Operation Orator


Operation Orator was the code name for the defence of the Allied Arctic convoy PQ 18 by British and Australian air force units based temporarily in North-West Russia, against attack by the German battleship and other Kriegsmarine surface vessels. The wing, known as the Search & Strike Force, was commanded by Group Captain Frank Hopps and its maritime strike element was the Leuchars Wing, comprising No. 144 Squadron, Royal Air Force and No. 455 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force equipped with Handley-Page Hampden TB 1 torpedo bombers.
The Hampden crews made a long and dangerous flight from bases in Scotland and assembled at Vayenga-1 airfield, near Vayenga, on the Kola Inlet, north of Murmansk. The two squadrons lost nine aircraft shot down or crashed in transit but the remainder joined a detachment of 210 Squadron Catalina flying boats and a section of photographic reconnaissance Spitfires from 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit to make up the Search & Strike Force.
At on 14 September, 23 Hampdens were scrambled, after Tirpitz was reported absent from its moorings. The Hampdens flew to the maximum distance that Tirpitz could have reached then turned to follow the track back to Altafjord, as far as the Catalina cross over patrols. After an uneventful flight, the Hampdens returned at from what turned out to be a false alarm; Tirpitz having moved to a nearby fjord. The S&SF Hampdens stayed at readiness and the Spitfires watched over Tirpitz until October. Operation Orator had deterred the Germans from risking their capital ships against PQ 18 and after converting the Soviet Air Forces to the Hampden and Spitfire aircraft to be left behind, the aircrew and ground personnel returned to Britain.

Background

Arctic convoys

In October 1941, after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR, which had begun on 22 June, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, made a commitment to send a convoy to the Arctic ports of the USSR every ten days and to deliver a month from July 1942 to January 1943, followed by and another The first convoy was due at Murmansk around 12 October and the next convoy was to depart Iceland on 22 October. A motley of British, Allied and neutral shipping loaded with military stores and raw materials for the Soviet war effort would be assembled at Hvalfjörður, Iceland, an anchorage convenient for ships from both sides of the Atlantic.
By late 1941, the convoy system used in the Atlantic had been established on the Arctic run; a convoy commodore ensured that the ships' masters and signals officers attended a briefing to make arrangements for the management of the convoy, which sailed in a formation of long rows of short columns. The commodore was usually a retired naval officer, aboard a ship identified by a white pendant with a blue cross. The commodore was assisted by a Naval signals party of four men, who used lamps, semaphore flags and telescopes to pass signals, coded from books carried in a weighted bag, to be dumped overboard in an emergency. In large convoys, the commodore was assisted by vice- and rear-commodores who directed the speed, course and zig-zagging of the merchant ships in co-operation with the escort commander.

Convoy hiatus

Following Convoy PQ 16 and the disaster to PQ 17 in July 1942, Arctic convoys were suspended for nine weeks and much of the Home Fleet was detached to the Mediterranean. During the lull, Admiral John Tovey concluded that the Home Fleet had been of no great protection to convoys once beyond Bear Island, midway between Svalbard and the North Cape of Norway. Tovey planned to oversee the operation from Scapa Flow, where the fleet was linked to the Admiralty by landline and immune to variations in wireless reception. The next convoy was to be accompanied by the longer-range destroyers of the Home Fleet. Along with the close escort force of anti-submarine and anti-aircraft ships, the fleet destroyers could confront a sortie by German ships with the threat of a massed torpedo attack. Instead of meeting homeward-bound QP convoys near Bear Island, QP 14 was to remain in port until PQ 18 was near its destination, despite the longer journey being more demanding of the escort crews, fuel and equipment. The new escort carrier had arrived from the United States and was added to the escort force.

