That being the case, it is no surprise to see that the minutes of the meeting record the Prime Minister expressing the view that: ‘It was our duty to fight these convoys through whatever the cost. The Russians were engaged in a life and death struggle against our common enemy. There was little we could do to help them except by maintaining the flow of supplies by this northern route. In the last convoy 22 out of 25 ships had got through in spite of our apprehensions, and this time we might again do better than we feared.’

  However, Stalin was to be ‘strongly urged’ to bomb the aerodromes in northern Norway, and he was to be warned of the consequence of PQ16 coming to grief. As Churchill explained to Stalin in his 19 May 1942 telegram: ‘If luck is not with us, and the convoy suffers very heavy losses, the only course left to us may be to hold up the further convoys until we get more sea room when the ice recedes to the northward in July.’3

  One of those who believed he would be among the likely victims if PQ16 suffered heavy losses was the 38-year-old Lieutenant Graeme Ogden, skipper of the trawler Lady Madeleine. An old Etonian amateur sailor who had joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (the category that catered for sailing enthusiasts as well as complete beginners), he had been given to understand that he was not someone whose views about tactics, even if pertaining to his own vessel’s self-preservation, would be given much sway by the professional sailors in charge of the convoy. At least some of the regular naval officers to whom he reported before being instructed to join PQ16’s escort had let it be known that amateurs such as him were regarded in some quarters as more of a hindrance than a help. His usefulness as an officer was called into question even more vehemently by one middle ranking regular officer after learning that Ogden’s family had made their money from their cigarette business, trade during the early war years being regarded by some British officers as a breeding ground for men who were not as well equipped for the rigours of leadership as those hailing from a wealthy aristocratic lineage.4

  The deficiencies of the ship Ogden commanded also affected his state of mind. The vital statistics of an old-fashioned coal burning armed trawler did not automatically inspire confidence. Because Lady Madeleine was armed with a 4-inch gun for’ard, and a twin half-inch Vickers machine gun aft plus two Lewis light machine guns (.303 calibre) for use on the bridge, and had been fitted up with anti-submarine asdic equipment and depth charge throwers, she was classified as a convoy escort in spite of her status as a former fishing vessel and her relatively small stature (she was 195 foot long, with a beam of 32 feet).5 But if it came to an attack by the German surface fleet or the Luftwaffe, it was evident she would not be much more effective than the merchant ships she had been brought in to protect.

  That might explain why during the lead up to the departure of PQ16, Ogden was studiously in denial about the vulnerability of Arctic convoy escorts, and referred to the gossip about damage to warships during the previous pair of convoys as ‘ugly rumours’. His complacency only fell away when, as he wrote in his memoirs, the day before PQ16’s original departure date, he saw incontrovertible evidence of what he had previously dismissed as impossible while chugging around Reykjavik’s harbour:

  ‘Across our bows steamed two F-class destroyers (HMS Foresight and HMS Forester). These ships were near wrecks. Their masts were down, their sides holed, their smoke stacks askew. They bore the scars of German shells, and their own gun turrets were a shambles… It was a grim reminder of what might be in store for us. We returned to Hvalfjord… in rather a chastened mood.’6

  He was, he recalled, cheered up ‘somewhat’ however by the reassuring words spoken by the 52-year-old Rear Admiral Sir Harold Burrough, commander of the 10th Cruiser Squadron, who was to be in charge of the protection of PQ16, at the pre-convoy conference attended by escort commanders as well as by masters of merchant ships, during the morning of 20 May.7 PQ16’s departure had been delayed for a couple of days. According to Ogden, Admiral Burrough informed the conference ‘in the traditional bluff naval style… that we had little to fear, as the escort for this convoy was the most powerful ever to be sent on a north Russian convoy. He, with four cruisers, would be near us all the way up and battleships would be covering the convoy as a distant screen.’8 This was double the number of cruisers Burrough had had under his command when escorting PQ15 (see Chapter 12).

