PQ17 - An Arctic disaster

[Charles Morgan]

If you missed this, please watch. Jeremy Clarkson may be a prat, but with this, like his documentary on the St Nazaire raid, he has hit the ball out of the park. It is a terrible tale, of instant and protracted death in unspeakable conditions with men placed in impossible positions.

 

[W4E300]

One of the most powerful documentaries I've ever seen and great TV - honouring genuinely brave & 'ordinary' men doing extraordinary things. Clarkson does this type of thing very well too.

Sent from my iPad using MBClub UK

 

[stevieb15]

Excellent in every way, I assume its accurate, as there are some pretty devastating professional assassinations.
JC gets the writing credit as well.

 

[Charles Morgan]

Dudley Pound was old and very ill. Corelli Barnet's history of the RN in WW2, Engage the enemy more closely, makes similar criticisms. It is counterfactual to speculate how others might do, compared to the indifferent performance of the Navy at Jutland (the Rules of the Game by Andrew Gordon is definitive on how that occurred) Dudley Pound's navy was stellar.

 

[stevieb15]

Dudley Pound was old and very ill. Corelli Barnet's history of the RN in WW2, Engage the enemy more closely, makes similar criticisms. It is counterfactual to speculate how others might do, compared to the indifferent performance of the Navy at Jutland (the Rules of the Game by Andrew Gordon is definitive on how that occurred) Dudley Pound's navy was stellar.

It's all educational to me.

 

[s88]

A great shame that it took so long for the Arctic convoys and MN in general to be recognised for their efforts.

 

[Troon]

It's on Monday night at 2130 on BBC Two and Two HD, in case you don't do iPlayer. Set to record - thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Charles Morgan]

There is no bureaucracy more stubborn or stultifying than that which handles the granting of medals. Those who were honoured by the Russians (and boy they did) were not allowed to accept medals more than five years after the end of the convoys. So in theory veterans could not wear said foreign honours. The same five year rule was used to deny any further campaign medals be awarded - hence Bomber Command and the Arctic Convoys.

 

[Dryce]

A great shame that it took so long for the Arctic convoys and MN in general to be recognised for their efforts.

It's not so much that this stuff takes so long to get noticed but that it tends to be forgotten and re-noticed. All credit to Clarkson for bringing this stuff back to the fore - he did a good job with the St Nazaire raid as well.

If you watch the BBC you'd think that nobody knew about it. When I was younger I grew up well aware of the Arctic convoys and Bomber Command.

Plenty of older family members and friends' older family members had served in WW2 and even when peopel didn't talk much about what they had done there was an underlying knowledge of it.

Alistair Maclean's book 'HMS Ulysses' is quite a dark and brutal characterisation of service on the the Arctic convoys and somehat similar to PQ17. These days he's not as well known as he was in the 60s. But he was a popular author back then.

 

[markjay]

As Dryce said... yet it is always good to bring it back to memory.

Slightly OT, but we could do with a thread like this one:

http://www.cpfc.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-45906.html

 

[Dave Richardson]

Superb program, watched it last evening & what terrible conditions those men suffered.
JC has tuned top gear into a laughing stock but shone through in this program, how I'd like to see the story on the St Nazaire raid

 

[C43AMG]

Clarkson was spot on. He does his documentary programmes very well.

 

[Dryce]

S how I'd like to see the story on the St Nazaire raid

Youtube is your friend: Jeremy Clarkson: War Stories: THE GREATEST RAID OF ALL - YouTube

Clarkson also did a decent documentary of Brunel a few years back.

I think the upside of JC when he does these things is that he comes across as a bit of a juvenile on TG but there is a contrast with the passion and respect that comes across for his more serious stuff that makes it all the more poignant.

 

[BTB 500]

Must look up the PQ 17 programme (on iPlayer hopefully).

Per Dryce I grew up reading about WW2, with a particular interest in the naval and air war. Pretty sure I had a book on PQ 17 ... can't remember the author though.

