeth’s crew was rescued by Offa, whose commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander R. A. Ewing, ran her alongside the Panamanian freighter, so close that several of the destroyer’s guardrails and stanchions were crushed. Torpedoes also hit the Russian ship Sukhona, as well as Afrikander, a Panamanian ship chartered to the U.S. Maritime Commission. Both were abandoned as they sank, their crews efficiently picked up by the close escort ships. Although the rescues were a bit of good news, the day was going poorly for the convoy. With the exception of the Mary Luckenbach, the outer two columns of PQ-18 had been annihilated.
The loss of the two outer columns was by no means the end of it all. More losses would come. Leading an inner port column, Empire Beaumont was set on fire after a torpedo struck in the only hold not containing explosives. The ship was successfully abandoned. Less fortunate, however, were the crew of the John Penn. The three men on duty in her engine room were killed when two torpedoes exploded in their midst.
Amid the confusion, Copeland, the trawlers, and the motor minesweepers picked up the merchant sailors from their rafts, lifeboats, and the freezing sea. Daneman, one of the four trawlers, was steaming at the rear of the convoy. Seaman Gunner G. R. Lunn, one of the survivors from Empire Stevenson, wrote later:
One of these four seamen couldn’t swim and we put it down to his threshing madly about in the sea which kept him afloat and warm enough to survive. Another older man was about to be rescued when the planes attacked again and we had to get under way and leave him to drown. I can still see him, cold in the water, trying to reach one of our sailor’s hands to get a grip so that he could be pulled aboard to safety, but we were being attacked by a torpedo-bomber and the skipper rang full-ahead.
We had to leave him and watch his bald head and red football jersey, vanish behind us; as we were the last ship in the convoy he would never he picked up.
St. Kenan rescued sixty-four survivors during and after the mass torpedo-bomber attack. These included survivors from the American SS Oregonian. Ten of her survivors were snatched from the sea, all in horrible condition after swallowing oil and water and being plunged into the icy seas.
Among Sukhona’s survivors were a man and his wife who had suffered several broken ribs. Their two children were not among the survivors.
Eight ships had been lost in less than fifteen minutes. Luftwaffe losses amounted to only five aircraft.
The following day, September 14, began with another loss for the convoy. Returning to station from an ASDIC contact, HMS Impulsive obtained a second echo and had begun a run in to depth-charge it, but before she could, U-457 (Korvettenkapitän Karl Brandenburg) torpedoed the tanker Athel Templar. Impulsive then lost contact as U-457 dove under the convoy amid the noise of the propeller races and escaped.
Although she was hit in the engine room, the tanker’s volatile cargo did not explode. But fire soon made it impossible for her crew to do anything more than abandon ship. The master, forty-two crewmembers, and eighteen gunners were picked up by Copeland and Off a, one of whose crewmen, James Green, jumped into the icy sea in an abortive attempt to rescue a drowning boy. Green was recovered and revived with difficulty after his exertions. Another sixteen Athel Templar crewmembers later died from their injuries.
HMS Onslow, following a sighting by one of Avenger’s Swordfish, bagged U-589, which was stalking the convoy. At 1235 hours, the Luftwaffe again joined the battle with about twenty torpedo aircraft targeting Avenger and Scylla. The attack cost the Germans another eleven planes, but the losses didn’t deter them from further attacks.
As the initial wave of torpedo bombers in this attack disappeared over the horizon, a dozen Ju-88s appeared overhead and started dive-bombing. Several ships, including the Avenger, made narrow escapes while the Germans lost another aircraft. Almost immediately, twenty-five torpedo aircraft came in from ahead, dividing as before into two groups, one of which made a dead set for the Avenger. Avenger had ten fighters in the air, and these, together with the ship’s guns, shot down nine more enemy aircraft, but one ship, Mary Luckenbach in the starboard wing column, was torpedoed. She blew up with such force that Nathaniel Greene right behind her in the column was covered with debris and several of her deck cargo crates burst. Sublieutenant Robert Hughes witnessed the explosion from his gun director on Scylla.
Tracers began to fly upward from all over the ship as a plane skimmed the masts. Oerlikon gunners lay backward, strapped to their guns, the muzzles pointing skyward and slewing as the gunners scrabbled the deck for purchase to move sideways. The plane kept on steadily though shells kept hitting her, and headed for the Mary Luckenbach on our starboard side. She headed on pursued by a few shells, and other targets presented themselves. Suddenly there was a dull roar from starboard, and Freeman shouted and pointed. “Look !”
The Mary Luckenbach had gone. In her place a stupendous column of smoke was rocketing to heaven, and as we looked an immense glow lit the column, and great cerise, orange-and-yellow fragments arched outwards towards us.
“Oh, Good God Almighty,” prayed someone.
I shuddered in fear. “Oh, God,” I prayed. “Oh, God, why have you sent us here? What have we done, what have we done?”
“Duck!” came my voice from somewhere deep down, and five heads bent as in prayer, and perhaps we did pray.
Still we waited and the seconds flitted past, but there was no crash of metal on top of us. We raised our heads. Fluttering down into the director came large pieces of ash.
Mead caught a piece on his hand and smeared it into his palm. “Just like burnt paper,” he said quietly and wonderingly.
The great smoke column was still thousands of feet high and mushrooming out where it met the clouds. At its base flames still flickered, and the following ship was altering course to avoid them. The Mary Luckenbach had gone, and forty men had died. This was their memorial and the smear on Mead’s palm.
The death toll from Mary Luckenbach was forty crewmen and twenty-four armed guards. Incredibly, one man did survive. He was walking along the deck carrying a cup of coffee for the captain when the ship exploded. Next thing he knew, he was in the water a half mile away. Unfortunately, Hughes wasn’t able to record his name, just his story.
During this action, three Hurricanes were shot down by the convoy’s guns, but the pilots were saved. The final attack of the day began at 1430 hours when about twenty aircraft approached from astern and bombed intermittently through gaps in the cloud for about an hour. Despite the difficult conditions that provided only fleeting glimpses of the attackers, another aircraft was shot down.
The next morning, two large Russian destroyers, Gremyashchiy and Sokrushitelnyy, and two smaller ones, Uritski and Kuibyshev, joined the convoy escort screen. When rounding Cape Kanin at 0820 hours on September 18, twelve He-Ill torpedo aircraft delivered an attack from the starboard quarter of the convoy dropping their torpedoes at between 3,000 and 4,000 yards range. Although in the commodore’s opinion the ships had a good opportunity to avoid them, one ship, Kentucky, was hit. Fortunately no one was killed.
A similar attack an hour later was synchronized with a bombing attack by Ju-88s. Kentucky was hit again and sunk. All her crew got away safely. The Hurricane aircraft in the CAM ship Empire Morn shot down three aircraft and damaged another. The pilot then flew on and successfully landed at a Russian airfield with only four gallons of fuel left in his tank.
At last, on the evening of September 19, the convoy reached the Dvina River leading to Arkhangelsk. PQ-18 lost fourteen ships, more than a third of the total convoy, during the voyage.
Meanwhile, westbound QP-14 with twenty ships sailed from Arkhangelsk for Loch Ewe on September 13. With the convoy of fifteen ships were the rescue ships Zamalek and Rathlin. The commodore was J. C. K. Dowding, on board the Ocean Voice, which also was his ship in PQ-16. The close escort of the two anti-aircraft ships Palomares and Pozarica, two destroyers, four corvettes, three minesweepers, and three trawlers was under the command of Captain J. F. Crombie, R.N.
