Michael Pearson - Red Sky in the Morning

However, not all was doom and gloom. Late on 31 December 1942 as U354 reconnoitred the Barents Sea battle area, Admiral Kluber in Narvik took time to send good news to one crew member: ‘To: Herschelb. For Lt. E. Rainer. Its arrived. Going well Dora. Best Wishes.’ [172]

On 24 August 1944 two British corvettes, a frigate, and a destroyer, tracked U354 and sank her with all hands in the Barents Sea. Kapitänleutnant Herschelb, whose message of 31 December 1942 unwittingly helped to cause the seismic upheaval in the German navy following the Battle of the Barents Sea, had previously transferred and was not with the boat at the time.

On the outbreak of war with Germany, Soviet industry was capable of manufacturing large quantities of basic but reliable and sturdy weapons of war – guns, tanks, aeroplanes, etc. The problem was the factories, which were almost all situated in western Russia in the immediate path of the invaders. Had these factories been overrun, defeat for the Soviets would have been inevitable, as resupply from Britain and the United States could not hope to keep pace with all the requirements of the Red Army. The solution was both breathtakingly simple and enormously complex. The Russians would move all the plant and machinery, entire factories, eastwards away from the rapidly advancing Germans.

In the four months from July to October 1941, 1½ million trucks and 915,000 railway wagons transported over 1000 factories east, together with the manpower to rebuild them, install plant and machinery, and operate them. Some 100,000 men accompanied the dispersion of Soviet industry eastwards, and the results of this enormous physical and logistical exercise were equally impressive. Aircraft factories moved to Saratov began production before the roofs were on – fourteen days after the last jigs were installed, MiG fighters were rolling off the production line. The tank works transported to Kharkov produced its first twenty-five T-34 tanks ten weeks after engineers rebuilt the factories. Winter in eastern Russia is a desperately hard affair; nevertheless despite atrocious working conditions the winter of 1941/2 saw Soviet arms production reach 4500 tanks, 3000 aircraft, 14,000 guns, and over 50,000 mortars. [173]This equipment would be vital in the coming months, but could not hope to keep pace with the rate of attrition on the Russian front. It was vital that the hundreds of thousands of tons of military hardware and equipment scheduled for transportation from Britain in the Arctic convoys were fought through to Russia.

Britain’s economy between the wars depended on her vital trade routes with the empire, and her many other overseas trading partners, the Royal Navy’s mainstay for the defence of these trade routes being the cruiser. At the Washington conference of November 1921, pressure was applied to the British delegation, principally by the United States (whose strategic considerations were wholly different from those of Britain), to restrict the number of cruisers in commission. Britain refused but put forward a proposal – which was accepted – that cruisers should not exceed 10,000 tons, and mount guns 8 in (200 mm). The principal concern at this time was not the navy of Germany, but that of Japan, which had undergone major expansion and modernisation and threatened the balance of power in the Pacific.