Word: murmansk
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Reindeer and horses still pulled sleighs through the haphazard streets of Murmansk. From that fine, deep-water Arctic harbor all the way to Leningrad, 650 miles south, winter snows still blanketed the land. Moving across the solidly frozen earth of the Karelian Isthmus, the Red Army smashed again & again at the tough Finnish defenders, drove a trio of wedges into the Finnish lines despite desperate tank and infantry counterattacks. East of beleaguered Leningrad Red troops lately transported from Siberia hacked away at Finnish positions on the Aunus Isthmus between Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega...
...vital Mid-East, Chiang Kai-shek in China, General Wavell in India, Britain herself, U.S. forces stationed from Hawaii to Iceland-all these called as well for supply. Last week a London naval analyst listed Britain's most important lines (the Indian Ocean, her route to Russia via Murmansk, her north Atlantic route from the U.S.), and said: "If it is not possible to safeguard all three without incurring disastrous losses both in warships and merchantmen, surely it is necessary to decide what it would be literally fatal to lose, and to concentrate on that...
...somewhere off upper Norway, beyond where the North Atlantic meets the Arctic Circle. As the convoy sailed around North Cape and along the coasts of the remote, mineral-rich territory called Lapland, dive-bombers and submarines kept up the attack. Berlin, reporting the last one near the entrance to Murmansk harbor, claimed a total bag of eight ships, including a 10,000-tonner loaded with tanks and ammunition. The British said that the entire convoy entered Murmansk, admitted some damage and deaths, claimed the probable destruction of three U-boats with depth charges...
More significant than the actual losses in this particular foray was a later London announcement: the British had increased the naval strength assigned to the northern patrol between Iceland and Murmansk. For this there was a reason. After months when more & more British and U.S. war goods had found their way, with little interference, past Norway to Murmansk and Archangel, the Germans were stirring in their Norwegian lairs. The United Nations from now on would have to fight for one of the vital sea lanes of World...
...Russia, victory in the looming Battle of the Arctic means a continued flow of supplies to Murmansk and (in the ice-free season, from April to November) to Archangel, then on by rail to the Soviet fronts. For Britain and the U.S., command of these waters may yet open the way to a front in northern Europe, where Allied manpower can wield Allied weapons against Hitler's armies...