After the air battle around PQ-18 on the afternoon of September 16, Admiral Robert L. Burnett began transferring forces from PQ-18 to QP-14. He did this gradually in three groups so as to make it less obvious to the enemy. In addition to Scylla and her destroyer escort force, he took the aircraft carrier Avenger, the anti-aircraft ship Alynbank, the tankers Gray Ranger and Black Ranger, and the submarines P 615 and P 614.
The weather during the convoy’s passage through the Barents Sea was thick with patches of fog and intermittent snow squalls, which favored the defenders and hampered the work of the enemy shadowing aircraft. It was bitterly cold, too, and severe icing conditions impeded the work of the Avenger’s antisubmarine aircraft in maintaining constant air patrols around the convoy. Catalina aircraft working from the Kola Inlet assisted in the patrols.
As for the Kriegsmarine, instructions had been given to eight U-boats to patrol along a line 200 miles to the east of the passage between Bear Island and the South Cape of Spitzbergen, but by the time this line was established, the convoy was well to the west of it. When this was discovered from a report of a shadowing aircraft that caught sight of the convoy at 1100 hours on September 18, the U-boats took up the chase at full speed. Escorts sighted three of them astern and northeast of the convoy that afternoon.
The thick weather seemed to offer an excellent opportunity to throw the U-boats and Luftwaffe off the scent, and Burnett decided that when the convoy passed the South Cape of Spitzbergen on the morning of September 19, he would alter its course to take it up the west coast of Spitzbergen, which would increase its distance from the enemy airfields in north Norway.
The deception worked for twelve hours before the U-boats again found the convoy. Their first victim was the minesweeper Leda, stationed astern of the convoy. She was torpedoed and sunk by U-435 (Korvettenkapitän Siegfried Strelow) at 0520 hours on September 20, resulting in the loss of forty-six lives, including two merchant seamen survivors. Six others were among the eighty-six of the ship’s company who were rescued.
It was estimated that five submarines were in contact with the convoy. Counterattacks by destroyers and aircraft continued throughout the day, but without success. Then at 1720 hours, 11-255 (Kapitänleutnant Reinhart Reche) laced two torpedoes into the American freighter Silver Sword (Master Clyde Wellington Colbeth). The first struck in the bow, and the explosion destroyed the forward part of the bridge. The second hit the stern, blowing off the stern post, the propeller, and the rudder and causing the after magazine to explode. The seven officers, twenty-nine crewmen, twelve armed guards, and sixteen passengers abandoned ship in two lifeboats and one raft. Of the sixty-four survivors, fifty-five were picked up by the British rescue ship Rathlin and nine by the Zamalek, but one oiler later died aboard of wounds. The sixteen passengers aboard Silver Sword also had survived ships lost in PQ-17: fifteen from Honomu and one survivor from Peter Kerr, which had been sunk by German aircraft on July 5.
Silver Sword was one of the ships of Convoy PQ-17 that Lieutenant L. J. A. Gradwell of the trawler Ayrshire had preserved from destruction. It was tragic that a ship that had survived such great dangers should have been stricken when she was two thirds of the way back on the return trip.
In the afternoon of September 20, Admiral Burnett decided to detach the carrier Avenger and his flagship, the cruiser Scylla, to return to base independently because the convoy was now beyond the range of heavy air attack. He had requested aircraft from Coastal Command to take over the antisubmarine air patrols and so relieve the Avenger’s pilots, who were exhausted after ten days of continuous operations under extremely severe conditions. Burnett also considered that the U-boat threat was so great that it was inadvisable to retain these two valuable ships close by any longer.
After transferring his flag to the destroyer Milne (Captain I. M. R. Campbell, R.N.), the two ships parted company, but hardly had they disappeared over the horizon before U-703 (Kapitänleutnant Heinz Bielfeld) fired a spread of three torpedoes at the destroyer Somali, commanded by Lieutenant Commander C. D. Maud, R.N., at 1955 hours. One torpedo struck home. The explosion blew the torpedo tubes over the side and cut all of the port side main stringers so that the ship was held together only by the upper deck and starboard side as far as the keel. The port engine fell through the bottom of the ship, and the engine and gear rooms filled with water. The leaking bulkheads on either side were promptly shored up and seemed to be holding, but there was no light or power except from an unreliable auxiliary diesel generator that powered the bilge pumps.
The British rescue ship Zamalek was alongside within minutes after the hit, but she was sent back to the convoy. The trawler HMS Lord Middleton took off most of the 190-man crew and transferred them to other ships. Only a skeleton crew of eighty men were left aboard Somali, and all of them were forbidden to go below except for any critical work. HMS Ashanti then took her crippled sister ship in tow, cruising at a slow 7 knots in a flat and calm sea, to crawl to Akureyri, Iceland.
Three more destroyers and Lord Middleton were detailed to escort her. This left the convoy with twelve destroyers and the close escort of nine ships. The presence of twenty-one escorts didn’t trouble the U-boat captains and their veteran crews, which U-435, commanded by Korvettenkapitän Siegfried Strelow, proved in dramatic fashion.
At 0630 hours on September 22, U-435 penetrated the screen and torpedoed three ships within five minutes of each other. They were the tanker Gray Ranger (Master Howard Douglas Gausden, DSO), the Bellingham (Master Soren Mortensen), both of which were survivors from PQ-17, and the Commodore’s ship Ocean Voice (Master Harold James Kay). Once again Commodore Dowding found himself waiting to be picked up out of an icy sea. Gray Ranger suffered the loss of six of her crew of thirty-three. Surprisingly, no one on board either Bellingham or Ocean Voice was lost.
This was the last attack, as soon afterward the U-boats were ordered to withdraw. But now another hazard beset the convoy in the shape of a northerly gale, which swept down upon the ships riding high in ballast and tossed them about, making steering and station-keeping a torment. Thankfully the storm didn’t claim any ships, so the battered sixteen made it safely into Loch Ewe on September 26.
Meanwhile, Somali was slowly making her way south under tow. All but two officers, one of whom was the commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Maud, and eighty ratings had been taken off the Somali. By that time, everything possible had been done to make her seaworthy, but as the wind increased and the rising sea caused the water-logged ship to labor more and more, the towing hawser sprang taut out of the sea one moment, only to fall back slack the next. It soon became obvious that disaster was in the offing.
The captains of the two ships conferred over a telephone line that had been run between them. It was a battle against lengthening odds. Maud ordered all hands on deck as a precaution. It was well that he did so, for the end came with dramatic suddenness. Early on the morning of September 24, with the wind howling through the darkness and the angry hiss of the waves rolling up from astern, there was heard the ugly, frightening sound of rending metal as the ship broke in half. This was followed by the shattering thud of bursting bulkheads as the two sections drifted apart, slowly turned over, and sank. Only thirty-five of the eighty men on board were plucked out of the icy water, including Maud, who was unconscious when rescued.
Captain Richard Onslow (later Admiral Sir Richard Onslow), commanding HMS Ashanti, wrote about rescuing Somali’s survivors:
We had come up on the weather side, beam to sea, drifting fast down over the position where she had sunk. The rescue nets were over the side and some of our better swimmers ready with lines round their bodies. I signalled to the other two ships to get to windward of me. In that weather it was hopeless to try to hold the ship head to sea. The only possible manoeuvre was to stay beam on and, by backing and filling, pick up as many as we could to leeward.
