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 while unloading at the ports of Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Polyarny.

[3] Operations in the Arctic were favoured by Stalin and Churchill but the First Sea Lord, Admiral Dudley Pound considered such proposals unsound, "with the dice loaded against us in every direction".

[3] A joint supply mission led by W. Averell Harriman and Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) arrived at Archangelsk on 27 September and on 6 October, Churchill made a commitment to sail a convoy every ten days from Iceland to north Russia.

[6] The Main Party, the majority of the 2,700 men of 151 Wing, including fourteen pilots was embarked on the troopship SS Llanstephan Castle together with 15 Hurricanes packed in crates, at the Scapa Flow anchorage in the Orkney Islands.

[7] The ships departed from Scapa Flow on 17 August 1941 with the Dervish Convoy and headed towards the Svalbard archipelago and the midnight sun, to circle as far north around Norway as possible.

As the 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.

[8] The ship anchored about 50 ft (15 m) from the dock and workers began to build a wooden quay outwards towards them, a race against time before the waters froze; the passengers were surprised to find that most of the dockworkers were women.

Ramsbottom-Isherwood had made a plan in case a British liaison party from Moscow failed to arrive and intended to use the 151 Wing transport to travel to Vaenga, only to be surprised to find that no roads to Murmansk existed.

The departure of the ship was delayed for ten days and fears rose that the voyage would be cancelled but eventually Argus sailed, escorted by a cruiser and three destroyers.

The weather remained unchanged as the carrier turned south for Russia but when the ship reached the departure point, it was dead calm and Argus had to sail in circles until the wind rose sufficiently.

One crate was emptied to accommodate the wireless section and then the men found that some types of specialist tools had been omitted from the maintenance kits but that tropical insulation covers for the engines had been included.

The main problem in re-assembling the aircraft was a lack of lifting gear to remove them from crates, jacking them up, lowering onto the undercarriage, adding the wings tail unit, then arming, fuelling and air testing.

The British worked thirteen-hour days and were surprised by the lavish Russian hospitality compared with the rations at home, which manifested in stomach upsets (the grumbleguts) for which a doctor was sent up from Llanstephen Castle.

The local military forces and anti-aircraft units were notified and then the Hurricane pilots put on as much of a show as the low cloud base allowed, mainly tight turns and low-level passes.

[14] In the evening the British had some English food for a change and by the ninth day, all fifteen aircraft were ready and had improved the morale of the Archangelsk residents who had seen them perform.

The formation flew over the White Sea, exchanging recognition signals with Russian ships and landed safely at Vaenga, just as the Hurricanes from Argus returned from a sortie.

[18] The front line was about 15 mi (24 km) to the west and the airfield facilities were almost invisible, being well dispersed, dug in and camouflaged among the hillocks and growths of silver birch.

The aircraft hangars were part-buried for camouflage but had been built for the Polikarpov I-16s and were too narrow for the Hurricanes; Russian workers appeared to widen them, working-non-stop until the enlargement was complete.

The bedding was new, the food was ample, though some considered it to be a little greasy and the sanitation was hideous, leading to the British naming the main latrine, directly over a cesspit, "The Kremlin".

The pilots would have to navigate for themselves but there was a pleasing lack of mountains and it was a simple matter to fly north to follow the coast home or west to reach the Kola Inlet.

The last Hurricanes to be assembled were still at Keg Ostrov, the engines had to be adjusted to fly on 87-octane fuel and a shortage of sears, necessary to trigger the guns, meant only six per aircraft instead of the twelve usually carried.

Three of the Bf 109s were confirmed shot down and the Henschel, hit in the engine and seen leaving a plume of smoke was recorded as a probable, for a loss of one pilot (Sergeant "Nudger" Smith) and his Hurricane.

Next morning was fine and 81 Squadron escorted Petlyakov Pe-2 light bombers raiding a target in Norway, the Hurricane pilots finding it necessary to fly very fast to keep up.

A road the length of the Rybachy Peninsula to the Gulf of Bothnia on the Baltic Sea ran parallel to the river and the bridge was on the only supply route to the German 2nd and 3rd Mountain divisions.

On 7 October, the weather cleared, with a high cloud base and good visibility and fourteen Ju 88s with six Bf 109 escorts attacked the airfield in the middle of the afternoon.

[31] The Germans built a new bridge over the Pechenga, a gargantuan enterprise; baulks of timber had to be hauled from a sawmill 120 mi (190 km) away, lighter planks were shipped from Kirkenes and thousands of round logs were diverted from the stores of the nickel mines in Petsamo.

On 9 October an Arctic gale brought deep snow and a steep drop in temperature, which halted all movement; porters got lost in the snowstorm and froze to death; negated the rebuilding of the bridge.

[38] The cruiser HMS Kenya arrived with Convoy PQ 3 and took 151 Wing on board, departed and to the surprise of the RAF, bombarded Axis shore artillery at Vardø, in company with two British and two Soviet destroyers.

[39] On the journey home, a wireless message to Kenya announced that on 27 November the Order of Lenin had been awarded to Ramsbotham-Isherwood, Rook, Miller and Flight Sergeant C. "Wag" Haw, who was the top-scoring pilot of the wing.