The Northern (Arctic) Route

West to East only

Sources :

• Suprun, »Lend-Lease and the Northern Convoys«
• Smith, »Russian Convoys 1941-45«
• Lawson, »Ships in Arctic Convoys«
• Arnold Hague, »The Allied Convoy System 1939-45«

Cargo, arrived at Murmansk 1942-1945, in pcs.

Excerpt of »LEND-LEASE AND THE NORTHERN CONVOYS« by Sergey Kovalyov

In the early months of the war when the Soviet Union had it the hardest, the northern route bore the bulk of the lend-lease deliveries.

Toward the end of November 1941, the first batch of [U.S.] lend-lease deliveries -

• 79 light M-3 tanks,
• 59 Curtis fighter planes,
• about 1,000 trucks and
• over 2,000 tons of barbed wire

- arrived in the Soviet ports of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk.

Great Britain followed suit with

• the Mathilda and Valentine medium tanks and
• two Hurricane fighter plane squadrons

which joined in the October and November 1941 defense action right away.

Before the end of 1942, polar convoys crossed the North Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea and then steamed along the edge of the Barents Sea arctic ice.
In December 1942, they ceased stopping over off Iceland for refueling.
Upon leaving British ports, they would head up north, skirt an enormous minefield between Scotland and Iceland and then turn south and proceed straight to Murmansk or Arkhangelsk by way of Medvezhy Island.

Upon their arrival in Murmansk, the transports were unloaded, and escort ships refueled in Vaenga Bay from a tanker on round-the-clock duty there.
It was only from the year 1943 that escort ships started drawing upon the Polyarny base resources.

Arkhangelsk was a larger port than Murmansk and better equipped for accepting and handling war supplies.
However, the White Sea froze over in mid-December and could stay closed to navigation until the end of May.

Altogether, 41 convoys of 738-811 transports arrived within the Arctic Circle over the war years, bringing 4.2 million tons of supplies to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk.

• 2,146 A-20C, P-39, P-40, Hurricane, Spitfire and Mustang planes;
• 4,198 M-3 [light...] [...and medium] , M-4, Mathilda, Valentine and Churchill tanks;
• 138 selfpropelled gun mounts;
• 128 armored personnel carriers and cross-country vehicles;
• 276 tractors;
• 76 trailers;
• 640 37-90-mm artillery guns;
• 813 radars;
• 7,737 radio stations;
• 971 battery re-charging stations;
• 62 tank repair shops;
• 870 Diesel engines;
• 1,393 various petrol engines and
• a multitude of other supplies.

The Soviet side dispatched to the West 726 transports as part of 36 Allied convoys carrying about 1.5 million tons of Soviet exports (such as strategic materials - manganese, chromium, asbestos, platinum).

At sea, Nazis [Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine] managed to sink 38 Soviet and 77 Allied transports plus 18 British men-of-war, with 7.5% of the supplies carried by Russia-bound polar convoys lost (as against the Atlantic convoy loss average of 0.7%).