PQ17
One man's journey to remember a merchant navy massacre.
By Charlie Morton, Defence Reporter, Plymouth Herald, June 26, 2001.
FOR 59 years the code has been engraved in the minds of every sailor who chanced the waters of the Arctic Circle during World War Two. PQ17.
On June 26, 1942, the largest merchant convoy ever assembled at Reykjavik in Iceland set sail for ports in Russia, loaded with supplies to feed the war effort.
What followed was one of the grimmest tragedies in the history of the merchant navy as, scattered by the threat of a German battleship, the ships were an easy target for U-boat skippers who picked them off one by one, sinking 23 in all.
The horror of the event has haunted retired Lieutenant Commander Gordon Bruty for six decades.
He has sailed from the UK on a journey back to where it all happened, to drop a wreath in the sea in memory of those who died.
"I am doing this as much for myself as for those who so needlessly lost their lives," he said.
Gordon, from Derriford, was 16 when he joined the Royal Navy at Chatham Dockyard and trained as an engineer.
Two days before World War Two broke out, he was evacuated to Plymouth.
Deployment
He was assigned to the county-class cruiser HMS London where he made life-long friends including Ted Huke, who lives in Glenholt, and John Gillies, who lives in Vancouver, Canada. Patrolling the danger-fraught seas between Iceland and the Russian coast was his first wartime deployment.
In 1942, supplies were running short in Russia and the authorities were becoming frustrated with a lack of supplies from the allies.
"I don't think they realised just how difficult shipping the supplies actually was," Gordon said.
British warships were tasked with providing merchant navy convoys with a safe passages between Iceland and the ports of Murmansk and Archangel in Russia.
"It was grim work. The fog would descend at a moment's notice and with all the icebergs around it was a dangerous job," Gordon said.
PQ was the code assigned to every convoy from Iceland to Russia, and at first, the efforts were a success.
By the end of April, of the 12 convoys and 103 ships that sailed, only one ship had been lost and Admiralty fears about the risks of dispatching large convoys appeared to have been unjustified.
In May convoy PQ16 lost five of her ships.
The following month, the largest and most valuable convoy of the run was formed, with a cargo worth $700 million including nearly 300 aircraft, 600 tanks, more than 4,000 trucks and trailers, and a general cargo that exceeded 150,000 tons. Thirty-eight ships gathered at Reykjavik in Iceland, ready to run the German U-boat gauntlet.
Assigned to protect them, HMS London was joined by her sister ship, HMS Norfolk, the two American cruisers Tusaloosa and Wichita, and a squadron of destroyers, including 15 other armed vessels. A fleet was also assigned to sail out of Scapa Flow and give deep cover from 200 miles behind, made up of the battleship HMS Duke of York, two cruisers and 14 destroyers reinforced by the battleship USS Washington and the carrier HMS Victorious. PQ17 was to be heavily guarded.
The fleet sailed on June 27, with crew including the actor Douglas Fair-banks Jnr. then serving as a Lieutenant on the Wichita.
On July 1, the German's made their move, with an air-launched torpedo attack which claimed the Christopher Newport.
Three days later the convoy was ordered to scatter. Intelligence suggested the fearsome battleship Tirpitz was steaming their way, and while PQ17's escorts went off to find her, the merchant ships were left to find their own way unprotected.
They were hunted down and destroyed by sea and air leaving just four ships to reach Archangel.
It later emerged Tirpitz had been docked at Altenfjord in Northern Norway at the time.
"We were there to do a job, protecting the convoys. But while we were off hunting an enemy that wasn't there, the merchant ships were being picked off one by one. It was a disaster," Gordon said.
On Saturday, Gordon, now 81, and his wife Jennie set sail for the same waters in which PQ17 was all but destroyed.
He organised a small service to take place on the ship.
He said: "I wanted to return and have that personal moment."