Convoy PQ 3 was the fourth of the Arctic Convoys of the Second World War by which the Western Allies supplied the Soviet Union in its fight with Nazi Germany. The departure of Convoy PQ 3 was delayed for destroyers to repair weather damage and because of intelligence reports of an imminent sortie by the German battleship and the heavy cruiser .
The convoy sailed from Hvalfjord in Iceland on 9 November 1941 and arrived unhindered at Arkhangelsk on 22 November 1941 except for the British freighter that suffered ice damage and returned to Iceland escorted by the trawler . On 28 November Convoy PQ 3 entered the Northern Dvina with Convoy PQ 4, a faster convoy that had caught up since leaving Iceland on 17 November.
Between Greenland and Norway are some of the most stormy waters of the world's oceans, of water under gales full of snow, sleet and hail. Around the North Cape and the Barents Sea the sea temperature rarely rises about 4ð Celsius and a man in the water would probably die unless rescued immediately. The cold water and air made spray freeze on the superstructure of ships, which had to be removed quickly to avoid the ship becoming top-heavy. The cold Arctic water is met by the Gulf Stream, warm water from the Gulf of Mexico, which becomes the North Atlantic Drift. Arriving at the south-west of England, the drift moves between Scotland and Iceland.
North of Norway the drift splits, one stream of the North Atlantic Drift goes north of Bear Island to Svalbard and the southern stream follows the coast of Murmansk into the Barents Sea. The mingling of cold Arctic water and warmer water of higher salinity generates thick banks of fog for convoys to hide in but the waters drastically reduce the effectiveness of Asdic as U-boats moved in waters of differing temperatures and density. In winter, polar ice can form as far south as of the North Cape forcing ships closer to Luftwaffe air bases or being able to sail further out to sea in summer when the ice can recede northwards as far as Svalbard. The region is in perpetual darkness in winter and permanent daylight in the summer which makes air reconnaissance almost impossible or easy.
The Soviet authorities had claimed that the unloading capacity of Arkhangelsk was , Vladivostok and by the Persian Gulf route. When surveyed by British and US technicians, the capacity of the ten berths at Arkhangelsk was assessed as and the same from Murmansk from its eight berths. By late 1941, the convoy system used in the Atlantic had been established on the Arctic run; a convoy commodore ensured that the ships' masters and signals officers attended a briefing before sailing to make arrangements for the management of the convoy, which sailed in a formation of long rows of short columns. The commodore was usually a retired naval officer, aboard a ship identified by a white pendant with a blue cross. The commodore was assisted by a Naval signals party of four men, who used lamps, semaphore flags and telescopes to pass signals, coded from books carried in a bag, weighted to be dumped overboard. In large convoys, the commodore was assisted by vice- and rear-commodores to direct the speed, course and zig-zagging of the merchant ships and liaise with the escort commander.
A convoy was defined as at least one merchant ship sailing under the protection of at least one warship. At first the British had intended to run convoys to Russia on a forty-day cycle (the number of days between convoy departures) during the winter of 1941âÂÂ1942 but this was shortened to a ten-day cycle. The round trip to Murmansk for warships was three weeks and each convoy needed a cruiser and two destroyers, which severely depleted the Home Fleet. Convoys left port and rendezvoused with the escorts at sea. A cruiser provided distant cover from a position to the west of Bear Island. Air support was limited to 330 Squadron and 269 Squadron, RAF Coastal Command from Iceland, with some help from anti-submarine patrols from Sullom Voe, in Shetland, along the coast of Norway. Anti-submarine trawlers escorted the convoys on the first part of the outbound journey. Built for Arctic conditions, trawlers were coal-burning ships with sufficient endurance. The trawlers were operated by their peacetime crews and captains, with the rank of Skipper, Royal Naval Reserve (RNR), who were used to Arctic conditions, supplemented by anti-submarine specialists of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR).
