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Convoy is to Scatter; The Story of PQ17
vg+ book in vg+ price clipped dw 1st William Kimber 1972 hardcover In stock shipped from our UK warehouse
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
13 people want to read
About the author
Jack Broome
5 booksCaptain John Egerton "Jack" (or Jackie) Broome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Broome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Broome
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 12, 2020
The first part of this book is an amusing autobiography of the author's career in the Royal Navy, from his time as a teen-aged midshipman during World War I up to mid 1942. Then, as commanding officer of the RN destroyer HMS KEPPEL, he was assigned to escort a combined British and US convoy of merchant ships carrying war supplies over Arctic seas to Archangel in northern Russia.
The late Jack Broome had a gift for drawing caricature cartoons, many of which are in this book. Some of his cartoons were used officially. His account of his career, which included some time as a submariner, is full of funny anecdotes about pranks, friends and stuffy senior officers. It is very readable.
The second part of the book will mainly interest military historians. It is constructed from a series of signals exchanged between the Admiralty in London, the commanding officers of various warships, the commodore of the convoy known as PQ17, and others. Each signal is printed and accompanied by Broome's interesting analysis, in hindsight. It presents the dilemma facing commanding officers of escorts, and a shadowing squadron of heavier naval ships, when given orders from the Admiralty based on incomplete intelligence reports.
The tragic story of PQ17 has been told several times. Believing that the German battleship TIRPITZ had left her Norwegian base to attack the convoy, the Admiralty issued an order for the convoy to scatter. Up to that point the convoy escorts had kept losses from U-boat and air attacks minimal. The dispersed merchant ships, without close escort, were easy targets for the German submarines and aircraft and only 11 of the original 35 Allied ships reached a Russian port. Broome's book does not cover that catastrophe in detail; he concentrates on analysing how the command in London could issue orders without knowing accurately the situation at sea. Jack Broome's account is a warning about taking drastic action on the basis of uncorroborated intelligence. It is a situation that has been repeated often. Inaccurate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction' led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The German High Command's acceptance of deceptive disinformation in Operation Mincemeat, without corroborating support, helped the Allies when they invaded Sicily in 1943.
The late Jack Broome had a gift for drawing caricature cartoons, many of which are in this book. Some of his cartoons were used officially. His account of his career, which included some time as a submariner, is full of funny anecdotes about pranks, friends and stuffy senior officers. It is very readable.
The second part of the book will mainly interest military historians. It is constructed from a series of signals exchanged between the Admiralty in London, the commanding officers of various warships, the commodore of the convoy known as PQ17, and others. Each signal is printed and accompanied by Broome's interesting analysis, in hindsight. It presents the dilemma facing commanding officers of escorts, and a shadowing squadron of heavier naval ships, when given orders from the Admiralty based on incomplete intelligence reports.
The tragic story of PQ17 has been told several times. Believing that the German battleship TIRPITZ had left her Norwegian base to attack the convoy, the Admiralty issued an order for the convoy to scatter. Up to that point the convoy escorts had kept losses from U-boat and air attacks minimal. The dispersed merchant ships, without close escort, were easy targets for the German submarines and aircraft and only 11 of the original 35 Allied ships reached a Russian port. Broome's book does not cover that catastrophe in detail; he concentrates on analysing how the command in London could issue orders without knowing accurately the situation at sea. Jack Broome's account is a warning about taking drastic action on the basis of uncorroborated intelligence. It is a situation that has been repeated often. Inaccurate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction' led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The German High Command's acceptance of deceptive disinformation in Operation Mincemeat, without corroborating support, helped the Allies when they invaded Sicily in 1943.
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September 13, 2012aka Captain Jack Broome
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews