Convoy PQ 15 sailed from Reykjavik, Iceland, on 26 April 1942, twenty-five merchant ships laden with tanks, aircraft, ammunition, and supplies bound for the Soviet northern ports. The escort was formidable: minesweepers and trawlers for close protection, destroyers and an anti-aircraft ship for the middle ring, and beyond visual range, a cruiser cover force under Rear Admiral Harold Burrough and a distant covering force under Admiral John Tovey that included battleships, an aircraft carrier, heavy cruisers, and ten destroyers. Four submarines patrolled off Norway to guard against a sortie by German capital ships. It was, by the standards of 1942, an enormous commitment of naval power to shepherd two dozen freighters across some of the most dangerous waters on Earth.

German aircraft spotted the convoy on 28 April while it was southwest of Bear Island, but no attack materialized for two days -- the Luftwaffe was occupied with the reciprocal Convoy QP 11, heading west from Murmansk. On 1 May, six Junkers Ju 88 bombers made the first attempt on PQ 15, inflicting no damage but losing one of their own. That same day, fog claimed two warships from the distant covering force: the battleship King George V and the destroyer Punjabi collided. Punjabi sank, and King George V limped back to port, her place taken by a replacement battleship racing north from Scapa Flow. The following day brought a different kind of tragedy. Escort destroyers detected a submarine contact and attacked, forcing it to the surface -- only to discover they had depth-charged the Polish submarine Jastrzab, which had drifted out of its assigned patrol area off Norway. Too badly damaged to save, Jastrzab was scuttled. Her crew survived, but the incident underscored the lethal confusion of Arctic convoy warfare.

The torpedo attack on 3 May was something new. Kampfgeschwader 26's I. Gruppe had been training for months, and their six Heinkel He 111s approached low in the perpetual twilight of the Arctic spring. The merchant ships Botavon and Cape Corso were sunk outright. Jutland, damaged by torpedoes, was later finished off by U-251. The convoy's gunners fought back effectively, downing two of the attacking aircraft and damaging a third so badly it crashed before reaching base. A follow-up attack by high-level bombers at dusk achieved nothing. But the lesson was clear: Germany had added a potent new weapon to its Arctic arsenal. Future convoys, particularly the ill-fated PQ 17 two months later, would face this threat on a devastating scale.

On 4 May, the Arctic itself intervened. A gale roared in from the north, whipping the sea into mountains of grey water and driving snow horizontally across the decks. For the merchant sailors -- many of whom had been at action stations for days -- the storm was brutal but welcome. No aircraft could fly in such conditions. The convoy pressed on through the tempest, and at 21:00 on 5 May, PQ 15 entered the Kola Inlet and reached the relative safety of Murmansk. Twenty-two fully laden merchant ships had arrived, making PQ 15 the largest Allied convoy yet delivered to the Soviet Union. Three merchant ships, one destroyer, and one submarine had been lost. The Allies counted it a success.

The relief was real but temporary. PQ 15 had demonstrated that the Germans were adapting rapidly, adding torpedo bombers to the U-boats and surface raiders already menacing the Arctic route. The accidental sinking of the Jastrzab and the collision between King George V and Punjabi revealed how the Arctic's fog, ice, and endless twilight could turn allies into threats as easily as enemies. Two months later, Convoy PQ 17 would be ordered to scatter in the face of a rumored German battleship sortie, and 24 of its 35 merchant ships would be destroyed -- the worst convoy disaster of the war. PQ 15's passage, costly but ultimately successful, was the last time the Arctic run would feel manageable. The waters southwest of Bear Island, where the torpedo bombers first struck, became one of the most dangerous stretches of ocean in the Second World War.