Russia Honors First British Arctic Merchant Navy Convoy – gCaptain
▻https://gcaptain.com/russia-honors-first-british-arctic-merchant-navy-convoy
Britain’s Princess Anna [Admiral and Chief Commandant for Women in the Royal Navy] listens to Russian artist Sergei Syukhin near a memorial to the participants of the Arctic Convoys during festive commemorations for the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the first allied Arctic Convoy, Operation Dervish.
REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
British and Russian World War Two veterans gathered on Wednesday in Arkhangelsk, 75 years to the day since Britain’s first Arctic convoy of military supplies steamed into the northern port.
Britain’s Princess Anne has been among those attending events honoring those who sailed, and the thousands who died, protecting supply convoys dispatched to aid the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.
On Aug. 31, 1941, two months after Hitler’s surprise attack on his erstwhile ally prompted Josef Stalin to seek support from a beleaguered Britain, the first convoy, codenamed “Dervish”, sailed into Arkhangelsk, or Archangel, after a 10-day crossing.
In one of the lesser known examples of British-Soviet wartime cooperation, the six British and one Dutch merchant ships which arrived under the protection of the Royal Navy carried among other supplies a force of Hurricane fighters.