It was heartbreaking work. The ship was rolling drunkenly and we were drifting so fast that inevitably a few of those in the water were trapped under our bilge keel before we could grab them. And a few swept past our bow or stern, when to have moved the ship would have meant losing those we nearly had.
We could only pray that the ships to windward would see them in the blinding snow and spindrift. I was proud of our men that night. Many of them showed great courage and endurance, particularly those who went over the side, at the risk of themselves being caught under the bilge keel. But their courage was of little avail. Of those they brought on board none was still breathing, and only one responded to artificial respiration. He was the captain, Lieutenant Commander Colin Mead.
When we could see no more men to leeward we worked round to windward again. Between us we covered the area until all hope was gone. The three of us could count the living on one hand, and it took some time to find out from the Lord Middleton how many she had.
We had lost sight of her in the storm and could get no answer on the wireless, so we spent a very anxious time while we spread on a line of search to find her. When she got her radio working again we learnt that she had rescued over thirty (men). Thank God for the Lord Middleton was our thought. But we had lost some forty gallant officers and men. I am haunted still by the thought that perhaps I should have foreseen and avoided it.
In the two convoys, sixteen merchant ships had been lost (a loss rate of 29 percent), together with the large destroyer Somali, minesweeper Leda, fleet tanker Gray Ranger, and four fighter aircraft (three of whose pilots were rescued).
The commander in chief, Admiral John C. Tovey, did not consider the losses excessive in view of the scale of air and submarine attacks to which they had been subjected. The Germans lost thirty-three torpedo planes, six Ju-88 dive bombers, and two long-range reconnaissance aircraft—a total of forty-one; three U-boats had been lost and five damaged, and another had been sunk by a Catalina aircraft off Iceland while lying in wait for QP-14. Approximately 250 aircraft torpedoes had been fired in order to sink ten ships. No one tallied the human losses to death or injury or to the incredible amount of stress each person suffered.
Convoy PQ-19 was cancelled because Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, required the support of a large number of British Home Fleet units. In order to keep supplies following to the Soviets, the British Admiralty started a series of independent single-ship sailings, both east- and westbound, codenamed Operation FB.
It is not clear whether the British or Americans originated the idea for Operation FB. What is known is that it initially was to entail twelve merchant ships, then in Iceland, sailing at twelve-hour intervals (roughly equivalent to 200 miles distance between sailings) from October 29 to November 2, 1942, with British and American ships alternating departures. At the last moment, the Russian ship SS Dekabrist was added, bringing the total to thirteen ships.
No escorts were provided for the individual ships, but the trawlers Cape Palliser, Northern Pride, Northern Spray, and St. Elstan were spaced along the route from Iceland, while Cape Argona, Cape Mariato, and St. Kenan were sailed from Murmansk to cover the eastern end of the passage. In addition, two submarines, HM submarine Tuna and the Dutch 0-15, were ordered to provide protection for ships sailing between October 23 and November 9.
The first ships, Richard H. Alvey and Empire Galliard, sailed on October 29 without being spotted by the Germans. These were followed by Dekabrist (Russian) and John Walker and Empire Gilbert (British) on October 30; John H. B. Latrobe (U.S.) and Chulmleigh (British) on October 31; Hugh Williamson (U.S.) and Empire Sky (British) on November 1; William Clark (U.S.) and Empire Scott (British) on November 2; and, finally, the last two British ships, Daldorch on November 3 and Briarwood on November 4.
Of the thirteen ships, three (John H. B. Latrobe, Briarwood, and Daldorch) returned to Iceland, five completed their voyages (Empire Galliard, Hugh Williamson, Richard H. Alvey, Empire Scott, and John Walker), and five were sunk (Chulmleigh, Dekabrist, Empire Gilbert, Empire Sky, and William Clark). For the crews of Chulmleigh and Dekabrist, their tales of survival are epics of suffering and endurance. For the five crews whose luck ran out, their stories also endure.
At 0118 hours on November 2, 1942, Empire Gilbert (Master William Williams) was hit on the port side by two torpedoes from U-586 (Kapitänleutnant Dietrich von der Esch). She sank within two minutes, southwest of Jan Mayen. The U-boat had caAfter an unequal battle againhsed the ship for about two hours but missed with a first spread of two torpedoes at 0017 hours, only to hit a minute later. Within thirty minutes, the Germans arrived at the sinking position and rescued two men who were sitting on a beam, floating in the icy water. Von der Esch tried to question six survivors on a raft but received no answer, so he took gunner Douglas Meadows as prisoner aboard. The Germans took good care of their prisoners and landed them at Skjomen Fjord, Norway, on November 5. However, the master, forty-six crewmembers, and seventeen gunners aboard Empire Gilbert were lost.
The crew of Empire Gilbert was typical of a British merchantman in time of war. The merchant navy part of her crew tended to come from one area of the United Kingdom, though not exclusively. In this case it was from Tyneside in northeast England. The large complement of Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship (DEMS) gunners came from all over the country. There was a strong element of experienced men in all departments, together with many who were only in their first few years of seafaring.
Twenty-one-year-old Eric Aisthorpe was a quiet, conscientious lad. During his youth, he learned to play the harmonica and the accordion very well. He was looking forward to seeing more of the world when he joined Empire Gilbert early in September 1942. But apart from a short visit to Iceland, he would see no more of the world before he lost his life.
Two other young men, John Stewart and Alex Souter, grew up only a few doors from each other in Lossiemouth, a small town in Scotland. Inseparable friends, they shared good times as well as bad. The bond between the two was as strong as ever when they both signed on Empire Gilbert in early September 1942.
Bombardier Arthur Hopkins of the Maritime Royal Artillery had already completed five wartime voyages in merchant ships: two to Canada, one to the United States, one to Freetown, and then to the Middle East on a troopship, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. After joining Empire Gilbert, Hopkins said the voyage from England to Iceland was uneventful.
Empire Gilbert sailed as ship number five from Hvalfjödur on October 30 and remained undetected for about two days until a German aircraft found them on November 1. The plane did not attack, instead flying around, well out of anti-aircraft range, making signals to base. Bombardier Hopkins was on watch when, at 2200 hours, he spotted a U-boat running parallel to them on the port side. He raised the alarm, and the ship was brought to action stations immediately. Soon afterward, though, a torpedo hit Empire Gilbert on the port side, sinking her. There was no time for lifeboats to be lowered. Only three men survived.
Bombardier Hopkins and those around him were forced to jump into the icy sea. In the frigid November waters of the Arctic Ocean, it would have taken only minutes for most of them to succumb. Though Hopkins recalled hearing men shouting in the darkness around him while he was still in the water, as Harry Hutson described in Arctic Interlude, Hopkins remembered little else about the event until being rescued by a U-boat. There, he found two of his shipmates also on board.
Ralph Urwin also signed on Empire Gilbert in early September 1942. Just seventeen years old, he signed on as deck boy, as did three other seventeen-year-olds: Thomas Stobbs, George Carey, and Ronald Birch.
After Empire Gilbert sank, like Hopkins, Urwin remembered little until he awoke on board the submarine and found himself being rubbed down by the German crew to try to bring warmth and circulation back to his numb limbs.
The third survivor was also a DEMS gunner: twenty-year-old Army gunner Douglas Meadows of Gloucester.
