Convoy QP 1

Convoy QP 1 (28 September – 19 October 1941) was the first Arctic Convoy of the Second World War by which the Allies brought back the ships of Operation Dervish that had carried supplies to the Soviet Union after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of 22 June 1941. The convoy sailed from Murmansk on 28 September 1941 and arrived safely at Scapa Flow in Orkney on 19 October.

From Operation Dervish, at the end of August 1941 to 20 December, six more convoys (Convoy PQ 1 to Convoy PQ 6) sent 45 ships, all of which reached Arkhangelsk or Murmansk. German awareness of these and the reciprocal westbound convoys (Convoy QP 1 to Convoy QP 4) was too vague to plan attacks by the Kriegsmarine or the Luftwaffe.

On 13 November 1941, the commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine, Großadmiral (Grand Admiral) Erich Raeder, told Hitler that, owing to the extreme weather and the lack of air reconnaissance, the prospects of the small number of U-boats in the Arctic Ocean were poor.

Background

Lend-lease

The Soviet leaders needed to replace the colossal losses of military equipment lost after the German invasion, especially when Soviet war industries were being moved out of the war zone and emphasised tank and aircraft deliveries. Machine tools, steel and aluminium was needed to replace indigenous resources lost in the invasion. The pressure on the civilian sector of the economy needed to be limited by food deliveries. The Soviets wanted to concentrate the resources that remained on items that the Soviet war economy that had the greatest comparative advantage over the German economy. Aluminium imports allowed aircraft production to a far greater extent than would have been possible using local sources and tank production was emphasised at the expense of lorries and food supplies were squeezed by reliance on what could be obtained from lend–lease.