All language subtitles for Combat.Ships.S02E03.Doomed.Vessels.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-BLOOM_track3_[eng]

This time on Combat Ships...

In naval warfare, when you're sunk,

you're sunk!

If a vessel goes down,
it means there's a U-boat nearby.

You're on your own, Jack.

Stories of vessels
that were doomed from the start...

We all knew that if she got caught
in action,

she was going to get sunk.

The ship simply filled with water
and sank like a stone.

It was probably gone within
ten minutes.

And cornered men
fighting to survive...

They discussed it as a crew.
They would be blown up.

What happens when disaster strikes?

Combat ships.

Fast. Effective.

The mission is pure James Bond
espionage.

Deadly.

Japan is willing to throw the dice

to engage just about every aspect of
their military force

in a climactic decisive battle
to stop the United States.

They have changed
the world...

Warships have been key factors
in global history

from the beginning of civilisation
to the present day.

...thanks to clever design,

raw firepower

and the heroism of their crews.

In the summer of 1956,

a Swedish archaeologist named
Anders Franzen

took a boat and a movie camera

out into Stockholm Harbour.

He had a homemade device to collect
samples from the bottom.

Franzen had a hunch something
priceless was below him -

a 17th-century combat ship.

A single piece of wood proved him
right.

Five years later, a massive
recovery operation began

and on the 24th of April, 1961,

old timbers emerged
from the water.

Built to be the largest and most
impressive combat ship of the age,

from the moment she set sail,
she was doomed.

This is the Vasa!

Named after the royal family,

the Vasa was built in 1626,

a time when Sweden was becoming
a military force.

The Swedish King Gustav Adolf

had ambitious plans for his nation.

He saw himself as a great
Renaissance prince.

And in order to do that, he had
to take Sweden from the periphery

into the centre in some way.

And he did that largely
through warfare.

Gustav wanted to create
a new type of navy.

Instead of using ships simply
to carry soldiers,

he wanted them to be heavily armed
gun platforms.

In the winter of 1626,

the Vasa took shape
in the Royal Dockyard in Stockholm.

It's going to be the wonder
of the age,

it will show the power of
the King of Sweden.

King Gustav had already
reformed his army,

making sure his soldiers all had
the same type of musket.

He wanted every ship in his navy

to have the same type of powerful
bronze cannon.

The armament for the ship
had to be specifically made

because it was an experiment

to follow the King's idea of
standardisation.

And so an entirely new armament was
ordered from the Royal Gun Foundry

here in Stockholm.

The Vasa's 64 guns
could fire over 500 pounds of shot

in a single broadside,

travelling almost
at the speed of sound.

That many 24-pound of guns
needed an extra deck .

So the shipwrights made the ship
taller.

That created a problem.

It's going to be higher
out of the water,

more windage, more weight high up,

but nothing extra
below the water line,

no extra ballast,
no extra stability.

This ship is going to be dangerously
top heavy.

Anybody who knew about ships

would have known that
this was not a good idea.

But the King is absolute
and the King's will prevails.

It would not meet modern stability
requirements.

It would not even meet normal
17th-century stability requirements.

And that's why the ship was unsafe.

On the Sunday afternoon of
the 10th of August 1628,

Vasa was finally ready to set sail.

The King was away at war in Prussia,

but thousands of his subjects
turned out to watch.

Among them were foreign spies,

intrigued by Sweden's new warship.

On board the Vasa were around
200 people,

including women and children.

The Vasa's skipper was keen
to show off his new ship.

If you're going to sail with
the most armed warship

in the world in front of all
the spies of northern Europe,

it's not the most powerfully armed
warship in the world

if the gun ports are closed.

You could have an empty ship.

You have to show off those guns.

You have to fire a salute
as you leave town.

The Vasa sailed about
a thousand yards

and then the breeze picked up.

When the first gust of wind
filled the sails,

the ship began to heel
to the port side,

this side behind me,
and it hung there for a minute.

It didn't really come back up
the way a ship should.

People on board
must have realised already

that there was something wrong.

Everybody else probably just held
their breath for a minute

or laughed it off.

But things escalated quickly.

