ABSTRACT
The destruction of PQ 17 was by no means the worst convoy disaster suffered by the British in the Second World War, but it has the unenviable distinction of being the only convoy to be abandoned by its escort in the face of predictable and devastating attack by the enemy. How did it come about that 34 merchantmen were left defenceless against the onslaught of Dönitz’s U-boats and Goering’s bombers despite the Royal Navy’s centuries-old tradition of sacrificing its own ships and men to ensure the ‘safe and timely arrival’ of vessels entrusted to its care? The reason was that the convoy was ordered to scatter. The effect of an order to scatter is for its constitutent ships to abandon their close and disciplined formation and to proceed on separate, predetermined and diverging courses to their individual destinations. It was a recognized tactic for a convoy attacked by superior surface forces on the broad oceans and had been successfully used in 1940 by convoy HX 84 in the North Atlantic when, thanks to the sacrifice of its sole escort, the Armed Merchant Cruiser Jervis Bay, the great majority of the convoy had been enabled to escape from the 11-inch guns of the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer. But PQ 17 was not sailing on the vast expanse on the North Atlantic: it was on its way to North Russia, penned in to the north by the Arctic ice and to the south by the hostile Norwegian coast. It was under constant observation and attack by U-boats and aircraft. Evasion was impossible: disaster was inevitable unless the convoy and escort stuck together and somehow fought their way through to Murmansk. In the event only eleven merchant ships and two rescue ships, out of the total of 34 British, Dutch, American and Russian merchant ships and three rescue ships finally struggled into North Russian ports. No ship of the escort was sunk. Apart from a few aircraft the Germans also suffered no losses. It was a humiliating defeat for the Royal Navy, bitterly resented by its officers and men, and a shattering blow to the morale of all Allied merchant seamen. The decision to order the convoy to scatter, which deprived its escort of any possibility of protecting it, was taken by none other than the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, the professional head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound. It was taken, so far as can be seen, against the advice of almost all his staff and against the wishes of Sir John Tovey, Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet, of Rear-Admiral Hamilton, commanding the cruiser covering force and of Commander J.E. Broome, commander of the close escort. Pound believed, in the light of the intelligence available to him, that unless the convoy scattered, every ship in it, and all its escorts, would be sunk not so much by air and U-boat attack as by the overpowering strength of a German surface ship task force centred on the battleship Tirpitz.
