by Bernard Edwards

In the summer of 1942 Britain and the United States of America jointly agreed to provide massive quantities of arms and other vital war supplies to bolster Soviet Russia’s struggle against Hitler’s invasion. As might be expected, the bulk of these cargoes were carried in British and American merchant ships, with naval escorts. Equally predictably, the leaders of Nazi Germany ordered that these allied convoys were to be continually harassed and destroyed by naval and air attacks. There followed a ferocious and prolonged campaign made the more deadly by the extreme weather conditions of the Arctic Sea.

In The Road to Russia – Arctic Convoys 1942, Bernard Edwards has researched the fate of Convoys PQ13 and PQ17 bound from Iceland to Northern Russia as well as the westbound Convoy QP13. Attacked relentlessly by aircraft and U-boats, the former lost a total of thirty ships while QP13 ran into a British minefield off Iceland, losing seven vessels. Immortalised by Nicholas Montsarrat’s The Cruel Sea, the story of these convoys is one of the most inspiring examples of raw courage and dedication to duty to emerge from the Second World War.

This is a well written book and I would highly recommend it to our readers.

Published by:

Paperback: 235mm x 157mm, 210 pp illustrated

Price: £12.99