In mid-December 1942, Urwin’s mother received a letter from the ship’s managers, Turner Brightman & Co., telling her that the Empire Gilbert was overdue and must be presumed lost with all hands. It was not until March 1943 that Mrs. Urwin received a letter through the Red Cross from her son, saying that he was well but a prisoner of war.
The day after Empire Gilbert was sunk, William Clark (Master Walter Edmund Elian) left the safety of Hvalfjödur, sandwiched between Empire Sky and Empire Scott. The passage from Hvalfjödur to the North Cape of Iceland was uneventful. No warships were seen, though one or two white lights were observed in the distance from time to time, most likely from small Icelandic fishing vessels. Soon after leaving North Cape on November 2, a British Catalina aircraft buzzed them and then flew off. Hutson notes that, if it was an RAF aircraft, then it likely was from 330 (Norwegian) Squadron, RAF, based at Akureyri, or one of the long-range Catalinas of No. 210 Squadron, based at Sullum Voe in the Shetlands. The American VP-94 Squadron of the U.S. Navy was based at Reykjavik and also flew Catalinas.
By the morning of the November 4, William Clark, an American Liberty ship, was in the vicinity of Jan Mayen. At 1333 hours on November 4, she was hit on the port side amidships by one of three torpedoes from U-354 (Kapitänleutnant Karl-Heinz Herbschleb) off Jan Mayen Island. The torpedo struck in the engine room, disabling the engine, flooding the room, and killing the five men on watch below.
No one aboard William Clark had seen anything suspicious before the attack. No one saw any signs of the submarine or the first torpedo. Seven lookouts had been on duty at the time: one in the crow’s nest, two in the bows, two on the flying bridge, and two on the after gun platform.
The surviving sixty-six crewmen, officers, and naval armed guards of William Clark abandoned ship in three lifeboats after the hit. The U-boat missed the ship with a torpedo at 1400 hours, but hit her ten minutes later with a coup de grâce on the starboard side amidships. She broke in two forward of the midship house and sank in a few minutes.
The three boats got together, and the motor lifeboat (No. 1), under the charge of Elian attempted to tow the other two, but because of the danger of swamping, he ordered the lines cast off. Elian told the other two boats he was going to try to sail to Iceland so that he could send help to them. This boat with the master and twenty-two other men was never seen again, presumed to have been swamped with all hands lost.
First Mate William F. Goldsmith was in charge of No. 2 boat. On the strength of the briefing before sailing from Hvalfjödur and the fact that a distress message had been sent, he decided to stay in the vicinity, for the time being at least. The remaining two boats drifted apart. After three days and two nights of suffering through brutal, unrelenting Arctic weather, rescuers finally arrived.
The telegraphists of St. Elstan, which also had sailed with PQ-16, had received the distress call from William Clark and knew she was astern of their own position. The vessel was turned round and steamed at full speed toward the given position. She searched for several days before Able Seaman Anstey a Newfoundlander who was on look-out aft, sighted the flare sent up by Goldsmith’s lifeboat astern of the trawler. After some confusion over the bearing, the trawler steamed off at full speed on the correct course to find the boat. Approaching quietly and smoothly, St. Elstan was almost alongside the lifeboat before most of the occupants realized it.
The long and cold days and nights of searching for the survivors of the William Clark were made up for by the sheer joy displayed by those rescued. The lifeboat had drifted roughly 20 miles from the given position during the day of November 7. Quickly taking the twenty-six men on board, St. Elstan was under orders to continue her patrol until all of the independently sailing merchant ships were clear of her area. Thus, it was not until November 17 that she landed the survivors at Reykjavik.
HMS Cape Palliser picked up No. 3 lifeboat and its fifteen survivors and two dead crewmembers—the second mate and a utility man—on November 12. All the survivors in this boat were near death when rescued, and a Navy gunner among them died shortly after being rescued. Two of the survivors lost their legs due to exposure. All of the survivors were landed at Akureyri, Iceland.
Eighteen-year-old Anthony Spinazzola had joined the SS William Clark in August 1942, in New York, after having already served as an Armed Guard gunner on board SS James Gunn and SS Valley Forge. He recalled the events in the Arctic:
My boat station was with the Chief Mate’s crew while my duty station was aft on the 4.5-inch gun, 12 to 4 watch. November 4th was a calm morning and we were about to sit down to chow when the torpedo hit directly amidships, right into the engine room, just below the crew’s mess hall on the port side. We all rushed out to the port side passageway but the outer door was jammed shut. We went over to the starboard side passageway and had to pass the engine room hatchway by this route. I remember looking down as we passed but I could see nothing but steam, fire and smoke. I did not think anyone down there could have survived that explosion.
I made my way to my boat station, stopping to pick up some extra warm clothing on the way. The Chief Mate’s boat had been destroyed by the explosion and the other port lifeboat was hanging by one of its falls. We crossed to the starboard side but both these boats were already full so we went back to the port side.
The Chief Mate organized us into getting this boat into the water. The greatest danger was from the water being continuously washed in and out of the hole in the ship’s side made by the torpedo. We managed to get the boat launched and to heave on the line fastened to its stern. This kept us clear of the yawning hole. We had to row with all our might when we cast off, but we made it clear of the ship. All three boats came together and the Master said he was going to use his motor to try and reach Iceland to get help for us all.
The Second Mate hoisted his sail and also left. Mr. Goldsmith, however, decided to wait near the scene to see if rescue came. We did not see the submarine at all. The weather got worse and I do not know how we managed to stay afloat. Morale slumped rapidly as the weather deteriorated. We had seen a Catalina while we were in the boat but there was still no sign of rescue. I remember being suddenly engulfed by a bright ray of light which frequently disappeared below the wave tops. We did not know then if it was a rescue ship or a submarine. Fortunately it turned out to be HMS St. Elstan and the Captain was warning us to keep clear of the propeller.
Soon we were all on board the rescue ship and all her crew did everything they could to make us comfortable. Some of us had frozen feet and hands. I cannot remember how long we were on board, but we searched for other survivors, unsuccessfully. When we reached Reykjavik we said our farewells to the rescue ship crew and were taken by ambulance to the Quonset hut hospital. I was there for a month before being taken back to the States on board the USS Polaris. I was sent to Brooklyn Naval Hospital for two months until my frozen feet got better and then I returned to sea until the war ended.
I spent all my remaining sea-time in warmer climates!
The final death toll for the William Clark was thirty-one men: four officers, fourteen crewmen, and thirteen armed guards.
While Empire Gilbert and William Clark were unsuccessfully fending off attack, Empire Sky was dealing with troubles of her own. At 2224 hours on November 6, Empire Sky (Master Thomas Morley) was torpedoed and sunk by U-625 (Kapitänleutnant Hans Benker) south of Spitzbergen, Norway. The master and forty-one crewmembers were lost, as were eighteen DEMS gunners (ten from the 4th Regiment Maritime Artillery and eight from the Royal Navy).
Only a year old at the time of this sailing, Empire Sky, a British cargo steamer, likely was the first victim of U-625 (Kapitänleutnant Hans Benker) when she was listed as missing as of November 14,1942. British records show her as sunk off Murmansk, cause unknown, with no survivors from her crew of sixty. Most historians agree that the missing ship almost certainly was Empire Sky, as no other missing vessel was unaccounted for in this northern area at the time.