The wind filled the sails again

and the ship heeled even more
over to port.

In fact, it heeled so far to port

that the lower row of gunports
went into the water.

The sea began to pour in
on one side of the deck,

pushing the port side down
even further,

so even more water ran in,
cascading down into the hull.

From that moment, the Vasa was lost.

The ship simply filled with water
and sank like a stone.

An inquest began
within days of the sinking.

The King demanded answers.

Unsurprisingly, the evidence showed
Vasa was top-heavy.

Fingers pointed at the shipwright
who had died the year before.

He was the perfect scapegoat
because he was dead.

He couldn't defend himself
and he didn't need to be punished.

It's a brilliant political solution
that makes everybody happy.

For over 300 years,

the mighty combat ship lay at
the bottom of Stockholm Harbour,

until 1961, when Anders Franzen
and his team

brought her to the surface.

He had great plans for the Vasa.

The brilliance of Franzen was,
he was a great salesman

and he had a vision of what
Vasa could become.

He saw that Vasa could become the
centrepiece of a world-class museum.

The ship is now one of
Sweden's most popular attractions,

a 400-year-old cautionary tale.

Even today in Sweden, Vasa is
a kind of slang term for failure.

So, we have the world's most
unsuccessful 17th-century warship

on display as an example of what
not to do in future

and all students of naval
architecture should go and see

the Vasa to see just how brilliant
it looks

and how catastrophically
dangerous it actually was.

300 years after the Vasa,

naval technology had changed
dramatically.

But one design flaw could still
spell disaster... and death.

This is USS Nautilus.

Her launch in January 1954 was
a global event.

Although powered by
a nuclear reactor,

the Nautilus worked on a Victorian
principle.

The reactor produced steam to turn
the turbine that moved the sub.

It wasn't the first submarine
to use steam.

40 years earlier, the British Navy
built its own steam-powered sub.

If Nautilus was the epitome
of success,

this earlier vessel,
the epitome of failure.

In the early years of
the 20th century,

navies were fixated on
submarine technology.

The Admiralty wanted a submarine
that was fast enough

to keep up with the rest of
the fleet.

So this required speed,
well over 20 knots.

Only steam could provide
that kind of power.

In 1913, British designers came up
with a sub

equipped with oil-fired boilers
that powered steam turbines.

They were known as K-boats.

The K-boat's a unique design.
They're absolutely vast.

They have a full-sized
steam power plant

that allows them on the surface

to drive them along at the same
sort of speeds as light cruisers.

The K-boat's size
had a drawback.

Before it dived, over 20 hatches
and vents had to be closed.

As one submariner complained,

"It had too many damn holes."

But with World War One
now at its height,

there was no time to wait for
a redesign.

The British commissioned
a Scottish firm, Fairfield,

to start building the K-class subs.

The first, named K-13,
quickly took shape.

On Monday 29th of January, 1917,

it sailed from Fairfield Shipyard
to nearby Gare Loch for tests.

In charge of the sub was Lieutenant
Commander Godfrey Herbert.

Men like Herbert were used to danger
and risk.

Submariners, particularly in
the early days, were brave.

They were pioneers.
They saw themselves as a race apart,

The Trade, as they called
themselves.

They were very special people.

At about 11am,
the tests began.

K-13 dove for the first time.

Within minutes, there was a problem.

They find a leak
in the engine room.

But unfortunately,
because of the heat

from the steam turbines
and the boilers,

they can't find where the leak is.

K-13 surfaced and
the engine room cooled down.

Commander Herbert decided to dive
once more to find the leak.

Percy Hillhouse, one of Fairfield's
naval architects, was on board.

"The hatches were all closed

and the illuminated signal,
Engine Room Closed, signified

that hatches, funnels and
ventilators had been closed down."

As the submarine starts to dive,

there is a shout from within
the engine room spaces itself

that the boiler room is flooding
freely.

K-13's engine room
was quickly filling with seawater,

dragging the rest of the sub
down with it.

For me as a former submariner,
it must have been terrifying.

The one thing that submariners fear
above everything else is flooding.

