Convoy PQ 5

Convoy PQ 5
	Part of Arctic Convoys of the Second World War
	; The Norwegian and the Barents seas, site of the Arctic convoys
Date	27 November – 13 December 1941
Location	Arctic Ocean
Result	British victory
Belligerents
Royal Navy; Merchant Navy; Soviet Union;	Kriegsmarine; Luftwaffe;
Strength
7 merchant ships; 6 escorts (in relays); 3 destroyers;	Kriegsmarine; Luftflotte 5;
Casualties and losses
Nil	Nil

Convoy PQ 5 was the sixth of the Arctic Convoys of the Second World War by which the Western Allies supplied military equipment, weapons and raw materials to the Soviet Union after Operation Barbarossa the German invasion that began on 22 June 1941. The vast majority of the supplies despatched in 1941 came from British stocks. The convoy sailed from Hvalfjörður in Iceland on 27 November 1941.

The cruiser HMS Sheffield and a series of Halcyon-class minesweepers in relays, escorted the convoy, only HMS Sharpshooter sailing straight through. The destroyers HMS Offa, Onslow and Oribi struggled for six days to find the convoy until they spotted funnel smoke.

The ships were helped through the Gorlo the strait into the White Sea, 99 mi (160 km) long and 29–58 mi (46–93 km) wide, by Soviet ice breakers, reaching Arkhangelsk on 13 December 1941. As the winter ice increased, later convoys had to go to Murmansk. The Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine had almost no knowledge of the early PQ and the return QP convoys.