Signals intelligence

The British Government Code and Cypher School based at Bletchley Park housed a small industry of code-breakers and traffic analysts. By June 1941, the code-breakers could read quickly German Enigma machine cyphers in the Home Waters settings for surface ships and U-boats. On 1 February 1942, the Enigma machines used in U-boats in the Atlantic and Mediterranean were made more complex and it was not until December 1942 that the British could read the new Shark cypher. The older version remained in use by German ships the U-boats in Arctic waters. By mid-1941, British Y-stations were able to receive and read Luftwaffe W/T transmissions and give advance warning of Luftwaffe operations. In 1941, interception parties were embarked on warships and from May 1942, computers sailed with the cruiser admirals in command of convoy escorts, to intercept Luftwaffe W/T signals beyond the range of land stations in Britain. The Admiralty sent details of Luftwaffe wireless frequencies, call signs and the daily local codes to the computers. Combined with their knowledge of Luftwaffe procedures, the computers could give fairly accurate details of German reconnaissance sorties and sometimes predicted attacks twenty minutes before they appeared on radar. From February 1942 until January 1943, the German Beobachtungsdienst of the Marinenachrichtendienst read the British Naval Cypher No 3.

Allied Arctic operations

As Arctic convoys passed by the North Cape of Norway into the Barents Sea, they were easily within range of German aircraft, U-boats and ships based in Norway and Finland. The ships were still vulnerable while unloading at Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Polyarny and Hawker Hurricane fighters delivered by the first Arctic convoy, were intended for air defence against the Luftwaffe. In Operation Dervish, six elderly freighters sailed from Iceland for Archangelsk carrying wood, rubber, tin and fifteen crated Hawker Hurricane fighters. In Operation Strength, the aircraft carrier carried 24 Hurricanes concurrent with the convoy, escorted by three cruisers with the RAF ground party. When Argus was in range of Vayenga, the Hurricanes were flown off and all reached their destination.
No. 151 Wing RAF flew in the defence of Murmansk for five weeks and claimed 16 victories, four probables and seven aircraft damaged. The winter snows began on 22 September and the conversion of Soviet Air Force pilots and ground crews to the Hurricane Mk IID began in mid-October and in late November the RAF party returned to Britain, less various signals staff. The Allied Operation Gauntlet, Fritham had taken place in the Svalbard Archipelago on the main island of Spitsbergen, midway between northern Norway the North Pole, to eliminate German weather stations and to stop its coal exports to Norway. In Operation Gearbox II two cruisers and a destroyer took of supplies and equipment to Spitsbergen. On 3 September, Force P, the oilers, and four destroyer escorts sailed for Van Mijenfjorden in Spitsbergen and from 9 to 13 September refuelled destroyers detached from PQ 18.

German plans

Authority in the Kriegsmarine was derived from the Seekriegsleitung in Berlin and Arctic operations were commanded by Admiral Boehm, the Admiral Commanding Norway, from the Marinegruppenkommando Nord HQ in Kiel. Three flag officers were detached to Olso in command of minesweeping, coast defence, patrols and minelaying off the west, north and polar coasts. The large surface ships and U-boats were under the command of the Flag Officer Northern Waters at Narvik, who did not answer to Boehm but had authority over the Flag Officer Battlegroup, who commanded the ships when at sea. The Flag Officer Northern Waters also had tactical control of aircraft from Luftflotte 5 when they operated in support of the Kriegsmarine. The Norwegian-based aircraft had tactical headquarters at Kirkenes, Trondheim and Bardufoss. The Luftwaffe HQs were separate from the Kriegsmarine commanders except at Kirkenes, with the Flag Officer Polar Coast.
On 24 June, a British minesweeper based at Kola was sunk by Ju 87 Stuka dive-bombers and on 16 August, Admiral Scheer conducted Operation Wunderland, a sortie against Russian ships thought to be sailing along the route north of Siberia. Admiral Scheer sailed north of Novaya Zemlya and then to the east and sank a Soviet icebreaker; by 30 August Admiral Scheer was back in Narvik. B-Dienst signals interception and documents recovered from the crashed Hampden UB-C, revealed the crossover and escort changeover points of convoys PQ 18 and QP 14 and other details including Operation Orator. U-boats, destroyers and the minelayer Ulm sailed on Operation Zar to sow mines at the entrance of the White Sea and off Novaya Zemlya. On 25 August, Ultra revealed the itinerary of Ulm and three of the destroyers with Tuscaloosa south of Bear Island, were sent to intercept the ship; Ulm was sunk that night and sixty survivors were taken prisoner. The Germans had to press Admiral Hipper into service as a minelayer. Tirpitz, the cruiser Lützow and three destroyers had been in dock for repairs since Unternehmen Rosselsprung against Convoy PQ 17 and were not available. Twelve U-boats formed a patrol group in the Norwegian Sea against PQ 18 and the Kriegsmarine planned Unternehmen Doppelschlag in which the cruisers Admiral Scheer, Admiral Hipper and Köln with four destroyer escorts, would sail against the convoy.