When Herbert realises
what's happening,

he raises the command to close
the watertight doors,

which will have the effect of
closing off

the last half of the vessel,

leaving it open to the sea

and unfortunately condemning
the men there to death.

Herbert stopped the flooding,

but the sub was still sinking.

K-13 came to rest 50 feet down
in the waters of the loch.

Above them, on a steamer carrying
observers for the tests,

no-one was aware that anything
had gone wrong.

Commander Herbert took a roll call.

31 men were already dead.

Percy Hillhouse wrote...

"Our position appeared to be
desperate,

and I do not think there were any
on board

who had more than the very faintest
hope of ever seeing blue sky again."

Although the crew
didn't realise it,

four vital vents had been left open
when they dove.

It took an hour before observers
on the steamer began to worry.

They assembled a rescue team.

On K-13, the oxygen starts
to run out.

They become drowsy.
Some men lie down.

Some men start to move very slowly
indeed

and there's a consideration
that after a few hours

that oxygen will be gone completely.

As the hours passed,

conditions in K-13 became desperate.

The lights kept fusing...

and the equipment gave off
electric shocks.

The survivors on K-13
tried to conserve their oxygen

by not doing anything.
The more you exert yourself,

the more exercise you do,
the more oxygen you use

and the more carbon dioxide
you breathe out.

And carbon dioxide
is almost as bad as lack of oxygen.

In high quantities,
it affects your reasoning,

you become lethargic

and you get to the point where
you can't even help yourself

to save your own life.

One submariner tapped out
a desperate message in Morse code

on the hull. "Give us some air.
Give us some air."

Lieutenant Commander Herbert

and another sub captain named
Francis Goodhart

had had enough.

So they decided that Goodhart,
who was a supernumerary,

he was going to be a captain of
another K-class submarine

and was along for the experience,

would attempt to escape through
the conning tower.

Herbert and Goodhart
climbed into the tower.

The plan was to flood it.

Goodhart would open the lower hatch.

Herbert would stay behind,
close the hatch

so the conning tower could be
drained of water.

Goodhart would open a second hatch
and escape.

Herbert would then climb back
into the sub.

However, it goes wrong.
Herbert, who has no intention

of leaving the submarine
and no intention of escaping,

actually is blasted out of
the submarine

at the same time as Goodhart is.

Goodhart is knocked unconscious

or trapped within the submarine's
bridge superstructure,

whilst Herbert is blasted clear
and comes to the surface.

Francis Goodhart drowned.

An exhausted Herbert told
the rescuers

that his men were running
out of air.

Finally, the salvage team managed
to attach a tube

from another submarine to K-13

and blow compressed air into her
forward ballast tanks.

Slowly K-13's bow rose
above the water.

And then it was possible to get
a cutting torch

and cut a hole in the outer casing

and then through to the pressure
hull, and it let the men escape,

after 55 hours of being entombed
in this submarine.

Percy Hillhouse wrote:

"We began to appear one by one
out of the depths

and on to the deck of K-13.

48 men came out, each one greeted by
a tremendous ovation."

But 32 men died
in the accident.

They were buried on a hill
above the shores of Gare Loch.

Lieutenant Commander Herbert
never dived in a sub again.

He does not go to sea in another
K-class submarine.

He commands other ships,

but he does not go back to sea
in a submarine.

K-13 is salvaged
and she's put back into service.

However, the Navy rename her K-22

and she goes off and fights the war
with the other K-class submarines.

So they persist, really in the
face of all the evidence,

with the development of the K-boats.

And when they enter service,
they became rapidly nicknamed

the Kalamity Class, K for Kalamity.

Because so many of them are lost
in accidents.

The K-boats had
a catastrophic war.

Not a single K-Boat is lost
in action with the enemy,

but six of them are lost
in accidents.

They are a complete disaster
as a class of submarine.

One of the consequences
of K-13 sinking in the Gare Loch

is that the submarine service would
never have another submarine

named 13.

It's 1916,

the height of the First World War.

In the John Brown Shipyard
on Clydebank, Scotland,

a vast combat ship was taking
shape,

a state-of-the-art Royal
Navy battlecruiser named HMS Hood,

designed to take on anything
an enemy fleet could throw at it.

