Battle of the Arctic: Page 2 | click here for Page 1
Battle of the Arctic: the Maritime Epic of World War Two
Who Was To Blame For the PQ17 Disaster
While the western allies had to put a brave face on several setbacks during the 1942 Arctic convoys, the most infamous of all remains the one known as PQ17.
Many people appear to have reached the conclusion that Admiral Sir Dudley Pound made an unforgiveable mistake when, fearing that the German battleship Tirpitz was about to be used in an attack on the convoy, he issued the order requiring PQ17’s merchant ships to scatter. Some still hold him responsible for the 21 Allied ships that were subsequently abandoned or sunk due to their being targeted by the crews of U-boats and German aircraft at a time when, as a result of the scatter order, there was no support from Allied warships. This blaming is understandable. The scatter order turned out to be unnecessary because although Tirpitz’s commander was initially told to advance towards PQ17, the attack was called off. Many of the ships whose cargo was lost would surely have reached Russia were it not for Pound’s reaction to the unfolding events.
However in this book I have tried to explain that while with the benefit of hindsight his order was ‘wrong’, given what was known at the Admiralty at the time, it was arguably at the very least justifiable.
One reason why Pound has been blamed is that, his critics allege, he did not take on board that Tirpitz was not an immediate threat, which was the advice given by Ned Denning, the intelligence expert relating to German surface warships at the Admiralty. Blaming Pound for not agreeing with Denning appears to be unfair. Without going into all the details here, a crucial piece of the evidence used by Denning to back up his view that Tirpitz would not be sent out to attack PQ17 was flawed.
Denning has stated that he gave Pound to understand that deciphered Enigma messages from German aircraft crews were reporting that there was a battleship near the convoy. This led Denning to conclude that Tirpitz’s commander would not be ordered to attack until the allegation that there was such a powerful vessel near the convoy was confirmed to be incorrect. However before the convoy was scattered, Denning saw a decrypted message from one of the circling German aircraft crews which did appear to suggest that some of the Germans on the spot realized no Allied battleship was in the convoy’s vicinity after all. Such a realization undermined Denning’s theory somewhat. It at least made it arguable, given that the other evidence cited by Denning also had holes in it, that based on evidence possessed by those at the Admiralty at the time, Pound was right to assume that if the convoy was not scattered, Tirpitz might be deployed to target and decimate it.