Empire Sky had loaded at Hull, England, during August and September 1942, and two teenage boys from nearby Grimsby joined her there. Victor James Jennings, sixteen years old, signed on as mess room boy. The second youngest of ten children, Jennings was a quiet boy, who, after leaving school, had begun work at a local cycle shop until he had joined the merchant navy in 1941. After working on Empire Sky for about two weeks, he was given permission to sign off and did so. He told his family that he had seen rats on board and that he considered Empire Sky an unlucky ship. This action saved Jennings’s young life—for a time. But his luck would not hold. He signed on the SS Almenara, a much smaller ship than Empire Sky. He sailed in this vessel on his seventeenth birthday, bound for the Mediterranean. The vessel was mined off Taranto on September 20, 1943, and Jennings died in the tragedy.
George Rhodes was the other teenager who had signed on Empire Sky at Hull. He had signed on as cabin boy. Like Jennings, Rhodes, too, came from a large family His father, Bill, was a ship’s carpenter. This left his mother, Ethel May, to bring up the family on her own while his father was at sea. Rhodes’s first job upon leaving school was on a farm, but his heart was not in it. There was salt water in his blood, and so in 1940 he joined the merchant navy as a cabin boy. He had already been shipwrecked off Australia and had two years sea time under his belt when he signed on Empire Sky. He decided to stay with the ship when Jennings signed off. This decision was to cost him his life.
Sergeant Edward Edgar Stoackley joined Empire Sky at this time, too. He was the senior Army gunner on board. He enlisted in the Royal Artillery before the outbreak of war, and early in 1941 volunteered for duty as an anti-aircraft gunner on merchant ships.
During the last week of October 1942, Empire Sky was in Hvalfjödur. Three men, including two firefighters, were discharged there. Fireman James Carr, thirty-nine years old, signed on as one of the replacements for this fateful voyage. The other two firemen also joined Empire Sky at Hvalfjödur shortly before she sailed on her fateful journey: Robert Hall and John Murray.
The only records regarding the loss of Empire Sky are from the log of U-625. The entry for November 6 shows that after attacking the stranded SS Chulmleigh, the U-boat set off to return to her designated patrol area. An hour later, she dived to reload her torpedo tubes and while submerged the sound operator detected propeller noises on a bearing of 150 degrees true at 1830 hours. The U-boat surfaced ten minutes later and set off at high speed on this bearing, looking for the contact.
Fifty minutes later, the lookouts on the U-boat could see a dark shadow off the port bow. It was a large merchant ship, steering an easterly course at about 9 knots. The U-boat rapidly gained on the ship and overtook her to get into a suitable attack position. By 2000 hours, U-625 was beginning her run in. At 2014, she fired two torpedoes. Both missed.
U-625 increased speed to get ahead of the merchantman, and once again Benker maneuvered his submarine in a favorable position to attack. He waited half an hour as the sky grew bright with shimmering waves of light from the Aurora Borealis. Benker intended his next attack to be from close range in order not to give Empire Sky any time to avoid action, should she spot his torpedoes running toward her. Meanwhile, the forward torpedo tubes had been reloaded, and Benker ordered Tubes 1 and 2 to stand by. At 2224 hours, he then ordered them to be fired. One hit the bow. The other struck just aft of the midship’s superstructure. Benker wrote in the logbook:
The ship is listing to starboard then to port. The bows sink deeper. Transmits a radio message, name of ship not recognized. Boats are lowered. Astern is an aircraft on a catapult were fitted with a fighter on a catapult which straddled the foc’sle head, not the stern. [None of the ships taking part in this operation were CAM ships.] On deck aircraft are lashed and there are large boxes. On the bow and stern there are guns. Ship has six holds. Estimate 6,500 tons. Ship now stopped.
Eire torpedo from tube five (stern tube), hit after thirty-five seconds. Ship explodes in a great detonation, night is brightened to daylight, a fire column rises in the sky, wreckage splashes around in the water, which seems to boil. Many splinters hit our boat. Only a short time later, smoke marks the scene of the disaster. The lifeboats have also disappeared. Return to patrol area.
Late in 1942, George Rhodes’s mother was informed that her son was missing. The terrible uncertainty of his fate remained a burden for her until February 1946, when she received a letter from the ship’s managers. The letter said that a postwar examination of German records indicated that Empire Sky had been sunk by a U-boat and that none of the crew survived.
On October 31, Chulmleigh left Hvalfjödur for North Russia, carrying a cargo of government stores. The weather was overcast, and heavy snowstorms made it difficult to fix positions. A snowstorm was raging, and visibility was very poor. Master Daniel M. Williams had made good progress, when at 2300 on November 5, his ship struck a reef. The Chulmleigh, stuck firmly amidships on the reef, with her stern almost out of the water. She was so much down by the bows that the foredeck was almost awash and the captain was afraid the swell then running would break her back. A wireless message was issued, and after an hour and a half the men were ordered to the boats.
The captain remained on board with Chief Officer E. J. Fenn and Second Engineer Richard A. Middlemiss. The numbing cold so affected the men in the boats that they seemed incapable of action. The master at length got Chulmleigh’s engines started, but the ship only settled more down by the head. Finally she hogged amidships. The engines were stopped for fear that the ship would break in two. A further wireless message was sent, and by 0400 hours, Chulmleigh had been abandoned. The boats seemed to be in a horseshoe-shaped lagoon, with heavy seas running and breakers all around; the boats were kept alongside the ship, as otherwise they would have been crushed on the reef.
At the first sign of daylight on November 5, the fifty-eight men in three boats moved off toward an opening in the lagoon. Almost at once, five Ju-88s flew over the ship at masthead height and scored two direct hits with their bombs. A column of black smoke rose high into the air, but the Chulmleigh did not catch fire. Williams decided to make for the nearest settlement, which he calculated to be about 150 miles away.
At 1558 hours on November 6, U-625 torpedoed the stranded Chulmleigh and completed the destruction of the vessel with gunfire. Later, the wreck was again bombed by a Ju-88.
The following account, based on the report by Williams and Third Officer David F. Clark, conveys a graphic illustration of the appalling hardships suffered by the survivors.
The men of the Chulmleigh, struggling to remain connected in three lifeboats, could not easily keep together. One of the boats was in dangerous condition and was soon abandoned, its crew divided between the two remaining seaworthy boats. They proceeded along the Spitzbergen coast, which was visible during the few hours of twilight that relieved the otherwise perpetual darkness. A gale blew up on November 8, but on November 9, the two boats turned toward the shore and regained contact with each other. Captain Williams’s boat had a serviceable motor, and it was agreed that he should go on ahead to the settlement to fetch help. It was very cold, and a lot of water was shipped; the wind froze the sails, and the crew’s clothing became rigid with frost and ice.
The night of November 9/10 was so severe that the steward became delirious and died. On the afternoon of November 10, some huts at the entrance to a fjord were sighted, but as Williams and his crew were making toward them, the motor froze up and could not be restarted. Without the motor helping them, the wind and current made it impossible to make landfall, and the boats drifted out to sea, losing sight of land.
At about 0200 the next day, after several hours among the reefs, they were suddenly washed up on the beach, where a heavy sea broke over the party and the master regained consciousness at the shock. By good fortune, they found several wooden huts within 20 yards; two of the crew had died in the boat and another died on the beach, but the survivors managed to reach the huts, although the youngest among the crew had to be carried.