Hood was built on number three
berth of the East Yard

here at Clydebank, and she was
launched just over there,

where that piece of slipway
is still visible.

The Hood was afloat.

Now she needed her guns.

Just one of Hood's 15-inch guns
weighed 100 tons.

So, this crane here was rated at
150 tons, she could lift up to that.

In all, the Hood was
equipped with eight 15-inch guns,

12 5.5-inch guns
and six torpedo tubes.

To make her lighter and faster,

she was built with less armour
than most warships.

What she lost in protection,
she would gain in speed.

But a battle
on the 31st of May, 1916

changed naval design forever.

The Battle of Jutland was
the biggest naval clash of the war.

The British and German fleets met
off the coast of Denmark.

The Royal Navy was victorious,
but at a cost.

During the Battle of Jutland,

the British suffered
very heavy losses.

They lost three battle cruisers.

They lost far more people than the
Germans

and they tended to blame
lack of armour protection for this.

The main lesson officially drawn
from the battle

was that you need more armour.

The Hood was instantly
out of date.

In 1920, she returned
to the shipyard for a re-fit.

The archives of the University of
Glasgow have the original blueprints

showing the changes made
after Jutland.

What this drawing shows is that
the belt armour on the side of Hood

has been increased to five, seven
and twelve inches,

a considerable increase from when
the ship was first designed.

And altogether, these additions to
the armouring of Hood

amounted to about 5,000 tons.

The drawing is showing the increase
in thickness of plates,

for example, 35 pounds up to 40
here again, and again.

With her sides
now thickly armoured,

the Hood was once again
the pride of the Royal Navy.

She was heavily armed,
she was fast

and she seemed to symbolise
the power of the British Empire.

Britain was back as a major power.

Bill Cass served on
the Hood between 1938 and 1940.

Well, it was vast. You never
really got to know it.

The first thing that impressed me

was what we called
"the measured mile."

It was a long passageway
in the ship.

It went for ages right through
the bowels of the ship.

And everything was on
such a massive scale.

The Hood would soon be put
to the test.

As the Second World War broke out,

the German Navy targeted convoys

bringing vital supplies from
the United States to Britain.

By 1941, the Germans had two
awe-inspiring combat ships

at their disposal - the Tirpitz

and her sister ship, Bismarck.

Bismarck was regarded by
the British as a formidable threat.

She could seriously interrupt
trans-Atlantic communications

at a time when Lend-Lease
was just taking hold

and American supplies were crucial.

So, her appearance in the Atlantic
was one that had to be dealt with

as quickly as possible.

On May 22nd, 1941

Bismarck left her base in Norway.

The Hood, together with a brand-new
battleship, Prince of Wales,

were sent to the Denmark Strait
near Greenland

to intercept Bismarck.

Admiral Lancelot Holland,
onboard the Hood,

was in charge of
the British flotilla.

At dawn on the 24th May,
his lookouts spotted the Bismarck

and the cruiser Prince Eugen.

For the first time the Mighty Hood
would be tested in combat.

A German sailor onboard the Prince
Eugen filmed the battle.

Hood opens fire on what it thought
was the Bismarck,

but it was the wrong ship.

The Germans quite deliberately
made their ships look similar.

And at a distance, Prince Eugen was
actually a very big cruiser,

could be easily mistaken
for Bismarck

and this allowed Bismarck
relatively unhindered fire

in the vital opening part of
the action.

Bismarck had plenty
of time to find its range.

The first two salvos from Bismarck

don't go close to Hood.

But an 18 shell from Prince Eugen
hits Hood

in the after part of the shelter
deck and casualties are sustained.

The blow reminded the crew
of what they already knew.

Their ship had a fatal flaw.

Although her sides had been
reinforced,

the Hood's deck armour had not.

She was a disaster
waiting to happen.

Every stoker that was on The Hood

knew that she was a hazard,

that if she got in the wrong place
at the wrong time,

she's going to get sunk.

She was the best ship in the Navy
at the time,

but her armour was bad.

First blood to
the Germans.

Admiral Holland also knew
the weakness of his deck armour.

