Convoy PQ 17
PQ 17 was the code name for an Allied Arctic convoy during the Second World War. On 27 June 1942, the ships sailed from Hvalfjörður, Iceland, for the port of Arkhangelsk in the Soviet Union. The convoy was located by German forces on 1 July, after which it was shadowed continuously and attacked. The First Sea Lord Admiral Dudley Pound, acting on information that German surface units, including the German battleship "Tirpitz", were moving to intercept, ordered the covering force built around the Allied battleships HMS "Duke of York" and the USS "Washington" away from the convoy and told the convoy to scatter. Because of vacillation by "Oberkommando der Wehrmacht" (OKW, German armed forces high command), the "Tirpitz" raid never materialised. The convoy was the first large joint Anglo-American naval operation under British command; in Churchill's view this encouraged a more careful approach to fleet movements.