''Goldene Zange'' (Golden Comb)

The Luftwaffe used the lull after PQ 17 to assemble a force of 35 Junkers Ju 88 A-4 dive-bombers of Kampfgeschwader 30 and 42 torpedo-bombers of Kampfgeschwader 26 to join the reconnaissance aircraft of Luftflotte 5. After analysing the results of anti-shipping operations against PQ 17, in which the crews of Luftflotte 5 made exaggerated claims of ships sunk including a cruiser, the anti-shipping units devised the Goldene Zange. Ju 88 bombers were to divert the defenders with medium and dive bombing attacks as the torpedo-bombers approached out of the twilight. The torpedo bombers were to fly towards the convoy in line abreast, at wave-top height to evade radar, as the convoy was silhouetted against the lighter sky, then drop their torpedoes in a salvo. When B-Dienst discovered that an aircraft carrier would accompany the next convoy, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring gave orders that it must be sunk first; Luftwaffe aircrew were told that the destruction of the convoy was the best way to help the German army at Stalingrad and in Caucasus in southern Russia.

Operation Orator

Plan

A Search & Strike Force, commanded by Group Captain Frank Hopps, was to fly to north Russia and operate over the Barents Sea. The maritime strike element comprised 16 Handley Page Hampden torpedo-bombers each from 144 Squadron, Royal Air Force and 455 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force. The search element comprised nine Catalinas detached from 210 Squadron RAF from RAF Sullom Voe, in Shetland, to operate from Lake Lakhta near Arkhangelsk, to keep watch on the waters north of Altafjord and a section of three RAF 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit Extra-Super-Long-Range Spitfire PR Mk IV flown from RAF Sumburgh in shetland, to operate from Afrikanda to watch over Tirpitz. The Spitfires and Catalinas were to keep watch on the bigger Kriegsmarine ships in Norwegian waters, including the battleship Tirpitz, to attack them at the first opportunity.