 

[markjay]

Yes, Alistair MacLean wrote quite a few best sellers at the time, including some which made it to the big screen: Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, and Ice Station Zebra, all featuring the period's US and UK mega-starts.

While HMS Ulysses was never made into a film (not as far as I am aware anyway), Alistair MacLean's fame meant that quite a few people would have read the book, which as said, is based on Convoy PQ-17.

 

[Giantvanman]

I was watching this with my wife and she told me that her father (who died before I met her) had an abiding hatred of Russians as a direct result of what he saw on one of these convoys.

He went through WW2 as a rear gunner on (I think) Lancasters and Wellingtons as well as doing sea rescue patrols in his leave time. His very unusual combination of medals are on view in a museum in Berwick-upon-Tweed, his family home town.

Anyway, he was part of the RAF patrol providing cover on one convoy when it was ambushed by German surface ships and aircraft not far from Archangel.

The Russians had boats under steam (ready to leave) in the harbour but they refused to leave the safety of the harbour and it's defences to help the convoy which was being decimated.

Of course, it's easy to speculate on the tactical decisions not to assist the convoy but having seen how these men willingly put everything on the line for their own country and for an ally, it must have been devastating.

I for one, had I had the honour of meeting him, would not have found the heart to question his opinion.

It saddens me more that anything else when I think on the sacrifice of that generation and compare that with the modern selfish and cavalier attitude to duty to country and to others. We are squandering their legacy.

 

[markjay]

It is difficult to judge such decisions made at wartime.

Some of the men and women captured in Singapore, and family members of those who died there, may still blame Churchill for not reinforcing Singapore sufficiently and in time, though the larger picture meant that not diverting troops and ships from the Atlantic or the Middle East oil fields was probably the right decision.

Probably - because it is almost imposdible to fully recreate the exact circumstances including the uncertainty and the partial or incorrect information that was available to decision makers at the time.

 

[Giantvanman]

It is difficult to judge such decisions made at wartime.

Some of the men and women captured in Singapore, and family members of those who died there, may still blame Churchill for not reinforcing Singapore sufficiently and in time, though the larger picture meant that not diverting troops and ships from the Atlantic or the Middle East oil fields was probably the right decision.

Probably - because it is almost imposdible to fully recreate the exact circumstances including the uncertainty and the partial or incorrect information that was available to decision makers at the time.

I agree without reservation and well said.

 

[pipmk]

I was watching this with my wife and she told me that her father (who died before I met her) had an abiding hatred of Russians as a direct result of what he saw on one of these convoys.

He went through WW2 as a rear gunner on (I think) Lancasters and Wellingtons as well as doing sea rescue patrols in his leave time. His very unusual combination of medals are on view in a museum in Berwick-upon-Tweed, his family home town.

Anyway, he was part of the RAF patrol providing cover on one convoy when it was ambushed by German surface ships and aircraft not far from Archangel.

The Russians had boats under steam (ready to leave) in the harbour but they refused to leave the safety of the harbour and it's defences to help the convoy which was being decimated.

Of course, it's easy to speculate on the tactical decisions not to assist the convoy but having seen how these men willingly put everything on the line for their own country and for an ally, it must have been devastating.

I for one, had I had the honour of meeting him, would not have found the heart to question his opinion.

It saddens me more that anything else when I think on the sacrifice of that generation and compare that with the modern selfish and cavalier attitude to duty to country and to others. We are squandering their legacy.

Every generation believes that about the younger generation and are always proved wrong. Written on the walls of Pompeii is a lament about the behaviour and moral fibre of the then modern youth.

The Oxford Union in 1933 "This house would not in any circumstances fight for King and country" but it went on to do rather well a little later.

Do not allow yourselves to despair,cometh the hour,cometh the man.

 

[Giantvanman]

I have not the education to reply aptly. All I can say is, from my heart, the things I see every day test my fortitude and I despair of life's pendulum ever swinging back to more altruistic times.

And I envy your optimism.