He tried to get as close to
the Bismarck as possible.

Vertical armour,
say on the side of a battleship,

is important,
particularly at close ranges,

where the trajectory of incoming
shells is quite flat.

You're going to take the damage
where you want it,

on your armoured side.

But at long distances,

plunging shells are likely
to go through decks

as much as they're likely to hit
the side of the ship.

Admiral Holland's
manoeuvre was too little too late.

A deadly salvo from Bismarck
found its target.

The Hood's final moments
are captured on film.

A shell penetrated
the thin deck armour

and landed in a gun magazine.

This explodes. This causes the aft
15-inch magazine to explode,

and a wall of fire goes through
the ship.

Effectively,
Hood is blown to pieces.

Her bow is last seen going down
stern-first.

1,415 officers and men
were killed.

Bill Cass was on leave
when he heard the news.

I thought of all the shipmates
that I'd known...

...that I wouldn't be seeing again.

I thought what a terrible end
it must have been,

to get carried down to the depth
in a steel coffin.

The loss of those 1,415
officers and men

still is the largest loss of life
in any one event in the Royal Navy.

Put it in context, the equivalent of
three battalions of troops

being killed in one event.

Only three men survived.

The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen steamed
on victorious into the Atlantic.

The sinking of the Hood
was a tremendous shock.

This symbol of British Naval power,
British Imperial power

had been sunk in its first
two-way action.

The Germans saw this,
quite rightly in fact,

as their greatest naval victory
so far in the war.

But the Royal Navy soon
got its revenge.

They sank the Bismarck
just three days later.

It isn't always faulty design
that dooms combat ships.

Sometimes it's the unpredictable ocean.

In the 13th century, a natural
disaster stopped an invasion

and inspired one of the most
infamous strategies

of the Second World War.

Under the waters of
this bay in western Japan

are the remains of
a combat fleet.

Until D-Day, it was the largest
armada in history.

In the 13th century, the ruthless
Mongol warlord Genghis Khan

created one of the largest empires
the world has ever seen.

The Mongol dynasty
at that time

stretched from East Asia to Europe.

It ruled about 30 percent of
the world's territories.

But Japan stood defiant.

His grandson, Khubilai Khan,

wanted to change that.

In 1281, he assembled a mighty fleet
and sailed for Japan.

The 13th-century explorer
Marco Polo wrote:

"Khubilai the Grand Kahn,

having heard much of the immense
wealth that was in this Island,

formed a plan to get possession
of it.

For this purpose, he sent two
of his barons with a great navy

and a great force of horse
and foot.'"

Most of the fleet anchored
here - Imari Bay off Kyushu.

Thousands of Khubilai Khan's troops
made their way ashore.

Japanese Samurai defenders
fought back hard.

The Japanese actually knew
that the Chinese were coming,

so they were probably prepared
to fight against this larger fleet

that was coming from China.

But the Japanese
were outnumbered.

Defeat seemed inevitable.

Then their Emperor prayed for
divine intervention.

According to legend,
a miracle happened.

The weather suddenly changed.

The winds were probably
much higher than usual,

maybe tens of metres per second.

So strong in fact that people
wouldn't have been able to stand.

In Imari Bay where the waves
would usually be calm,

many of Khan's ships sank.

Some vessel tried to escape into
deep water,

some tried to set anchor,
to brace against the wind.

So it's probably just panic
everywhere.

It's believed over
100,000 men drowned.

Khublai Khan's remaining forces were
soon overwhelmed.

He called off the attack.

Japan was saved,
and the story became legend.

In the 1980s, Japanese
archaeologists dived off Kyushu

to see if any evidence of Khubilai
Khan's combat fleet survived.

Here in the sea
near Takashima,

on the seabed,

many items were discovered from
the time of the Mongol invasion -

arms, weapons,
as well as everyday things

such as bowls, jars,

and ornaments and helmets.

Around 4,000 relics were found.

Randy Sasaki was one of
the archaeologists

who painstakingly analysed
the hundreds of ship's timbers

brought to the surface.