Deployment of the Search & Strike Force

On 13 August, Hopps, RAF and RAAF ground staff and a medical unit sailed for Russia on the cruiser, along with three destroyers. Hopps was to establish an HQ at Polyarny on the Kola Inlet, north-north-east of Murmansk. The three PRU Spitfires for the Search & Strike Force departed from Sumburgh, Shetland on 1 September on a journey of more than over the North Sea, occupied Norway, Sweden the Gulf of Bothnia and Finland to Afrikanda in north Russia and arrived safely after a -hour flight. The 210 Squadron Catalinas had to remain on operations until the last minute and their equipment and ground crews also had to travel by air but the distance was easily within Catalina range.
On 2 September 1942, as PQ 18 departed from Loch Ewe, the 32 Hampdens of the Search & Strike Force flew from their base at RAF Leuchars to Sumburgh. The safe range for a Hampden not carrying a torpedo or overload tanks was thought to be a maximum of. There was no time to fit long-range fuel tanks and each Hampden was to carry a member of the ground staff, the rest travelling to Murmansk on USS Tuscaloosa, with the Mk XII torpedoes, munitions and other stores. If the Hampdens flew at and did not need rich mixture for manoeuvring, the range to dry tanks might be stretched to, when the safe route from Sumburgh to Vayenga was. On 3 September an attempt to send the squadrons to Russia despite an unfavourable weather report, in fear of even worse weather to come, was refused by McLaughlin and Lindeman and the squadrons waited for better weather.
Late on 4 September, the Hampdens of the Leuchars Wing took off for Russia. Their route would keep the Hampdens a minimum of from German-occupied territory but was clearly too risky. A flight along the Norwegian coast would cover but could easily be intercepted by the Luftwaffe. A direct route over the mountains of Norway would be only long but the fuel consumed in climbing high enough would leave little left to overcome head winds, engine trouble, navigation errors or a landing delay. The Hampden crews were to follow a route similar to that of the Spitfires, flying north to Burrafirth in Shetland and the fly on a course to reach Norway at 66°N, cross the mountains in the dark, overfly northern Sweden and Finland, before landing at the Soviet air base at Afrikanda, at the southern end of Murmansk Oblast. The flight to Afrikanda was expected to take five to eight hours, depending on the weather and German opposition. After refuelling, the Hampden crews were to fly the remaining to Vayenga, following the Kandalaksha–Murmansk railway northwards.
Two Hampdens crashed in northern Sweden, near Arjeplog; both crashes were thought to have been caused by atmospheric icing. Four RAAF, three RCAF and one RAFVR crew were killed and buried at Kviberg Cemetery, Gothenburg. There were no survivors from Hampden P5304 of 455 Squadron, piloted by Sgt Edward Smart, when it crashed on 4/5 September by lake Arvestuottar, after passing over the larger lake Arvesjaure to the north-west. Hampden AE436 piloted by P/O David Evans, crashed in the Sarek National Park on Tsatsa, a massif located between the valleys of Njåtjosvagge and Tjuoltavagge, about north of the intended route. Evans and his supernumerary, Corporal Bernard Sowerby, survived the crash and made a three-day trek to the nearest village. Under international law, combatant aircraft entering a neutral country during wartime have normally been subject to impounding and their crews to internment, and these laws were enforced in Sweden at the time. To avoid internment, Evans and Sowerby told the Swedish authorities that they had crashed in Norway and walked across the border; they were repatriated to Britain on 21 September.
Four Hampdens were either shot down or forced to land in German-held territory. AT109 of 455 Squadron, piloted by Sqn Ldr James Catanach, landed on a beach in northern Norway after being damaged by flak from a German submarine chaser and the crew were taken prisoner. Hampden AT138 "PL-C" of 144 Squadron, was attacked over Finland by a fighter of Jagdgeschwader 5 ; three crew and one passenger were killed. Sergeant J. C. R. Bray, the pilot, bailed out and became a prisoner of war. AT138 crashed near Alakurtti. P1344 "PL-K", piloted by P/O E. H. E. Perry, suffered from icing and was forced to take an alternate, lower altitude route. They flew over the Luftwaffe base at Petsamo, where P1344 was damaged by flak; it was then attacked by two Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighters of JG 5. During a crash-landing in an Axis-held part of the Kola Peninsula, three crew members were killed and Perry was seriously injured. He and his passenger were taken prisoner. P1273 "PL-Q", piloted by Sgt H. L. Bertrand, was attacked by fighters from JG 5 near Petsamo; the crew and passenger bailed out and were captured. Plans for PQ 18 and QP 14 were recovered by the Germans from "UB-C" and along with a decoded signal from the Soviet 95th Naval Flight Regiment, the Germans gained the itinerary for both convoys.
Poor visibility in the Afrikanda area made landings difficult and two Hampden pilots, Sqn Ldr Dennis Foster and Sqn Ldr Jack Davenport, landed on a mud airstrip at Monchegorsk, about to the north. Davenport did so after his Hampden was intercepted by VVS fighter pilots, who directed him to land. Two Hampdens ran out of fuel over Russia and were damaged in forced landings at or near Afrikanda. One pilot made a wheels-up landing in soft ground at Khibiniy, several miles north of Afrikanda and the other Hampden was written off after hitting tree stumps. A further Hampden was lost on the Afrikanda–Murmansk leg. AE356, piloted by Sgt Walter Hood, was caught up in a German air raid over the Kola Inlet and was attacked in error by VVS fighter pilots. Forced to ditch in a lake, the crew were strafed in the water and the ventral gunner, Sgt Walter Tabor died, either from bullet wounds or drowning when the aircraft sank. The survivors got ashore and received small-arms fire from Soviet troops until they were recognised as Allies ; 23 Hampdens arrived at Soviet airfields intact or with only minor damage.

