Convoy QP 4

Convoy QP 4 (29 December 1941 – 9 January 1942) was an Arctic convoy that sailed from Arkhangelsk in the Arctic north of the USSR. The convoy detoured to the north away from Norway and then turned towards the west for Iceland. The convoy had a close escort of minesweepers and trawlers and a cruiser escort of HMS Edinburgh and its destroyers HMS Echo and HMS Escapade.

On 8 January 1942, Edinburgh was ordered to depart the convoy and patrol to the south of the convoy route, where it "encountered nothing but bad weather". On 9 January the cruiser force sailed through a gale and on 10 January the temperature rose above freezing point for the first time for three weeks and the sun shone for the first time in a month. Edinburgh arrived at Scapa Flow on 11 January.

Eulima and San Ambrosio turned back from the convoy with fuel shortage but the rest arrived at Seyðisfjörður on the east coast of Iceland on 16 January with no losses due to German attacks and dispersed to other destinations.

Convoy QP 4 was one of a run of return convoys to Convoy QP 7, comprising 51 ships, that suffered no loss from German action, four ships turning back with weather damage, mechanical defects or fuel shortage. The Luftwaffe had great difficulty in finding Allied convoys and Generaladmiral Erich Raeder complained to Hitler about the lack of Luftwaffe reconnaissance.