British minesweepers based at Arkhangelsk met the convoys to join the escort for the remainder of the voyage. In October 1941, the unloading capacity of Arkhangelsk was , Vladivostok (in the Pacific) and in the Persian Gulf (for the Persian Corridor route) ports. The first convoy was due at Murmansk around 12 October and the next convoy was to depart Iceland on 22 October. A motley of British, Allied and neutral shipping loaded with military stores and raw materials for the Soviet war effort assembled at Hvalfjörður (Hvalfiord) in Iceland, convenient for ships from both sides of the Atlantic. In winter, due to the polar ice expanding southwards, the convoy route ran closer to Norway. The voyage was between each way, taking at least three weeks for a round trip.
The Soviet leaders needed to replace the colossal losses of military equipment lost after Operation Barbarossa the German invasion began, especially when Soviet war industries were being moved out of the war zone and emphasised tank and aircraft deliveries. Machine tools, steel and aluminium was needed to replace indigenous resources lost in the invasion. The pressure on the civilian sector of the economy needed to be limited by food deliveries. The Soviets wanted to concentrate the resources that remained on items that the Soviet war economy that had the greatest comparative advantage over the German economy. Aluminium imports allowed aircraft production to a far greater extent than would have been possible using local sources and tank production was emphasised at the expense of lorries and food supplies were squeezed by reliance on what could be obtained from lendâÂÂlease. At the Moscow Conference, it was acknowledged that 1.5 million tons of shipping was needed to transport the supplies of the First Protocol and that Soviet sources could provide less than 10 per cent of the carrying capacity.
The British and Americans accepted that the onus was on them to find most of the shipping, despite their commitments in other theatres. The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, made a commitment to send a convoy to the Arctic ports of the USSR every ten days and to deliver a month from July 1942 to January 1943, followed by and another more than already promised. In November, the US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, ordered Admiral Emory Land of the US Maritime Commission and then the head of the War Shipping Administration that deliveries to Russia should only be limited by 'insurmountable difficulties'. The first convoy was due at Murmansk around 12 October and the next convoy was to depart Iceland on 22 October. A motley of British, Allied and neutral shipping loaded with military stores and raw materials for the Soviet war effort would be assembled at Hvalfjörður in Iceland, convenient for ships from both sides of the Atlantic.
From Operation Dervish to Convoy PQ 11, the supplies to the USSR were mostly British, in British ships defended by the Royal Navy. A fighter force that could defend Murmansk was delivered that protected the Arctic ports and railways into the hinterland. British supplied aircraft and tanks reinforced the Russian defences of Leningrad and Moscow from December 1941. The tanks and aircraft did not save Moscow but were important in the Soviet counter-offensive. The was by then reduced to 600 operational aircraft on the Eastern Front, to an extent a consequence of being sent to the Mediterranean against the British. Tanks and aircraft supplied by the British helped the Soviet counter-offensive force back the Germans further than might have been possible. In January and February 1941, deliveries of tanks and aircraft allowed the Russians to have a margin of safety should the Germans attempt to counter-attack.
The British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) based at Bletchley Park housed a small industry of code-breakers and traffic analysts. By June 1941, the German Enigma machine Home Waters () settings used by surface ships and U-boats could quickly be read. On 1 February 1942, the Enigma machines used in U-boats in the Atlantic and Mediterranean were changed but German ships and the U-boats in Arctic waters continued with the older (Hydra from 1942, Dolphin to the British). By mid-1941, British Y-stations were able to receive and read W/T transmissions and give advance warning of operations. In 1941, naval Headache personnel, with receivers to eavesdrop on wireless transmissions, were embarked on warships.
The rival German (, Observation Service) of the (MND, Naval Intelligence Service) had broken several Admiralty codes and cyphers by 1939, which were used to help Kriegsmarine ships elude British forces and provide opportunities for surprise attacks. From June to August 1940, six British submarines were sunk in the Skaggerak using information gleaned from British wireless signals. In 1941, read signals from the Commander in Chief Western Approaches informing convoys of areas patrolled by U-boats, enabling the submarines to move into "safe" zones.
