Disaster at Stalingrad: An Alternate History (21 page)

HMS
London,
flagship of the Allied Cruiser Covering Force for PQ-17.

The USS
Tuscaloosa
at anchor in the British base of Scapa Flow shortly before the PQ-17 operation.

The cruiser USS
Wichita
with the splashes of near misses from heavy enemy shells visible just beyond.

The Hawker Sea Hurricane was the Royal Navy’s fighter aboard HMS
Victorious.
The parent Hurricane type was already obsolescent by 1942.

The Royal Navy’s Fairey Albacore torpedo bombers on HMS
Victorious
were slow and obsolete.

The Douglas TBD torpedo bombers aboard USS Wasp in 1942 were slow and already outdated by Pearl Harbor.

The Vought SB2U Vindicator dive bomber (USS
Wasp
) was the US Navy’s first monoplane and already obsolete before the war started. It was no match for the Focke Wulf Fw 190.

The Junkers Ju 88 bomber was fast and had the range to go after the Arctic convoys.

The American merchant ship SS
John Witherspoon,
sunk by
U-255
in the Battle of Bear Island.

Convoy PQ-17’s thirty-five merchant ships in formation as they approach Bear Island.

General der Jagdflieger Adolf Galland coordinated the Luftwaffe forces at the Battle of 20° East.

Captain Josef ‘Pips’ Priller’s Focke Wulf Fw 190s were the terror of the Battle of 20° East.

Lt. David McCampbell, here doing duty as deck landing officer, shot down six German aircraft at the Battle of 20° East, earning the title of ace, and went on to become the US Navy’s top ace of the war in the Pacific.