  Ogden was equally impressed by the 38-year-old Commander Richard Onslow, the senior officer in charge of the convoy’s close escort, although Onslow was a man whom Ogden had at first underrated. First impressions told Ogden that Onslow was ‘a most charming person: tall, elegant and well dressed… complete with a monocle… I felt he would be more at home in White’s (the Club), in St James’ Street, than the Arctic.’ However, once Ogden had seen how accurately Onslow described to the escort commanders, at another conference, what they were likely to face, and what they must do if they were to cope, he was already saying to himself: ‘how wrong I was!’9

  Ogden explains in his memoirs how he eventually decided it would be best to pass on what he had learned to his crew: ‘I… told them in their own language what they were in for, and what I expected of them. I made it clear that their best chance of survival was instant obedience to my orders, whatever might befall us, and that I would not have any nonsense from anybody.’10

  PQ16 finally sailed from Hvalfjord during the evening of 20 May.11 Churchill had been as good as his word to Roosevelt: it consisted of 35 merchant ships, including 1 Dutch vessel, 20 American, 7 British, 4 Soviet, and 3 Panamanian-registered vessels.12 Ogden’s recollection was that the ships were given their marching orders when ‘Commodore Gale in the [SS] Ocean Voice blew a long blast on his ship’s siren.’13 Alexander Werth, the BBC’s 41-year-old Russia correspondent, who was a passenger in the convoy’s SS Empire Baffin, later recalled that: ‘It had rained that day. But as we were sailing out of the fjord, the sun broke through the black clouds resting heavily on the hills, and a glorious rainbow appeared above the grey choppy sea. I felt a strange elation at the good omen.’ However, he would later deride himself for being naively superstitious, admitting that ‘many others in our convoy must have welcomed… [it], and among them, some of those who were never to see land again.’14

  Like most Arctic convoys, PQ16 was not protected by any of the larger warships when it first left the cover of Hvalfjord, accompanied only by its modest local escort. This might have had undesirable repercussions had the departure of the convoy not been delayed, or had the weather been fine. Because it was foggy, and because by 22 May no convoy had turned up south-east of Jan Mayen Island where the six U-boats designated Gruppe Greif (Griffen) had on 18 May been ordered to line up, Admiral Schmundt (Admiral Nordmeer) lost his nerve. Fearing that the next Russian convoy he had been expecting might have slipped through the net because of the restricted visibility, he instructed the U-boats’ commanders to move to the north-east, not realizing that had he waited a little longer, the lightly protected freighters might have fallen into his original trap (see initial location of Gruppe Greif U-boats in Map 12).15

  The chance to catch the convoy with such scant support would not recur. By early morning on 25 May, the nine-column convoy was not only protected by the four cruisers promised by Admiral Burrough at the pre-convoy conference along with their three supporting destroyers (Burrough flew his flag in the cruiser Nigeria), but it was also supported by an anti-aircraft ship, five more destroyers, four corvettes, three trawlers, two submarines and one minesweeper. There was also a tanker with its one destroyer screen, which was to refuel the convoy’s escorts, and was then to switch over so it could refuel the west-going convoy’s escorts before PQ16 reached what was generally accepted as the main danger area between Jan Mayen Island and Bear Island.16

  Ogden would later recall how the arrival of four of the five destroyers that were to form part of the so-called ‘through (to Russia) escort’ during the early afternoon of 24 May was marked by Ashanti’s Commander Onslow being ‘enough of a showman to steam right round the convoy to make sure his arrival had been noticed by all the merchantmen’.17

  But Ogden confessed that his heart fell when, within an hour of the arrival of the cruisers, which showed up at around 6.30 a.m. on 25 May, the first German shadower aircraft, a Focke-Wulf 200 Condor, appeared and began to circle the convoy, well within sight, but outside the range of any of the ships’ guns.18

  The account in his memoirs continues: ‘I realized with a sickening feeling… there could be no escape. The barbed harpoon had been plunged into the whale’s side, not to be withdrawn until its captors had killed it and its blood had turned the pale Arctic sea to crimson. As I watched this evil shadow through my glasses, I thought of it as a gigantic bat, a Fledermaus, a spectre consorting with a butcher, a Schlachter.’19