They at once fell fast asleep. In the morning, the twenty-three men who remained from the original ship’s company of fifty-eight moved into one of the larger huts. This proved to be quite habitable; it had a small coal stove, and there was enough wood and coal to make a good fire. Although no trees were in sight, there was plenty of driftwood and a great many old boxes they could burn. “After we had slept that first night,” Clark recalled, “we all felt a little better.”
We collected what was left of the lifeboat’s rations and at once made ourselves hot drinks, coffee and Horlicks, melting the snow for water. This revived us considerably and we became terribly hungry. We also found some tins of corned beef and biscuits in one of the huts, so we managed very well.
As long as we had food for tomorrow our morale remained good. Captain Williams encouraged us to take about two hours’ exercise each day, but after a time most of us suffered so much from frostbitten feet that it was impossible. Feet and hands became gangrenous and I became very ill.
After a few days on land, Captain Williams recovered enough to take charge. Most of the men had swollen hands and feet and could do very little, but the four Army gunners were hardly affected. One man in particular, only 4 feet 11 inches tall, was phenomenally tough; the captain said of the gunners that they “looked after us all, nursing the men who were ill, going out to collect firewood, and generally running things.”
Clark and Lance-Sergeant R. A. Peyer made two attempts during their first few days on land to reach the settlement, but the intervening country was barren and strewn with rocks. Deep ravines and great stretches of snow and ice were further hindrances to the explorers, who had to turn back and arrived back at the huts completely exhausted.
During the first week, thirteen more men died from frostbite, gangrene, and exposure. “They seemed to give up hope,” said Williams, “and then died; but I believed right to the end that we would come through.”
Expeditions of any kind were never easy. The men had only a few hours of twilight during which to work, and visibility often was reduced to 10 yards. Another sortie, in a northeasterly direction up the fjord, revealed a small hut in which there was a sack of flour and some tins of corned beef and cocoa. This was brought back, and the flour, mixed with water and cooked in the form of small cakes, kept the party alive for another three or four weeks. There were dozens of boxes of matches in their hut, and with the petrol from the lifeboat’s tank they managed to keep two Primus stoves working. They had hot drinks three times a day; and when the coffee and cocoa ran out, they made do with hot water. They also found some tins of whale-blubber preserved in oil; this sustained them for another five or six days, and they also drank the boiled oil.
A second attempt to reach the settlement was unsuccessful, and toward the end of December, the situation was becoming desperate. According to the master’s statement:
By now the Third Officer and an Able Seaman were suffering badly from gangrene, as were several of the others; their feet and hands were discharging and the smell was awful. Another man died on Christmas Eve. I therefore decided to make a final attempt to get help, or die in the effort.
When they were halfway to the settlement, Williams’s two companions broke down. They could not go on. So they turned back, and upon reaching the hut, all three collapsed. On January 2, 1943, one of the gunners went out to collect firewood; almost at once he came rushing back in a state of complete terror. Captain Williams could get nothing out of him, and the nine men still alive could think only that they were about to be set upon by polar bears. Luckily, it was nothing more fearsome than two hunters who were on a trapping expedition wearing white furs. They took word of the survivors’ plight to the settlement, and a rescue party was sent with sleighs.
“We were all in a pretty bad condition,” said Captain Williams, “as we had ceased to have the energy to exercise ourselves. Our clothes were soaked with pus from gangrenous limbs and gave off a horrible stench.”
After two months in bed, Williams and the remaining survivors were allowed to get up. They spent most of their time learning to ski. This pastime provides an ironical footnote to the long story of endurance, as Williams noted: “There had been a pair of skis in the hut, and if only we had known how to use them we could probably have got help much sooner.”
At 2000 on January 4, the survivors reached the settlement, where they stayed until June 10, 1943. The survivors eventually boarded the cruisers HMS Bermuda (Captain T. H. Back, RN) and HMS Cumberland (Captain A. H. Maxwell-Hyslop, RN) and landed at Thurso, Scotland, on June 15, 1943. The master, three crewmembers, and nine gunners survived. However, thirty crewmembers and nine six gunners were lost, many to gangrenous infections brought on by frostbite. Their ordeal lasted 217 days.
SS Dekabrist of Odessa, under the command of Captain Stephen Polukarpovic Belyev, had already survived two convoys: PQ-6 in late 1941 and QP-5 in early 1942. Now, in autumn 1942, she loaded her cargo in the United States and sailed in convoy to Iceland, originally intended to be part of convoy PQ-19.
Dekabrist was located on November 4 by Junkers Ju-88s from Norway. She was attacked several times with bombs and torpedoes and then strafed with machine guns. Dekabrist’s gunners drove off all of the attacks, leaving the ship undamaged.
The ship was attacked again just after midnight, this time by three aircraft, soon followed by five more. The final aircraft made its attack when one well-aimed torpedo struck the vessel in the bows. The Russian crew struggled all day to keep the water at bay, expecting more attacks to come, but no other aircraft found them.
By 2000 hours, it was obvious to Captain Belyev that the water was gaining on them at an ever-increasing rate. The vessel was going to sink. Belyev ordered the crew to abandon ship once she was well down by the head and the foredeck was awash. A final distress message was transmitted soon after midnight on November 5, giving their position as 7530N 2710E.
All four of Dekabrist’s lifeboats were launched safely, well stocked with food and other supplies. Once the boats were safely in the water, the captain ordered the crew to stand off the vessel but to remain in the vicinity in the hope that rescue would come to them from one of the two submarines. Dekabrist was east of Spitzbergen when she was attacked, and the trawlers were much further to the south and west.
None of the submarines arrived in time to save the Dekabrist. Soon after dawn, another flight of German aircraft found her and sent her to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. While the crew watched the vessel sink, a thick blanket of fog developed, and the four lifeboats soon lost sight of each other. A few hours later, the fog lifted and the survivors in the captain’s boat saw land and a hut on Hope Island to the east of Spitzbergen.
People were running along the beach, waving frantically. One of the other lifeboats came into view, too, and they closed on each other. Under the command of Third Mate Treticyn, this boat confirmed the sight of human habitation. Treticyn’s boat managed to land safely through the surf, but Captain Belyev’s boat could not make it through the breakers. The crew was not strong enough to prevent her broaching and so the captain stood off the beach, his men totally exhausted. Belyev and his crew never again caught sight of Treticyn or of any survivor from his boat.
After failing to land with Treticyn, Belyev’s boat drifted further north with the wind for another four days before the weather changed and they began to drift south again. The crew was in a very bad way, unable to assist themselves. On November 14, nine days after they abandoned the Dekabrist, they spotted land (Hope Island, southeast of Spitzbergen). A few hours later, they found themselves washed up onto the beach. All nineteen survivors reached the shore before the next wave smashed the boat.
The men had no idea where they were. They were weak from hunger and dehydration. The conditions in the lifeboat had been very bad indeed. There was only four ounces of water per person a day early on after the sinking, but this soon had to be cut in half and finally there was only enough water to wet their tongues. Food was more plentiful, but without water, the men found it difficult to eat because of swollen tongues and cracked lips.
The ship’s doctor, Nadejda Matvevna Natilich, had brought the ship’s cat with her into the lifeboat, and more than once it was suggested that the pet should be killed and used as food. Natilich, however, strongly resisted this, and the cat was reprieved after long and heated discussions.
