In accordance with the Anglo-Soviet Military Supplies Agreement of 27 June 1942, military aid sent from Britain to the Soviet Union during the war was entirely free of charge.
[33][34] In June 1941 within weeks of the German invasion of the USSR the first British aid convoy set off along the dangerous Arctic sea routes to
Murmansk arriving in September. It was carrying 40
Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of
No. 151 Wing to provide immediate air defence of the port and train Soviet pilots. After escorting Soviet bombers and scoring 14 kills for one loss, and completing the training of pilots and mechanics, No 151 Wing left in November their mission complete.
[35] The convoy was the first of many convoys to Murmansk and
Archangelsk in what became known as the
Arctic convoys, the returning ships carried the gold that the USSR was using to pay the US. Between June 1941 and May 1945 3,000+ Hurricanes were delivered to the USSR along with 4,000+ other aircraft, 5,218 tanks, 5,000+ anti-tank guns, 4,020 ambulances and trucks, 323 machinery trucks, 2,560 bren carriers, 1,721 motorcycles, £1.15bn worth of aircraft engines and 15 million pairs of boots in total 4 million tonnes of war materials including food and medical supplies were delivered. The munitions totaled £308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled £120m in 1946 index. Naval assets supplied included a battleship, 9 destroyers, 4 submarines, 5 mine sweepers, 9 trawler minesweepers, over 600 radar and sonar sets, 41 anti submarine batteries, several hundred naval guns and rocket batteries.
Significant numbers of British
Churchill and
Matilda tanks along with US
M3 Lee were shipped to the USSR after becoming obsolete on the African Front. The Churchills, supplied by the arctic convoys, saw action in the siege of St Petersburg and the battle of Kursk.
[36][37] while tanks shipped by the Persian route supplied the Caucasian Front. With the USSR giving priority to the defence of Moscow for domestically produced tanks this resulted in 40% of tanks in service on the Caucasian Front being Lend-Lease models.
[38]