  Nevertheless the Focke-Wulf, and the aircraft which replaced it, featured in a version of the humorous myth, or much-repeated joke, which appears in many of the detailed accounts written by Arctic convoy veterans, and particularly in those penned by PQ16 survivors. The story goes – and it appears to have been sincerely believed by at least some who told it – that various captains of ships in the convoys asked their signalmen to flash messages to the crews of the shadowers to tell them that their going round and round was making them dizzy. Would they mind circling in the opposite direction? On receiving this request, the shadowers changed the direction of the circling, after replying, ‘Anything to oblige.’20

  Less amusing was the information passed to Onslow by his opposite number in west-going QP12 (initially 15 ships excluding escorts), which had set out from the Kola Inlet on 21 May, as the two convoys chugged past each other east of Jan Mayen Island during the early afternoon of 25 May.21 Onslow was informed that QP12 had been shadowed by at least one U-boat. Within an hour of being told this, a U-boat was sighted from one of PQ16’s escorts.22 Although for some time after the sighting, this U-boat was the fugitive as she was chased and targeted by PQ16’s escorts and their depth charges, there was no mistaking the sense that all of a sudden the lives of everyone involved with PQ16 had become that much more insecure.

  QP12 also brought with it other bad news. It was with great sadness that Admiral Burrough learned from QP12’s senior destroyer commander what had transpired earlier that day.23 During the early hours of 25 May, the appearance of aircraft that proceeded to shadow QP12 had tempted Captain Dan McGrath, the senior officer of the escort in the anti-aircraft ship Ulster Queen, to try to shoot them out of the sky before they could summon the Luftwaffe units from northern Norway. Although R. Struben, his second-in-command, believed that three German planes was too many for the one available Hurricane on QP12’s CAM ship Empire Morn, McGrath insisted that a signal should be sent to Empire Morn’s master requesting that its plane should be deployed.

  Struben has written about how he watched the ‘thrilling drama’ that ensued after ‘in a cloud of fiery rocket smoke, the fighter roared off the merchantman’s fo’c’sle and soared behind the cover of an isolated cloud’. What made the situation so dramatic was that the German aircraft’s crew appeared not to have seen the British plane. ‘In a minute or two, we saw the Hurricane dive at full throttle out of the cloud onto the tail of the first unsuspecting enemy to send it hurtling into the sea,’ Struben reported.

  While the Hurricane’s pilot, Flying Officer John Kendall, circled the convoy, he was instructed to make sure the ‘job was complete’. According to Empire Morn’s master, W. L. Cruickshank, Kendall radioed back to say that he could see the wrecked plane and a dinghy close by, but no crew. ‘I take it they must have gone down with their plane,’ Cruickshank reported. He added, ‘The other two must have realized that a Hurricane was about, for they made off for home to report.’24

  Struben’s account describes what happened next. After the encounter with the German aircraft, Kendall ‘circled round Ulster Queen to… report his petrol was nearly finished, and that he was about to ditch the Hurricane. Had the clouds been high enough, Kendall would have gained a safe height for parachuting, and then baled out near the rescue trawler… But he jumped from under the clouds…, and we watched in horror as he struck the water before the parachute had had time to open. Of course he was killed.’25

  Struben’s report suggests that the deployment that ended in Kendall’s death did not achieve anything since one of the shadowers returned. There was no disputing Cruickshank’s assessment of Kendall’s courage however, contained in the following epitaph. Kendall, he said, had ‘showed his mettle against the Hun… The attack was magnificently carried out with skill and daring against superior numbers… We all regret the loss of a fellow countryman, a gallant fighter and a hero.’26

  A different strategy was adopted concerning the PQ16 shadowers. It was decided that Empire Lawrence, PQ16’s CAM ship, should hold on to her Sea Hurricane until a bombing raid materialized. There was not long to wait.

