PQ17:

[Administrator]

PQ17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster:

News from the BBC Media Centre:

From Russia to the freezing Arctic Ocean, Jeremy Clarkson tells the dramatic story of the Arctic Convoys of the Second World War.

Together with moving first-hand testimony from the men who served on these convoys, Clarkson reveals the incredible hazards faced by members of the Merchant and Royal Navy who delivered vital war supplies via the Arctic to the Soviet Union. They included temperatures of -50 degrees, huge icebergs, colossal waves, not to mention German U-boats and the Luftwaffe. It’s no wonder that Churchill described the Arctic Convoys as ‘the worst journey in the world'.

Thursday 2 January

9.00-10.00pm

BBC TWO

LINK

[Administrator]

Confirmed by MNA:

We have been advised by the programme maker that 'PQ17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster' will be broadcast on Thursday, 2nd January 2014 at 9.00 pm
on BBC TWO.

Regards,

Tim Brant
National Secretary
Merchant Navy Association

[Administrator]

TV Review - The PQ17 Convoy:

The highlight of tonight's TV viewing was BBC2's Jeremy Clarkson's moving documentary on the Anglo-American Atlantic convoys during World War Two, especially 1942's Convoy PQ17 which went disastrously wrong.

It was the biggest convoy launched during the war, with merchant navy men unused to battle, transporting tanks and guns and supplies to the Russian ports through a gauntlet of German submarines and Luftwaffe attacks in the sub-zero Arctic circle.

Due to an unexplained to this day Admiralty blunder, and unfounded fears of an attack by the German warship, The Tirpitz, the protecting cover of allied warships abandoned the scattered civilian ships who were mercilessly picked off one by one by the Germans with enormous loss of life.

Clarkson is generally annoying in presenting Top Gear about the joys of fast expensive cars, but here he presented and wrote a genuinely touching evocative study of the real nightmare of ocean warfare in unbelievably cold conditions, with input from a handful of surviving veterans from the PQ17 campaign.

Only a fraction of ships made it through the deadly gauntlet. Clarkson's anger at the Government blunders that killed so many heroes echoed that of Stalin who then needed the supplies with the Germans reaching within fifteen miles of Moscow.

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