BATTLE OF THE ARCTIC: Passage to Murmansk

Snow was falling on the sea. Each ship in the convoy moved through the night in a white-curtained cell of its own: the transports from New York, laden with munitions for Russia; the high-sided, thick-bowed Russian destroyers, adapted from Italian designs for ice-breaking and patrol in rough northern waters; Britain’s new (1939) 8,000-ton cruiser Trinidad, the old and war-tried destroyer Eclipse, several other warships under the Union Jack. This convoy, for the first time in World War II, had brought together British and Soviet naval units for a common job.

They soon had a job to do. German dive-bombers, from the coasts and airdromes of nearby Norway, screamed down through the snow. German destroyers and submarines, from the fjords and ports of lower Norway, attacked with shells and torpedoes. The Trinidad holed a German destroyer. The Eclipse stopped another dead in its sudden charge, but had to run when two more enemy destroyers appeared.

The battle had begun somewhere off upper Norway, beyond where the North Atlantic meets the Arctic Circle. As the convoy sailed around North Cape and along the coasts of the remote, mineral-rich territory called Lapland, dive-bombers and submarines kept up the attack. Berlin, reporting the last one near the entrance to Murmansk harbor, claimed a total bag of eight ships, including a 10,000-tonner loaded with tanks and ammunition. The British said that the entire convoy entered Murmansk, admitted some damage and deaths, claimed the probable destruction of three U-boats with depth charges.

More significant than the actual losses in this particular foray was a later London announcement: the British had increased the naval strength assigned to the northern patrol between Iceland and Murmansk. For this there was a reason. After months when more & more British and U.S. war goods had found their way, with little interference, past Norway to Murmansk and Archangel, the Germans were stirring in their Norwegian lairs. The United Nations from now on would have to fight for one of the vital sea lanes of World War II.

For Russia, victory in the looming Battle of the Arctic means a continued flow of supplies to Murmansk and (in the ice-free season, from April to November) to Archangel, then on by rail to the Soviet fronts. For Britain and the U.S., command of these waters may yet open the way to a front in northern Europe, where Allied manpower can wield Allied weapons against Hitler’s armies.

Britain, at Scapa Flow, and the U.S. and Britain, in Iceland, have naval bases on the fringes of the battle area. In Norway on the Atlantic, at Kiel and Helgoland on the North Sea approaches, the Nazis have a great advantage: an inner line of both naval and air bases to protect German supply routes and to launch attacks on the outer Allied routes. The Germans also have enough naval power at hand to give the Allies serious contest: the mighty Tirpitz, which apparently escaped unharmed from a recent torpedo-plane attack; the smaller Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, several cruisers and at least aircraft carrier.

The mere existence of this force was made the British increase their naval strength in the North last week. If the forays become full-scale raids by heavy Nazi task units, Britain and the U.S. will have to weigh the Battle of the North in the worldwide war of supply. Weighing it, they will not forget that the North is a sector of the Battle of Russia, the battle which may decide World War II this year.