1941 1942 1943 1944 1942 1943 1944 1945 Operation Dervish (21–31 August 1941) was the first of the Arctic Convoys of the Second World War by which the Western Allies supplied material to the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.

Included in the convoy was the personnel and equipment of an RAF Wing, for the air defence of the Russian ports, several civilians and diplomatic missions.

On 7 July, Churchill wrote to Stalin and ordered the British ambassador in Moscow, Stafford Cripps, to begin discussions for a treaty of mutual assistance.

[1] On the same day a Soviet commission met the Royal Navy and the RAF in London and it was decided to use the airfield at Vaenga (now Severomorsk) as a fighter base to defend ships unloading at the ports of Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Polyarny.

[4] The USSR turned out to lack the ships and escorts and the British and Americans, who had made a commitment to "help with the delivery", undertook to deliver the supplies for want of an alternative.

(In September, after the arrival of Dervish, the main Soviet need in 1941 was military equipment to replace losses because two large aircraft factories were being moved east from Leningrad and two more from Ukraine.

The Anglo-Americans also undertook to send 42,000 long tons (43,000 t) of aluminium and 3, 862 machine tools, along with sundry raw materials, food and medical supplies.

Further from the front line than Murmansk [30 mi (48 km) by the autumn of 1941] the Soviet authorities claimed that they could be kept open by ice-breakers but could only provide two of the eight to ten they promised and Stalin was bombed on 15 January 1942, leaving five British ships iced in until the spring.

In July the British had conducted Operation EF, an attack on the ports of Kirkenes and Petsamo by carrier aircraft, while the fast minelayer HMS Adventure had run to Archangelsk with a cargo of parachute mines.

At the end of July a cruiser force commanded by Rear Admiral Philip Vian had investigated the Spitzbergen archipelago for signs of German activity and had destroyed a weather station on Hope Island.

[10] In August a convoy of six ships loaded with war materiel was to sail to Archangelsk, together with a contingent of RAF personnel to prepare the way for Operation Strength, a plan to fly 48 Hurricane fighters from the aircraft carrier HMS Argus to airfields in Russia in a similar manner to the Club Run operations in the Mediterranean.

The escorts were supported in the first and second stages of the voyage by the anti-aircraft auxiliary ship Pozarica and the trawlers Celia, St. Cathan and Le Tiger.

The operations were supported by a Distant Cover Force from the Home Fleet, the carrier HMS Victorious and the cruisers Devonshire and Suffolk, with the destroyers Eclipse, Escapade and Inglefield.

[12] The Gauntlet force departed Scapa Flow on 19 August and rendezvoused with the cruiser Aurora, which had been sailing with the Dervish convoy.

[19] As Llanstephan Castle sailed upriver to dock, rifle shots were heard and a member of the crew was hit in the arm, the gunfire coming from people onshore, who mistook the British uniforms for German ones.

[23] The old aircraft carrier Argus (launched in 1917) took part in Operation Strength (30 August – 14 September) with the heavy cruiser Shropshire and the destroyers HMS Matabele, Punjabi and Somali, protected by the Dervish covering force.

The first homeward-bound convoy, QP 1 included the Dervish merchant ships, carrying Polish troops stranded in the USSR, left Archangelsk on 28 September 1941 and arrived at Scapa Flow on 9 October.

[28] In August 2016, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the start of the Operation, Princess Anne visited Arkhangelsk to celebrate as a guest of Governor Igor Orlov.