Four lifeboats had left Dekabrist. The crew numbered around eighty, about twenty people per boat. The reports of Belyev and Natilich quote a total figure of nineteen survivors in this boat. By the time they reached the beach, the survivors from Belyev’s boat could barely walk. Miraculously, no one drowned when the boat was smashed by the pounding surf.
Once ashore, the survivors set to work. The sails were recovered from the lifeboat, and the fittest among them erected a makeshift tent. Two small parties were organized from the fittest men to search for better shelter, one going south, the other, led by Belyev, heading north.
Belyev’s group located a seal hunters’ hut. The rotting hut was in poor condition, large holes dotting the walls. The floor was covered in ice. But with an ancient stove and some bunks, it was better than their makeshift tent. Not long after reaching the hut, the weather deteriorated to hurricane-force winds and blizzard conditions. Before long, snow several feet thick covered the hut.
The survivors made a rough chimney from wet wooden boards and this worked well—until the boards dried out and caught fire. As soon as the weather moderated sufficiently, they dug themselves out and everyone went back to find the tent, three men, the doctor, and the cat. They eventually located the tent, but all the men had died from exposure. They were left where they had died.
It was at first thought that the doctor was dead, too; as there was no reaction from her, but the cat was still alive and kept close to its mistress. Able seaman Vasiley Nichalovich Borodin investigated further and realized that Natilich, although close to death, was still alive—barely. Every effort was made to revive her. About three days later, she was taken to the northern hut. Not long after, Soviet Navy seaman Kamenskji became gravely ill and died, most likely from pneumonia. He was soon followed in death by seaman Nicholas F. Ivanov.
The survivors soon established a routine, the fittest making daily forages for firewood, others melting snow and boiling water for treating victims who suffered from gangrene. Scouting the shoreline for goods that had been washed up proved fruitful as they frequently found a keg of butter, a sack of flour, and other valuable items of food, all of which helped to sustain them throughout the long winter and spring months. The hut itself also contained meager supplies of flour and butter, as well as an ancient shotgun (though only a few cartridges).
One evening after settling in for the night, an enormous polar bear pounded open the flimsy door of the hut. Belyev kept his head and picked up the loaded shotgun, not knowing for sure whether it would fire correctly or explode in his face. He pointed it in the general direction of the bear and pulled the trigger. There was a tremendous explosion, and the bear fell mortally wounded. The crew made the most of its quarry. Its body was skinned for the fur, the meat used for food, and the less savory parts for baiting fox traps.
On Saturday, 1 May 1943, almost six months after the Russian survivors had first set foot on Hope Island, a Heinkel He-115 seaplane from Banak in Northern Norway, flown by Luftwaffe pilot R. Schutze, had been ordered to overfly the island just in case the Allies had put ashore a weather station during the winter. The aircrew was amazed to see the figure of a man against the snowy white background. The German pilot cautiously flew lower on his second run. He could see the castaway beckoning him to land. Instead, the pilot climbed and then sent a signal to its base reporting the incident. The reply ordered the aircraft not to attempt to land but to return to base immediately and make a full report.
German intelligence officers concluded that there could be only two possible explanations for human presence on Hope Island: Either the man was indeed a member of an Allied weather party and the beckoning had been a deliberate ploy, or he was a shipwrecked mariner who had somehow managed to reach the island. The Germans knew that they had sunk ships in the vicinity during the past few months, but they found it difficult to believe that any man could have survived without assistance.
This, however, gives rise to even more questions. If the hut had been occupied, presumably by shipwrecked mariners, then which ship were they from? What happened to them? Had they tried to reach safety in their lifeboat?
Other aircraft were sent to the island, and one reported finding a wooden hut, most likely constructed before the war by seal hunters. The aircraft also reported seeing not one but three castaways, one of whom was almost certainly a woman. None of the survivors had made any attempt to hide from the aircraft—quite the reverse: They all seemed happy to have been discovered, and all waved excitedly. When the aircraft returned and the crew was debriefed, the German authorities decided that they had no other choice than to order a U-boat to make a landing on the island to discover exactly what was going on.
On July 24, 1943, U-703 (Oberleutnant zur See Joachim Brunner) was ordered to make a thorough search of Hope Island, take off the survivors if indeed they were shipwrecked mariners, and destroy the hut if it was, or had been, used as a weather station.
U-703 reached Hope Island the next day. The U-boat circumnavigated the island at a discreet distance while several members of the crew scanned the barren snow-covered rock with powerful binoculars. They found no signs of human habitation. Brunner decided to take a closer look. On the second run, a keen-eyed lookout spotted a wooden hut. A shore party was made ready while other members of the crew inflated a rubber dinghy checked the 88-mm deck gun, and made it ready for immediate action. Light machine guns were mounted on the conning tower and small arms, grenades, and ammunition for the shore party were checked. A small, well-armed group were put into the dinghy and paddled to the shore.
The group approached the hut with caution, not knowing exactly what to expect. After bursting through the door, they discovered the hut was empty, although there were signs that it had been recently occupied. They soon found a second hut, and once again the shore party of four men under the command of Leutnant zur See Heinz Schlott went ashore.
Once the shore party was in position surrounding the tiny refuge, they signaled the submarine and a warning shot from the 88-mm deck gun on the U-boat was fired. This brought forth a solitary figure, hands crossed behind his head in sign of surrender. The shore party advanced and eventually found that no one else was inside the hut to pose a threat.
Inside the shelter they found an old revolver, ammunition, a few meager rations, old newspapers, and animal skins. They discovered the foul-smelling castaway was Russian. Although he could not speak any German, he could speak a few words of English. The Germans soon discovered it was Belyev.
Captain Belyev told his rescuers that he would be more than pleased to guide them to the survivors who were living in other huts. He was taken back to U-703, where he showed Brunner where the other huts were situated. The first hut was found easily. It was empty when investigated, though it, too, showed definite signs of having been occupied quite recently. The shore party was again recovered, and U-703 set off for the next position.
By that afternoon, the third hut was sighted, and a few short bursts of light machine gun fire were used to attract attention before deciding whether to put men ashore. The gunfire immediately brought three people from the hut. Two seemed quite fit, but the third was obviously seriously ill or injured. Captain Belyev used the megaphone to instruct the people to come out to the U-boat in the small boat that could be seen on the shoreline.
The two fit survivors placed the sick man in the boat and then rowed out to U-703. Brunner and his crew were surprised to find that one of the fit survivors was a woman.
While the Russians were on board U-703 being questioned and given food, clothing, and facilities to wash, a small landing party went ashore to examine the survivors’ hut and its contents. When they returned they reported that the hut was indeed only a refuge. There was no sign of weather or radio equipment.
Brunner decided that because he still had to lay another weather buoy and because accommodation on the U-boat was limited, he would take only the Russian captain with him. The others would be left behind. Brunner ordered his crew to assemble a survival kit from the U-boat’s stores while he explained to Belyev what he proposed to do.
When Captain Belyev translated this to his compatriots, their disappointment was obvious, but they accepted the fact that they had no choice. They were sent ashore with the survival kit, which contained medical supplies, vitamin tablets, food, clothes, diesel oil, matches, cigarettes, and tools. The U-boat crew gathered firewood from the shore and brought it to the hut.
U-703 set off again for Narvik, arriving on August 3 without further incident. Belyev was almost in tears as he shook hands with every member of the submarine’s crew before being taken away under a Navy guard.