Convoy PQ 18

The German surface force at Narvik had been alerted when PQ 18 was first sighted and on 10 September sailed north to Altafjord past the British submarines and. Tigris made an abortive torpedo attack on Admiral Scheer and erroneously reported it as Tirpitz. Soon after midnight on the Admiralty supplied Enigma messages to the British escort commander that Admiral Hipper was due at Altafjord at and in the afternoon reported that Tirpitz was still at Narvik. On 13 September, Enigma showed that the ships at Altafjord had come to one hours' notice at which was relayed to the convoy escort commander at Enigma showed that Tirpitz was still in Narvik on 14 September and on 16 September, a Swedish source, A2, reported that only Admiral Hipper, Admiral Scheer and Koln would operate against PQ 18. Doppeslschlag had already been called off on 13 September; Hitler, reluctant to risk the loss of any of his capital ships on an offensive operation, had refused to authorise a sortie.
Scheer and its escorts remained far to the north of PQ 18 as the convoy rounded the North Cape. Operation EV, the escort operation for the forty Allied freighters in the convoy comprised an exceptionally large number of Naval ships, including Avenger, the first escort carrier to accompany an Arctic convoy. Detailed information on German intentions was provided by Allied code breakers, through Ultra signals decrypts and eavesdropping on Luftwaffe wireless communications. From 12 to 21 September, PQ 18 was attacked by bombers, torpedo-bombers, U-boats and mines, which sank thirteen ships at a cost of forty-four aircraft and four U-boats. The escort ships and the aircraft of Avenger were able to use signals intelligence from the Admiralty to provide early warning of some air attacks and to attempt evasive routeing of the convoy around concentrations of U-boats. The convoy handed over its distant escorts and Avenger to the homeward bound Convoy QP 14 near Archangelsk on 16 September and continued with the close escort and local escorts, riding out a storm in the northern Dvina estuary and the last attacks by the Luftwaffe, before reaching Archangelsk on 21 September.

Air operations from Russia

The Catalinas of 210 Squadron were to provide a close escort for PQ 18 at the beginning and end of its journey. The aircraft based at Shetland and Iceland carried depth charges instead of overload tanks and on 23 September, an aircraft from Shetland sank, off Cape Langanaes, Iceland. The Catalina detachment based in Russia carried overload tanks instead of depth charges and could only menace the U-boats and report their positions to Allied naval ships. The main task of the Catalinas was to maintain ten crossover patrols, AA to KK, from the Norwegian coast, from west of Narvik to east of the North Cape. It would be impossible for a sortie by the German ships in north Norway to pass through without being detected by Air to Surface Vessel radar. As PQ 18 sailed around Norway, the patrol areas moved north-eastwards; AA to CC were flown by the Catalinas from Shetland, as were DD to EE but the aircraft flew on to Russia. EE was the furthest from both bases and five aircraft were necessary to keep continuously one aircraft in the patrol area; FF to KK were flown by the detachment in Russia. The flights from Shetland could take 16 hours before the first landfall and low stratus cloud often prevented celestial navigation, the crew having to rely on dead reckoning instead.
The detachment of Catalinas in Russia were based at Lake Lakhta near Archangelsk on the White Sea and used Grasnaya on the Kola Inlet as an advanced base. The communications between them were impossible; Hopps used Grasnaya instead, which was nearer to the patrol areas and equally closer to occupied Norway. Lake Lakhta became a rest area and the base for close escort of PQ 18, once it was on the final leg of the journey. The Catalinas bound for Russia left Shetland in sequence, completed the circuits of their patrol area and proceeded to Russia. From above, the Arctic tundra looked uninviting but having landed, the crews found the Soviet Naval Aviation base at Lake Lakhta an idyllic setting, lying amidst woods and cliffs. Russian ground crews were found to be very efficient, impressing the British with their ability to improvise. The damaged Hampden from Khibiniy was put back into service and a Catalina damaged by a Luftwaffe aircraft was hauled ashore within eight minutes of landing and swiftly repaired; once begun, work went on until aircraft were serviceable. The flight from Lake Lakhta to Grasnaya took about five hours and once over PQ 18, the Catalina would circle it, keeping a careful watch on aircraft nearby in case of mistaken identity.
By 5 September, the serviceable Hampdens were at Vayenga, further back from the front line than Polyarny. The airfield was bombed several times by the Luftwaffe and a Spitfire to be written off on 9 September but there were no casualties. An Area Combined HQ was set up at Polyarny, where a Senior British Naval Officer, Rear-Admiral Douglas Fisher was already installed. The PR Spitfires at Vayenga had their RAF roundels painted out and replaced by red stars: oblique F 24 cameras were used on twelve sorties to Narvik and Altafjord, flying through foul weather to keep watch over the German ships. To replace the written off Spitfire, 1 PRU despatched another Spitfire, which arrived from Britain on 16 September, along with a de Havilland Mosquito PR Mk I.
On the night of 13/14 September, communications between PQ 18 and Lake Lakhta failed, a Catalina at Grasnaya was unable to take off until dawn and the PR sortie found Altafjord covered by cloud. If the Catalina sent a sighting report, it would come too late for the Hampdens to attack and as a precaution, Hopps ordered the 23 operational Hampdens up on 14 September, for a reconnaissance in force. Each aircraft carried an 18 inch Mark XII torpedo and the force flew to the maximum distance that Tirpitz could have reached then turned to follow the track back to Altafjord, as far as the Catalina patrol zone. After a flight of hours, the Hampdens returned at later to discover that Tirpitz had merely moved to a nearby fiord. The other German ships were photographed at Altafiord by the PR Spitfires on 14, 15 and 16 September.
By late September, the S&SF was experiencing increased attention from the Luftwaffe. The Hampdens remained dispersed around Vayenga airfield, receiving some damage during air raids. One of the PR pilots, F/O Gavin Walker, was killed on a sortie to Altafiord, when Spitfire BP889 was shot down near Lakselv, Norway between and midday on 27 September. Luftwaffe records attributed the loss to Gefreiter Kurt Dobner a fighter pilot of 11./JG 5 based at Banak airfield in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190. Some sources suggest that Walker was hit by ground fire near Alta airfield, on the outward leg to the fiord. Vayenga airfield was bombed the same day by two Ju 88s in a low-level raid. The pilot of a VVS Yak fighter who had dived on the Ju 88s from approximately, was forced to bail out when the tail of his aircraft was shot off by Soviet anti-aircraft fire. The Yak crashed through the roof of a three-storey barracks assigned to S&SF commissioned officers and the building caught fire; the S&SF suffered no casualties and its members helped to put out the fire.

