pattern. Our feet got fairly close to the water. We were doing that for a couple of days.
We shot down a Vichy French aircraft while we were there, which had come from Dakar. It was observing us, I suppose. A lucky shot brought it down.
From the warm waters of the South Atlantic London was dispatched to the seas off Iceland, in the mistaken belief that another surface raider was about to enter the Atlantic. After that, she was part of the escort protecting a convoy of troop ships bound for North Africa. She then returned to Iceland.
Iceland was of major strategic importance to the Allies, as it extended the air cover that could be maintained to help protect convoys against U-boat attack, and provide surveillance over sea areas including the Denmark Strait. But in the early days of the war there were few suitable aircraft available for this task. Apart from the Sunderland flying boats, which had a range of over 2,000 miles, none of the other suitable and available aircraft had a range that was enough to provide significant cover. This situation was only alleviated when America entered the war, and the Sunderlands were joined by long-range American Liberator aircraft, which also had a range of over 2,000 miles.
The use of Iceland as a base for aircraft did not become possible until Britain sent a Royal Naval task force to Reykjavik on 10 May 1940 to take control of the country. The Icelanders had not been warned in advance, and naturally were not happy about the matter; however, the need for the Allies to secure Iceland and deny it to Germany was of more importance to the British War Cabinet than the outraged feelings of the Icelanders. In May 1941 President Roosevelt offered to replace the British troops in Iceland with an American force. Following discussions with the Icelandic government, the American force landed an advance party on 8 July, which was followed eventually by a force of 40,000 men. The Americans did not endear themselves to the Icelanders at first: as Jonathan Dimbleby quotes in The Battle of the Atlantic: How the Allies Won the War, ‘United States troops on sentry duty had a tendency to be “too quick on the trigger” …within the first few weeks two Icelandic civilians had been shot and killed, one of them a 12-year-old boy.
London sailed from Greenock and arrived at Hvalfjordur on 2 August.
After that we were at the occupation of Iceland. We went to Hvalfjordur, near Reykjavik. We were escorting troopships, as part of a convoy. There were sloops protecting against submarines. While we were in the fjord the U.S. Navy came in, including the battleship USS Texas, and they invited all the ships’ boys across for ice cream, so we all went over and had a look round. It was a First World War battleship, but it was still very spruce. They all had bunks – I never saw any hammocks. They took us round different parts of the ship, then some of them came aboard us later. It was a bit more drab than that ship – I think we could get pop, but not ice cream! I never remember having ice cream on board. That was in the summer, but after that we went off to Russia.
The London’s trip to Russia came against the backdrop of the worsening situation in the Russian fight against Germany, which had invaded Russia on 22 June 1941, inflicting huge losses on its aircraft and men on the very first day. The situation continued to deteriorate rapidly as the Germans advanced. In response to demands from Stalin, America and Britain had accepted that aid to Russia was necessary: from 22 June, the day of the invasion, as Richard Woodman notes in Arctic Convoys, Churchill had complained that
the Soviet Union’s first impulse and lasting policy was to demand all possible succour from Great Britain and her Empire … They did not hesitate to appeal in urgent and strident terms to harassed and struggling Britain to send them the munitions of which her armies were so short.
Churchill and Roosevelt held a meeting on board HMS Prince of Wales (the battleship which was later to be sunk by Japanese aircraft off the coast of Malaya), in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941. The result of that meeting was a telegram to Stalin, to reassure him that the United States and Great Britain were cooperating to provide him with the supplies that he was demanding – demanding in unfriendly terms; in Lord Beaverbrook’s words, ‘surly, snarling and grasping’. So as to coordinate supplies and formulate a joint policy with the Russians, a conference was set up in Moscow. From the Allied side, an Anglo-American Supply Mission was sent, led by Lord Beaverbrook and the American diplomat Averell Harriman, accompanied by British and American military staff and civil servants.
They boarded London at Scapa Flow and sailed for Archangel on 22 September. Fortunately for the members of the mission, it was a calm trip and devoid of German attack. London had sailed without escorts, so the fact that the Germans did not find her was very fortunate. She arrived at Archangel on 27 September. The delegation was then escorted to Moscow. On the following day, London sailed from Archangel as part of the escort for a small convoy carrying timber to the United Kingdom. The fog and low cloud that surrounded the convoy prevented German aircraft, which were heard overhead, from attacking; as it was a designated slow convoy, with a top speed of 6 knots, that was very fortunate. On 2 October London handed over her responsibilities for the convoy, and returned to Archangel to collect the members of the mission after the completion of the conference. This time they anchored outside the harbour, and the members of the mission were ferried out to her on a Royal Naval minesweeper which was based in Archangel. The weather conditions were bad, with a heavy sea running. This made the transfer from the minesweeper to the cruiser very difficult, but all were eventually transferred successfully. The weather soon abated and the return to Scapa F low was uneventful.
[W]e went off to Russia. We took with us Lord Beaverbrook and the American diplomat Averill Harriman; they were going to Moscow to meet Stalin. When we went to Russia we had an admiral on board, Admiral Hamilton. That’s because we had the VIPs on board, although we didn’t see much of them. They joined the ship in Scapa Flow and we sailed from there to Archangel. The weather was a bit choppy, but when we got to the ice floes the spray started coming over and they had us on the decks with chipping hammers.
In conditions where spray – and in some cases, when the bow went down into a wave, solid water – was coming over the side, ice formed very quickly on the decks, on the handrails and on all the fittings. This had to be cleared, as the additional weight would rapidly affect the ship’s stability to an extent that would make capsize a serious risk. In addition to the crew out on deck with chipping hammers removing the ice, all wearing every piece of cold-weather gear they had, including gloves –flesh freezes to ice very quickly – all steam-powered winches and capstans had to be kept turning to prevent the steam in the pipes freezing and bursting them.
We weren’t attacked on the way up there, but we were on the way back. When we tied up alongside in Archangel they put guards on the gangway so that nobody could be allowed off. All we could see were several women with axes over their shoulders who were cutting down trees and that. There were a few buildings on the jetty. We were only there for a few days and we weren’t allowed off. We took a convoy back [part of the way].
London then returned to Archangel to collect the diplomatic mission and return it to the United Kingdom. This time she did not go into the port, but instead anchored outside in gale force winds and a very rough sea. This caused problems, as the members of the mission were taken out to London on a Royal Naval minesweeper which was based in Archangel. The small size of the minesweeper, compared to London, caused the transfer of the mission to be fraught with risk; it was, however, completed without loss or injury. After returning the mission, London spent some months in the Arctic, including the Denmark Strait. The sea conditions there were notoriously bad, and the result of a period in those conditions was to cause damage to London’s hull which necessitated a further refit.
It was one of the early convoys up there. We were attacked by German torpedo bombers; I don’t remember that there were any submarine attacks. We weren’t the sole escort; there were corvettes as well. We were lucky because we ran into