On her next patrol, U-703 received a signal ordering her to return to Hope Island. Aircraft had reported seeing at least two people still alive, nine months after they had first reached the island. The message indicated that the middle hut seemed to be their base. Brunner was ordered to bring everyone off the island.
When U-703 arrived, the shore party found only two survivors in the hut, the woman and, amazingly, the man who previously had been so ill. The third survivor also was still alive, living in a separate hut further away along the shore. After bringing the doctor and the man aboard the U-boat, U-703 then made her way to the more remote second hut. The lone Russian, Lobanov, came out of the hut, crawling on his hands and knees to meet the landing party.
Lobanov was placed in the rubber dinghy by the four Germans, and they set off to paddle back to the submarine. They soon ran into difficulties in the choppy water and found they could make no headway against the surf. Brunner brought the submarine closer and managed to float a line to the exhausted dinghy crew. They retrieved the line and made it secure, and U-703 went slowly astern, pulling the dinghy and its occupants through the turbulence and alongside.
The rescue had come too late for Lobanov. He died a few hours later and was buried at sea with a formal ceremony. The two remaining Russians, Borodin and Natilich, were put ashore at Harstad, Norway, on October 9, 1943, almost eleven months after first being marooned. Seventy-seven of their comrades had died as a result of the sinking of the Dekabrist, lost to the enemy and to the even deadlier Arctic.
As the eastbound ships fought their way through storms, ice, and the patrolling Germans, eight Soviet ships sailed westward between October 29 and November 25. Eighteen additional Soviet ships ran the gauntlet, the last one sailing on January 24, 1943. All but three of these arrived safely.
The first lost was the hard fighting Donbass (M. I. Pavlova, Master), which had survived PQ-17 in summer 1942 and rescued fifty-two survivors from the Daniel Morgan. On November 7, Donbass ran into a Kriegsmarine battle group consisting of the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and the 5th Destroyer Flotilla (Z-27, Z-30, Friedrich Eckoldt, and Richard Beitzen). After an unequal battle against Z-27, she was sunk, and forty-nine of her crew were killed. Pavlova and fifteen crewmembers were taken prisoner. The other two losses were cargo ships Krasny Partizan (Captain A. F. Belov) and Ufa (Captain L. I. Patrikeev), both sunk by 11-255 in late January 1943.
Krasnoe Znamya left the Kola Inlet on January 26. She sent a message later that day that German aircraft were attacking, but then contact was lost. According to U-boat records, at 1100 hours on January 26, U-255 sank an iced-up steamer with two torpedoes west of the Bear Island. The ship had just escaped from the chasing 11-625 (Kapitänleutnant Hans Benker) when it was torpedoed by U-255. U-255 surfaced after the attack and tried to question the survivors who had taken refuge in a lifeboat, but they only spoke Russian, which the Germans could not understand and the U-boat left without taking any prisoners. No distress message was heard by shore stations or any ships, and the survivors were never found. Krasnoe Znamya’s captain Belov and fifty crewmen were lost.
Ufa had set out from the Kola Inlet a day earlier, on January 25. At 0547 hours on January 29, U-255 fired a torpedo at a steamer, identified as a Myronich-class freighter, which was located south of Bear Island in the Barents Sea and observed it sinking by the bow twenty-five minutes after being hit. Two torpedoes had missed at 0231 and 0233 hours, possibly passing underneath the vessel. When the U-boat surfaced after five hours, they still found survivors at the sinking position and tried to question them, but they only spoke Russian. Once again, there is no record of a distress message being sent and, like Krasnoe Znamya, Ufa’s captain and thirty-eight of her crew were never found.
The loss rate of eight out of thirty-nine unescorted ships that ultimately sailed as part of Operation FB was significantly better than that of the heavily guarded convoys. But all loss is relative. We’ll never know what hell most of the survivors went through before dying or how their families suffered not knowing, often for years, what had happened to their loved ones. Regardless of the personal tragedies, Operation FB with its 20 percent casualty rate, was considered by the British Admiralty, militarily and logistically, a success.
The last PQ/QP convoy series was QP-15, which sailed from Arkhangelsk on November 17 consisting of twenty-eight ships with Captain W. C. Meek as commodore. Protection was provided by the anti-aircraft ship Ulster Queen, five minesweepers, four corvettes, and the Soviet destroyers Baku and Sokrushitelnyy.
A gale sprung up on November 20, and by the time QP-15 reached the vicinity of Bear Island, it was badly scattered. Ted Balaam, a British telegraphist on board one of the escort ships, wrote graphically about what happened when the gale hit QP-15:
A story regarding QP15, a convoy in which our Russian allies lost ships in tragic circumstances. London (Flag), with Suffolk, A.A. ship Ulster Queen, 5 minesweepers, 4 corvettes, one trawler, destroyers Onslaught and Orwell, Russian destroyers Baku and Sokrushitelnyy, left Arkhangelsk with 28 ships formed into a convoy. More destroyers, two flotillas, had been promised as an enemy cypher had been decyphered by the Admiralty under the “Ultra” system informing Admiral Hamilton that German surface craft, including Hipper and attendant destroyers, had express orders to proceed and destroy QP15 and escorts.
However, after leaving port we ran into what developed into a hurricane, and within no time at all convoy lines were broken. The close escort screen was fighting to stay afloat. When Suffolk could be seen, her four screws became visible before plunging into the depths again. London, since the 1939 refit, rolled even at anchor and was going over to 45°, then 50°.
The height of the swell was measured and the seas running were eighty feet. A little later the anemometer screamed and took off, the graph in the plot came off the paper and ceased, the last reading was 110 mph.
The wind and sea increased, as did the icing up, suddenly we went over to 70°, everyone wedged themselves into something as we listened above the wind to hear the crashing of crockery, and many unidentified items moving. To our relief we came upright again and slewed to Port to receive a huge wave which did not break until it reached “B” Turret and all but drowned us. As we surfaced we were horrified to see Baku listing badly and her entire bridge went over the side.
We tried with the largest signal lamp to tell her to go home and tried to find Sokrushitelnyy to tell her the same. On the crest of an eighty-foot wave we saw her in a ‘Vee’ shape and tragically watched as she broke in half amidships and foundered, with all aboard we feared.
The only consolation was that the weather kept the aircraft grounded and Hipper in harbour, not that they could have done much in the prevailing conditions and with the convoy completely scattered and fighting damage.
At 1430 hours on November 20, Sokrushitelnyy was hit by a large wave, tearing off her stern and sinking her within ten minutes, killing six men. Other destroyers managed to take off 191 men, but thirty of them were lost during the rescue effort. At 1530, the other destroyers in the convoy began to leave due to a lack of fuel, leaving a crew of thirteen to man Sokrushitelnyy. She was not seen again.
The storm kept the Luftwaffe at bay, but it didn’t deter the U-boats. Two of them struck the badly scattered convoy on November 23. U-625 (Oberleutnant zur See Hans Benker) was the first, sinking the British freighter Goolistan (Master William Thomson) at 0145. Second was the Soviet motor merchant Kuznets Lesov (Master V. A. Tsibulkin), when U-601 (Kapitänleutnant Peter-Ottmar Grau) fired a spread of four torpedoes, one of which hit home. Kuznets Lesov sank in four minutes. Neither ship’s crews, totaling eighty-two men, survived.
The battered remnants of QP-15 began arriving at Loch Ewe on November 30. The last limped in four days later. With its arrival, the PQ/QP convoys passed into history.