Aftermath

Analysis

Operation Orator was called a success by J. H. W. Lawson in his history of 455 Squadron and in 1975, Peter Smith wrote that intelligence from B-Dienst and documents recovered from the Hampden crash about Operation Orator may have deterred a surface attack on PQ 18 by Scheer and its escorts. In the 2005 edition of Arctic Airmen... Ernest Schofield and Roy Nesbit wrote that "it is reasonable to assume that the aircraft based in north Russia had worried the German commander". Chris Mann in a 2012 study of British wartime strategy towards Norway, called it an expensive victory and in 2017, Jan Forsgren in a book on RAF attacks on Tirpitz called the operation a success, because no Axis surface vessels approached PQ 18. PQ 18 was also judged a success by the Allies, having revived the Arctic convoy route to the USSR and because Tirpitz, Admiral Scheer, Admiral Hipper and Köln had been deterred by Operation Orator from attacking the convoy.
In 2011, Michael Walling called the loss of nine Hampdens on the transit flight, the equivalent of the loss anticipated on an attack against a big warship, a disaster. The surviving Hampdens were to be flown back to Scotland but the crews had doubts about the prevailing west-east headwinds, which could push the aircraft beyond their maximum range. Wing Commander Grant Lindeman, the CO of 455 Squadron, called the flight "suicidal". On 1 October, Soviet authorities made a formal request for the Hampdens. The RAF agreed to donate the Hampdens and PR Spitfires to the VVS; S&SF personnel were to return to Britain by sea after helping to convert the Soviet air- and ground-crews to both types. RAAF and RAF personnel returned to Britain on 28 October in. All but one of the Catalinas was flown back to Britain, once QP 14 had passed through the danger zone.

Aircraft losses

Handley-Page Hampden TB 1
144 Squadron RAF
455 Squadron RAAF
Supermarine Spitfire PR Mk IV
1 PRU RAF