page_title: Operation Orator
section_title: Allied Arctic operations
hierarchical_section_title: Operation Orator / Background / Signals intelligence / Allied Arctic operations
caption_attribution_description: Five Royal Navy Hawker Sea Hurricanes and a single Supermarine Seafire lined up in the hangar of HMS Argus (I49), with several mechanics working on them. The base of the lift is in the foreground. Note the space needed for aircraft with non-folding wings.
context_page_description: Operation Orator was the code name for the defence of the Allied Arctic convoy PQ 18 by British and Australian air force units based temporarily in North-West Russia, against attack by the German battleship Tirpitz and other Kriegsmarine surface vessels. The wing, known as the Search & Strike Force, was commanded by Group Captain Frank Hopps and its maritime strike element was the Leuchars Wing, comprising No. 144 Squadron, Royal Air Force and No. 455 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force equipped with Handley-Page Hampden TB 1 torpedo bombers.
  The Hampden crews made a long and dangerous flight from bases in Scotland and assembled at Vayenga-1 airfield, near Vayenga, on the Kola Inlet, 25 mi north of Murmansk. The two squadrons lost nine aircraft shot down or crashed in transit but the remainder joined a detachment of 210 Squadron Catalina flying boats and a section of photographic reconnaissance Spitfires from 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit to make up the Search & Strike Force.
  At 7:30 a.m. on 14 September, 23 Hampdens were scrambled, after Tirpitz was reported absent from its moorings.
context_section_description: As Arctic convoys passed by the North Cape of Norway into the Barents Sea, they were easily within range of German aircraft, U-boats and ships based in Norway and Finland. The ships were still vulnerable while unloading at Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Polyarny and Hawker Hurricane fighters delivered by the first Arctic convoy, were intended for air defence against the Luftwaffe. In Operation Dervish (21–31 August 1941), six elderly freighters sailed from Iceland for Archangelsk carrying wood, rubber, tin and fifteen crated Hawker Hurricane fighters. In Operation Strength, the aircraft carrier HMS Argus carried 24 Hurricanes concurrent with the convoy, escorted by three cruisers with the RAF ground party. When Argus was in range of Vayenga, the Hurricanes were flown off and all reached their destination.
  No. 151 Wing RAF (Wing Commander Neville Ramsbottom-Isherwood) flew in the defence of Murmansk for five weeks and claimed 16 victories, four probables and seven aircraft damaged. The winter snows began on 22 September and the conversion of Soviet Air Force (VVS, Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily) pilots and ground crews to the Hurricane Mk IID began in mid-October and in late November the RAF party returned to Britain, less various signals staff. The Allied Operation Gauntlet (25 August – 3 September 1941), Fritham (30 April 1942 – 2 July 1943) had taken place in the Svalbard Archipelago on the main island of Spitsbergen, midway between northern Norway the North Pole, to eliminate German weather stations and to stop its coal exports to Norway. In Operation Gearbox II (2–21 September 1942)  two cruisers and a destroyer took 200 long tons (203 t) of supplies and equipment to Spitsbergen. On 3 September, Force P, the oilers RFA Blue Ranger, RFA Oligarch and four destroyer escorts sailed for Van Mijenfjorden (Lowe Sound) in Spitsbergen and from 9 to 13 September refuelled destroyers detached from PQ 18.
caption: Five Sea Hurricanes in the hangar of HMS Argus (1942–1944)
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