  Alexander Werth appears to have recorded the moment when, shortly after 8.30 p.m. that night (25 May), as PQ16 continued sailing on its course of 25°, south-west of Bear Island, torpedo bombers appeared in the distance for the first time (see 3 in Map 12 and Note 27 for approximate attack location).27 They came in, he said, ‘on the starboard side, low above the water. Three – four – five, then three more, then four or five after that, further to the right. We were all on deck [by this time]… and we counted and watched. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. Something was already happening ahead of us… The… cruisers… and the destroyers on the edge of the convoy were firing like mad… and the sky was… dotted with specks of smoke from the flak shells.’28

  It was in an attempt to forestall the port arm of the attack that the Hurricane in Empire Lawrence, which was sailing in convoy position 11 (the 1st column from the left side of convoy, i.e. the convoy’s extreme left column; 1st i.e. front ship), was unleashed against it.29

  The order it should take off almost led to a fight between the two pilots in Empire Lawrence, who were in the middle of a change-over when the message arrived. The argument was soon over. The 20-year-old South African pilot Alastair Hay was in the cockpit when the plane was catapulted off the ship.30

  ‘Its engines hum in a rising crescendo of sound,’ wrote the Polish journalist Bohdan Pawłowicz, who was embedded with the crew of the Polish Navy’s destroyer ORP Garland, the escort on the convoy’s port beam. ‘The pilot semi-circles round the convoy and makes off for the horizon where I can see torpedo planes approaching. He flies right into their midst. Smoke appears!’31

  Most of those watching from the convoy could only pray that it was not their man who had been hit. It was not: his voice could still be heard over his link with Empire Lawrence. He stated he had shot down one plane and damaged another on the port side of the convoy.32

  However, their excitement was quickly transformed into concern when he was heard reporting that he had been hit in one of his legs, and that his ammunition had run out. He then announced that he would bale out.

  Pawłowicz in Garland was watching as the Hurricane returned to the convoy. ‘As he approaches, some cargo ships open up with their machine guns,’ Pawłowicz wrote. ‘The pilot frantically dips his wings. “What? Don’t they know their own plane!” I shout out… The Hurricane circles in a wide sweep. The pilot bales out… I see the white mushroom of his parachute slowly settling on the water, and simultaneously a motor boat reaches him.’

  For now he was down, but he was not out, and a sailor in Garland was able to subsequently inform Pawłowicz, the pilot would live to shoot down more Germans.33 Whatever his future prospects, his patrol only ended after he had successfully disrupted the port arm of the German attack.34

  The torpedo bombers on the convoy’s starboard bow were also thwarted. They were evidently put off by the barrage put up by the cruisers which had been rushed out in front of the merchant ships in time to repulse the attack. As a result, the German torpedoes were dropped too far away to trouble either escorts or merchant ships.

  Stunned by all the banging sounds made by the warships’ and merchant ships’ guns, Werth and the other passengers with him silently watched the battle from amidships on their vessel. But all that changed when, as Werth recorded, ‘Something happened.’35 From where he was standing, it seemed that a cruiser’s guns had hit one of the German planes, although assuming that the same incident is being talked about, gunners in Ashanti and Volunteer, the destroyers positioned to guard the convoy’s port bow, were subsequently given the credit: according to Onslow’s official report, the shot-down Junkers Ju 88 was one of three planes that in quick succession had dived on the convoy out of the sun on the port side, which Volunteer and Ashanti were guarding. The shot down pilot appears to have paid the price for having had the temerity to think his aircraft could pass through the curtain of fire emanating out of the guns in these destroyers without paying the price.36

  As Werth watched the hit aircraft ‘reel and swoop down’ on the convoy’s port bow, he noted the ecstatic reaction in his ship Empire Baffin, which at the time was in convoy position 21 (2nd column from left side of convoy; 1st, i.e. front, ship in column): ‘It was like a football match… The RAF boys were shouting: “He’s on fire! He’s on fire! That’s it!… He’s down!” ’ After such gusto, the final act of the drama was incongruously unspectacular. ‘The plane… slid into the water without much of a splash,’ Werth recorded.37

  Eventually at around 10.30 p.m. the other German planes slunk away.38 After all that bombing, the only enemy casualty the Germans had to show for it was the American SS Carlton, the freighter in convoy position 14 (1st column from left, 4th row) which was seen to have smoke coming from her engine room.39 The ship’s main steam pipe had been fractured by the blast from a near miss, and her master was ordered to take her back to Iceland. She was first towed and later escorted by Northern Spray, one of the convoy’s armed trawlers.