Comments on: World War II: Convoy PQ-17

By: Pieter Graf

Pieter Graf — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:18:09 +0000

Dear Willard Brown,

I'd very much like to get a copy of your diary

Yours Sincerely,

Pieter Graf

By: Allan Watson

Allan Watson — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:19:12 +0000

I have read your interesting article on convoy PQ17.
Throughout the article you make various references to England and Great Britain.
Great Britain is made up of four seperate countries, Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Your continuing references to England when you mean Great Britain is annoying and does a great disservice to the many servicemen and women from the non English parts of the UK who died for the cause during WW2.
I am Scottish, and my uncle who came from Wales served on the Russian convoys during the war. He is now dead but if he was alive he would be furious to be classed as English.
Please take the time and trouble to research the history of the UK as well as you have researched the story of convoy PQ17.

By: Drew Dorman

Drew Dorman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:29:05 +0000

I think you need to dig a little deeper – the Soviet Union needed food, aircraft, tanks, and railroad equipment (rails, locomotives, etc.). The U.S. Lend Lease supplied 92.7% of the Soviet Union's railroad equipment, and from 15% to 90% of all other categories. Author M.N. Suprin states "The foodstuffs provided by Lend-Lease to the USSR would have sufficed to feed an army of ten million men for 1,688 days, that is, for the course of the entire war."

It is a proven fact that Stalin (and all the way to Gorbachev) downplayed the amount of materials sent, not wanting to acknowledge in its system of government. So state historians came up with an arbitrary figure of 4% of the Soviet war production. Soviet Army Marshal Georgii Zhukov has even stated that the Lend Lease aid was indispensable, despite Soviet propaganda otherwise.

Read the book "Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II" by Albert L. Weeks for more on this.

By: Paul Siebert

Paul Siebert — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:07:36 +0000

It's deplorable the way history is being falsified so casually. Not only the Soviets kept thanking the Americans on an official level for the lend-lease program, they actually PAID for all that cargo that sunk to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. As they paid fully for everything that was SOLD to them by the US during WWII. Yes, I said it right – tanks, fighters and bombers were not given to the USSR in a friendly gesture, that was in reality a commercial transaction. I guess there's a fundamental cultural difference at play here. When you are in the States, you dial a phone number and hear: 'How can I help you?', which in reality is a euphemism for 'What can I sell you?' Was it what the author meant? The Russians didn't say thank you after they paid for what they bought? Isn't a payment 'thank you' enough? Just for the record The Soviet Union never used US made tanks and bombers and the number of fighters was around 3000. Overall, according to Averell Harriman, US Ambassador to the USSR the US 'help' amounted to only 4% of the Soviet military industrial output from 1941-1945.
So of course the Soviets were mad, 24 ships – 2/3 of the convoy sunk due to a cowardly decision to disband the military escort and they had to pay for it in gold!

By: COMMANDER WILLARD BROWN

COMMANDER WILLARD BROWN — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:34:24 +0000

I have a diary of the my voyage on the SS Bellingham . Is this of any interest . I was a Naval gunnery officer on the ship . I was on the ship for the return trip , as you know the all crew survived but the ship went to the bottom