Novaya Zemlya under naval escort to deliver desperately needed Lend-Lease supplies to northern Soviet seaports. Destruction of the Allied convoys was thus a top priority for the German Navy — and brought World War II to Novaya Zemlya. The most ill-fated and one of the largest Arctic convoys, code-named “PQ-17,” left Iceland on June 27, 1942. It consisted of thirty-four merchant ships, six destroyer escorts, fifteen additional armed ships (among which were two Free-French corvettes), and three small rescue craft. The fast-moving convoy encountered ice floes on June 30 and was forced to reduce speed. On the following morning, the convoy was
Novaya Zemlya lost more than three-fourths of the merchant ships committed to the convoy — more than one fourth of the losses to American shipping in all convoys to northern Russia. The destruction of PQ-17 significantly affected the people dependent on supplies carried by the ill-fated merchant ships. Karlo Stajner, a Gulag prisoner in Norilsk in 1942, wrote “the German cruiser’s attack on Novaya Zemlya and the sinking of the food transports had catastrophic consequences…the population was left without provisions…supplies in the warehouses of Norilsk [were] distributed among the NKVD, the guards, and the few free civilians that lived in the town.”