====== German naval forces in Norway were commanded by Hermann Böhm, the . Two U-boats were based in Norway in July 1941, four in September, five in December and four due in January 1942. Grand Admiral () Erich Raeder, head of the , proposed a sortie to the Führer, Adolf Hitler, on 13 November but fuel shortage and the fate of , led Hitler to veto the suggestion; Admiral Scheer was sent to northern Norway. Raeder withdrew the torpedo boats in the north and replaced them with s. The destroyers carried a heavy armament of five 5-inch guns and eight torpedo tubes but suffered from unreliable boilers. Raeder ordered Karl Dönitz, the commander of the U-boat arm ( [BdU]) to send U-boats to Norway sufficent to keep three on patrol.
In mid-1941, (Air Fleet 5) had been re-organised for Operation Barbarossa when (Air Region Norway) was headquartered in Oslo. (Air Commander Stavanger) the centre and north of Norway, (Fighter Leader Norway) commanded the fighter force and ( [colonel] Andreas Nielsen) in the far north had airfields at Kirkenes and Banak. The Air Fleet had 180 aircraft, sixty of which were reserved for operations on the Karelian Front against the Red Army.
The distance from Banak to Arkhangelsk was and had only ten Junkers Ju 88 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 30, thirty Stukas, ten Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters of Jagdgeschwader 77, five Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighters of Zerstörergeschwader 76, ten reconnaissance aircraft and an anti-aircraft battalion. Sixty aircraft were far from adequate in such a climate and terrain where "there is no favourable season for operations" (Earl F. Ziemke). The emphasis of air operations changed from army support to anti-shipping operations as Allied Arctic convoys became more frequent.
The Luftwaffe Sea Rescue Service () along with the , the Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue (RS) and ships on passage, recovered aircrew and shipwrecked sailors. The service comprised at Stavanger, covering Bergen and Trondheim with at Kirkenes for Tromsø, Billefjord and Kirkenes. Co-operation was as important in rescues as it was in anti-shipping operations if aircrew were to be saved before they succumbed to the climate and severe weather.
Aircraft comprised Heinkel He 59 floatplanes, with Dornier Do 18 and Dornier Do 24 seaplanes. (OKL, the high command of the Luftwaffe) was not able to increase the number of search and rescue aircraft in Norway, due to a general shortage of aircraft and crews, despite Stumpff pointing out that coming down in such cold waters required extremely swift recovery and that his crews "must be given a chance of rescue" or morale could not be maintained.
Admiral John Tovey managed to postpone the sailing of Convoy PQ 3 to have time for repairs to be undertaken by destroyers that had suffered storm damage and also because of intelligence reports that a sortie by the German battleship and the heavy cruiser . The convoy consisted of the British , , , , , , and the Panamanian-flagged . The convoy was escorted from Iceland by the armed trawlers and and then met by the cruiser and the destroyers ; Macbeth making the journey straight through to Murmansk.
The convoy made a delayed departure on 9 November and MV Briarwood, returned to Iceland with ice damage, escorted by Hamlet. The convoy was met by on 14 November by met by the cruiser Kenya and the destroyers Bedouin and Intrepid. The Soviet destroyer and the s , and of the eastern local escort, joined for the last leg to Arkhangelsk on 20 November. On 28 November Convoy PQ 3 entered the Northern Dvina with Convoy PQ 4, a faster convoy that had overhauled Convoy PQ 3 since leaving Iceland on 17 November.
Convoy PQ 3 escaped detection by German reconnaissance aircraft in the winter weather and arrived without loss, except for the early return to Iceland by Briarwood. Neither side suffered casualties. Convoy PQ 3 arrived without loss on 22 November 1941. The convoy was part of a run to Convoy PQ 11 that had little difficulty apart from the weather, in reaching the Arctic north of the USSR. The convoys delivered 75 ships out of 77, with one early return and one loss to a U-boat.
The position of Cape Corso is not known, Briarwood was forced out the convoy with ice damage and returned to Iceland.