We all formed up behind the Kepple with Captain [D.] Jackie Broom ready to do a torpedo attack. I hadn’t any torpedoes, so my idea was to ram something, and everybody was just looking for the Tirpitz to come over the horizon, which was the effect of the Admiralty signal. Then nothing happened and all the merchant ships went off in different directions, and they said, “Cruisers are to retire at high speed to the west.” We had two English cruisers and two American cruisers, the London, Norfolk, Wichita and Tuscaloosa, and the Admiral, Admiral Hamilton, signalled us by lamp to join him and form a screen. We asked whether we could go back and we were refused, and then we went into thick fog and he made to me [signalled] “Try to keep up but don’t rupture yourself.” I remember because we only went 23 knots or 26 knots, whichever it was, which was the speed they were going, and I thought should I just slow down quietly and go back, but then, you see, from the moment you join the Navy you are taught obedience and it is very, very difficult to disobey. I did after that, but not then. And so we went on, and we came up out of the fog and eventually got back to Scapa.
There were 23 ships sunk in that PQ 17, 190 seamen killed, 400-500 aircraft were lost, about 300 tanks and 100,000 tons of war material. That’s what resulted from that Admiralty signal. It was really terrible – even now I have never got over it, because for the Navy to leave the Merchant Navy like that was simply terrible. And the Tirpitz was not within 300 or 400 miles of the convoy. She came out eventually, but not that day, the next day I think, or the following day. She was sighted by a submarine which made a signal, the Germans intercepted that signal and called her straight back to harbour. All these poor merchant ships – one merchant ship signalled, “I can see seven submarines approaching me on the surface,” and there was continual air attack. It was simply awful. Anyway, that was PQ 17.’
The ‘County’ Class cruiser HMS Norfolk took part in many of these convoys. Arthur Denby, a Signalman on board that ship, recalls that:
‘The first convoy I was in, there were four cruisers, there was Norfolk, Cumberland, London and I can’t remember the next one – it might have been Suffolk. We steamed around the convoy firing off everything that we could find at all these aircraft, and we got quite a few of them, but they made most of the attacks on the merchant ships. There was an oil tanker with a sort of catapult from which they fired off this Hurricane, and that certainly settled a few of the Germans, but the Hurricane could only land in the sea and the pilot had to be picked up quickly because you didn’t get very long to live in that kind of water there.
PQ 17, that was a real fiasco if ever there was. I don’t know where they got the information from, but they said there was either Tirpitz or one of these big ships coming out and we left all the convoy, the whole lot – the escorts and the cruisers and everything left at speed and the U-boats and the aircraft had a field day with all the merchant ships.’
Also in the Norfolk was Midshipman Richard Begg. It was his first ship and events were noted in his journal at the time:
‘Then we went on my first operation and it was the well-known and rather infamous Russian convoy labelled PQ 17. We went up to Iceland with three other 8-inch cruisers. They were HMS London, which was Admiral Hamilton’s flagship, ourselves and the American cruisers Tuscaloosa and Wichita. We had three destroyers as an anti-submarine screen. We fuelled at Seydisfiord in Iceland and next day went to sea as the cruiser-covering force to provide protection to the convoy against enemy surface ships. We didn’t travel with the convoy, we sort of hovered on the edges. At times we could see the convoy and at other times we were a bit too far away to see it.
Arthur Godfrey Denby
About the second or third day out we were joined by a German reconnaissance plane, a Blohm und Voss, which kept us company for most of the time. They would come out and they would circle round the Squadron, and then about four hours later their relief would come out from Norway and so they kept up their reconnaissance on us and the Germans knew exactly where we were all the time, and this applied to the convoy as well because, in those days, we didn’t have aircraft carriers accompanying the convoy and so we had no air cover. Of course, the Germans were very close in Norway, not far away. We couldn’t do much about these planes except to try and lodge the odd 8-inch shell in their vicinity on occasions, and there was the occasional exchange of signals; one, for which I cannot now vouch, was to the effect, “Squadron to Blohm und Voss – you are making us giddy, could you please fly in the opposite direction?” which brought an acknowledgement from the plane which obligingly turned and went in the opposite direction!
Richard Campbell Begg on the quarter-deck of HMS Norfolk at sea.
In the meantime, the German bombing and torpedo attacks had been going on against the convoy and, on about the fourth day, we were fairly close up to the convoy and we could see an air attack in progress; one plane was brought down and three ships hit, one exploded, an ammunition ship. Then, late in the afternoon, there was a hive of activity about the ship and the rumour went out that Tirpitz, the German battleship, had been reported just over the horizon and we were about to engage her and other ships of the German Fleet. Flags were flying from the masthead as we turned away at high speed, forming single line ahead whilst the destroyers from the convoy formed up in line on our starboard quarter. While this was going on, the merchant ships were to be seen breaking away from the convoy and moving off in all directions. It was an awesome moment.
Left and above HMS Norfolk refuelling destroyers on convoy PQ 17. (Begg)
It was only later that we heard that the Admiralty had signalled that German heavy units were at sea and attack was considered imminent. The ships in the convoy were to scatter and find their own way into Russian ports whilst the Cruiser Force was to retire to the west at high speed. Anyway, it soon spread about the ship that we were withdrawing and leaving the ships of the convoy. It was a dreadful moment really; this was a thing the Royal Navy was not accustomed to do. So over the next few days we continued steaming at speed towards the west. Incidentally, our Walrus aircraft seaplane had been up in the air at the time all this activity was going on, and our Captain requested permission from the Admiral to stop to pick up the aircraft because, of course, she had to land on the sea and we would cruise alongside it and pick it up with our crane, but permission was refused. So we had to leave our poor old Walrus aircraft up in the air as we went off. Incidentally, the pilot kept in the air as long as he could and then landed behind one of the merchant ships and got a tow into Murmansk, very fortunate because he chose a ship that got in.
During the days following our leaving the convoy, we kept receiving wireless messages from individual ships of the convoy, “Am being bombed, torpedoed, etc”, and requesting assistance, and, of course, there was no assistance available. Out of the 34 ships that sailed from Iceland, only 11 made it – 23 ships were sunk. This was my first operation, not easily forgotten.
Catapulting the Walrus aircraft from HMS Norfolk.
So over the next few months we spent our time either in Hvalfjord in Iceland or at Scapa Flow or carrying out gunnery exercises and so forth until the next convoy, PQ 18, which had been delayed because of the disaster occurring with PQ 17, was ready to sail. So it wasn’t until September that we went off again as part of the cruiser escort, but this time we also covered ships which were landing supplies for the Norwegian meteorological group, which was stationed in Spitzbergen and had, the previous week or so, been bombarded by the battleship Tirpitz,