The attacks continued for three more days without respite. Roving aircraft caught up with and sank Pan Atlantic, while prowling U-boats, working alone or in small wolfpacks, dealt death blows to John Witherspoon, Alcoa Ranger, Olopana and Hartlebury. One ship, Winston Salem, miraculously evaded numerous attacks only to be intentionally beached on the island of Novaya Zemyla, where she floundered until some of her cargo was salvaged. July 9 passed without incident; however, on the 10th, enemy planes caught Hoosier and El Capitan while they were making a desperate run for landfall southeast of Murmansk. They, too, were pounded to pieces and sent to the bottom within 100 miles of safety.

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Two little-known incidents illustrate the merchant ships’ dramatic struggle for survival in the Arctic. During the height of the attacks on July 5, the armed trawler Ayrshire made a desperate move. Serving as escort for Silver Sword, Ironclad and Troubadour, she led them in a mad dash directly into the ice barrier. Once anchored, the ships’ crews hurriedly painted their superstructures white to camouflage the vessels. Then, moving slowly along the ice edge and skirting the eastern extremes of the Barents Sea, the four ships eventually made for port.

Another incident involved the men of the naval armed guard serving aboard Washington, who actually chose to make the last leg of their trip to the Soviet Union in open lifeboats. Washington was carrying more than 600 tons of high explosives when she came under dive-bomber attack on July 5. Several hits had set the deck cargo ablaze, and with the flames raging out of control, the order to abandon ship was given. The gun crews loaded into two lifeboats and pulled away from the fiery wreck as fast as they could. When another ship tried to save them, the survivors repeatedly waved off all rescue attempts. They reasoned that they would simply be leaving one target for another and voted to remain adrift. It was their hope that once in the lifeboats they would be ignored by the attacking Germans. Within hours, just as anticipated, they witnessed the sinking of their would-be rescuers, hit by three torpedoes. Rigging sails and rowing in shifts, they reached the Soviet Union after 10 freezing days.

Air attacks by the Luftwaffe had temporarily closed the port of Murmansk, further disrupting deliveries of supplies, and the remaining ships of PQ-17 were rerouted. Only two ships made it across the White Sea to be unloaded at Archangel on July 9. Over the next few days, more stragglers came limping in, but it would take until July 28 for the last of the survivors of PQ-17 to arrive.

The toll taken on the abandoned convoy was horrendous. Only 11 of the 35 merchantmen that left Iceland finally made it to the Soviet Union. Fourteen of the sunken ships were American. More than two-thirds of the convoy had gone to the bottom, along with 210 combat planes, 430 Sherman tanks, 3,350 vehicles and nearly 100,000 tons of other cargo. More than 120 seamen were killed and countless others were crippled and maimed. The financial loss exceeded half a billion dollars.

For the Royal Navy, the massacre of PQ-17 and the abandonment of the convoy was one of the most shameful episodes of the war at sea. Details of the losses were kept from the public until after the war. The British decision to withdraw its protection from the convoy strained Anglo-American relations. Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of U.S. naval operations, was so enraged that he was very reluctant to have American and British ships continue operating together. Churchill lamented the fate of PQ-17 and wrote in his memoirs years later, “All risks should have been taken in the defense of the merchant ships.”

To make matters worse, the suspicious Soviets refused to believe that 24 ships from one convoy had been sunk. They openly accused their Western allies of lying about the disaster, and remained oblivious to the dangers and hardships endured by the merchantmen and escorts alike. No thanks were ever extended for the safe delivery of 5,000 tanks and more than 7,000 fighters and bombers. The Soviets never acknowledged that the 4 million tons of supplies that did arrive through the Arctic ports and the Persian Gulf may have kept their forces from being defeated by the Germans in the summer of 1942.

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