I think my work was some of
a jigsaw puzzle,

but jigsaw puzzle with 4,000
different puzzle boxes

put into a blender
and then bring it up

and trying to piece those 4,000
different puzzles into one picture,

which is the total story of
the Mongol invasion.

The timbers give a sense
of the size of Khan's combat ships.

A typical Chinese vessel,
basically a junk vessel we call it,

had a keel and then a V-shape hull,

and a three-masted vessel is what
we know

as a most typical vessel
of the time.

One of the most intriguing
discoveries found

among the shipwrecks
were these strange objects.

CT scans showed that they were
the world's first grenades,

known as tetsuhau.

Tetsuhau, if it were used
from a ship,

it will probably be ship towards
the shore,

because it wasn't very accurate and
the range would be 30 to 40 metres

The grenades
reveal another motive

for Khubilai Khan's invasion
of Japan... Explosives.

At that time, explosive
devices were the latest weapons.

So there was another theory,
because he wanted sulphur,

which is the raw material
for gunpowder.

The storm that sank
Khan's fleet

and saved Japan in 1281
was given a name -

Divine Wind, or Japanese "Kamikaze."

It's no accident that as the war
turns against them in the 1940s,

that kamikaze is dreamt up.

That's not the name of
an aeroplane.

That's the wind that destroyed
Kublai Khan's fleet.

It's a divine wind sent by the gods

and it will punish the infidel
for their temerity

in attempting to invade
the Japanese islands.

So, putting some crazy kids on speed
pills in obsolete aeroplanes

and crashing them into American
fleets, seems perfectly logical.

On the other side of the world,

another combat fleet was destroyed
not by a divine wind,

but catastrophic human error.

The 4th of July, 1942.

A large American and British convoy,
codenamed PQ 17,

is heading for Stalin's Russia,

when it comes under attack
from the German Luftwaffe.

35 ships carrying three quarters of
a billion dollars' worth of tanks,

food and guns, are under fire.

Russians are carrying
the bulk of the war.

They've got 300 divisions fighting
the Germans on the Eastern Front.

To keep them in the war
and supplied,

to kill as many Germans as possible,
we needed to get as many supplies

as we could to the Russians.

PQ 17 fights off
the Luftwaffe and sails on.

They're on a dangerous journey

to the northern Russian port
of Archangel.

For the British Admiralty,
the biggest fear

was not the Luftwaffe
or even U-boats.

It was a single battleship -
the mighty Tirpitz,

sister ship of the Bismarck.

The Tirpitz was feared because
it was very heavily armoured,

so it was hard to sink,

and it was very fast for its size.

But above all because it carried
a tremendous punch.

Eight 15-inch guns.

The man in charge of
the Royal Navy

was Admiral Sir Dudley Pound.

He was obsessed with the threat
Tirpitz posed.

Dudley Pound is one of the most
controversial First Sea Lords ever.

He was very prone to overwork.

He insisted on taking a lot of
decisions himself.

He didn't like being given advice.

Naval intelligence told Pound

that the Tirpitz was safely
in port.

Pound didn't believe them.

He was convinced that the battleship
was about to attack PQ 17.

For the first time in the war,
the Americans had contributed

significant naval forces
to the British home fleet

that was providing the distant cover
for the convoy.

And Dudley Pound may have felt that
this first Anglo-American

naval operation could not be risked

in the face of an attack
with the Tirpitz.

Pound gave a fateful order.

Dudley Pound makes a bad decision.

He decides to scatter the convoy

and withdraw the covering forces
back into the Norwegian Sea.

That was a death sentence because
it opened each ship up individually

to being picked off one at a time,

not by the big ships, which actually
turned around and went back,

but by German aircraft
and German submarines.

Hollywood actor
Douglas Fairbanks Jr

was an officer on board
the cruiser USS Wichita.

He wrote in his diary:
"We hate leaving PQ 17 behind.

It looks so helpless now since
the scatter order came through.

The ships are going round in circles
like so many frightened chicks."

When they scattered,

the convoy was still 600 miles
from the Russian port of Archangel.

The scene was set for one of
the greatest maritime disasters

of the Second World War.

The Germans couldn't believe
their luck.

They pounced on the unprotected
merchant ships.

Within a day, U-boats
and the Luftwaffe

had sent 12 of them to the bottom.

But not all the Navy escorts fled
the scene.

One British officer
disobeyed orders.

His name was
Lieutenant Leo Gradwell,

an amateur sailor and lawyer
before the war.

His only sailing qualification was
a pleasure yacht

Certificate of Competency.

Gradwell was in command of
a most unlikely combat ship,

one of the smallest in the convoy,

crewed by Royal Navy sailors
and former fishermen,

a converted trawler named
the Ayrshire.

It was a fishing vessel
with a large bow

so it could take
the very, very large waves.

They had depth chargers
and they had one gun.

It wasn't going to do a lot, was it?

Gradwell was still determined

to guide as many ships
as possible to Archangel.

He rounded up three
US merchant vessels -

Troubadour, Silver Sword

and Ironclad, and sailed north.

The thing about my father was that
he could think for himself

and he always said to us, "You must
learn to think for yourselves.

You don't take what other people
say. Think about what is right."

And that was the core of him.

Gradwell knew they were
vulnerable to attack,

possibly from the Tirpitz.
But he had a plan.

He told his small convoy
to follow him into an ice floe.

They had no maps. Dad's map was
a handy atlas - a road atlas.

A corvette signalled to them,
saying, "Where are you going?"

He replied, "To hell! And the first
one to come back, I hope."

At 6:30pm
on the 5th of July,

when they were completely surrounded
by ice,

Gradwell ordered all four ships
to stop.

Then he carried out the next part
of his plan.

They decided they needed to have
camouflage.

So he asked any of the other ships
if they had any paint,

and I think it was Silver Sword
that had loads of white paint.

So everybody was told to come out
and paint their ship.

And they covered all the guns
and everything else on deck

that looked dark with tablecloths
and sheets,

cos they hadn't got enough
white paint for everything.

They painted and
camouflaged the ships

for over six hours.

But Gradwell wasn't finished.

The merchant ships had a deadly
cargo on deck

that could be useful -
brand-new tanks.

They turned
the turrets around, loaded them.

The other thing they did was to put
all the depth charges, primed,

in the bow of the ship,

so that if the Tirpitz came anywhere
near them,

which was their main worry,
they were going to ram the Tirpitz.

They discussed it as a crew.
They would be blown up.

But they would have killed
the enemy.

It's madness really.

As Gradwell prepared to fight,

to the south, the remnants of PQ 17
were under attack.

On that day, July 5th,

eight more merchant ships were lost
and 60 men killed.

Dozens were adrift in lifeboats.

The North Atlantic is not a happy
place to be driving a ship anyway.

And if your ship went down,
even in a convoy,

other vessels didn't stop
to pick you up,

because if you stopped to pick up
survivors of one sunken vessel,

that made you a stationary target.

If a vessel goes down,
it means there's a U-boat nearby.

You're on your own, Jack.

After 24 hours
in the ice,

Gradwell's convoy edged
its way out towards Russia.

On July 9th, they reached the
Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya

and inched their way round the
coast,

hiding in fjords to avoid detection.

Then, 21 days after the order
to scatter,

the four ships arrived safely
in Archangel.

They brought with them
20,000 tons of vital war supplies.

35 merchant ships left Iceland
in PQ 17.

Only 11 made it to Archangel.

120,000 tons of supplies were lost.
153 men died.

Admiral Pound continued as Sea Lord,
but his health was failing.

A little over a year later,
he was dead.

Safely in port, Leo Gradwell wrote
to his mother:

"I can't tell you anything,
of course,

except that I have had
my one big opportunity in this war

and that everyone is being very nice
about it."

Singlehandedly he and his ship's
company effectively save

a quarter of the ships that make it
through to Russia.

It's that simple.

He saves a lot of ships, a lot of
equipment and a lot of lives.

He was a special
person. Yes, he was.

A very special person.

He had a huge sense of duty
and integrity, I think.

And this is what you did
to help your country.

The history of doomed
vessels has shown

that despite the courage and
determination of their crews,

they are always at risk from the
elements, the enemy and human error.

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