Why no convoys to Russia in WW1?

I have yet to see evidence that UK sent any aid with convoys to Russia in WW1. Why not? Surley after the Tannebergbattle UK and France would see the need for Russia to get more weapons.
 
1914...

Vladivostok? The railways were not done yet.
Murmansk? Did not exist yet.
Sevastopol? Not through the Dardanelles.
St. Petersburg? The Baltic Sea was a German lake.

Murmansk and Vladivostok become possible late in the war but that's too late.
 
I have yet to see evidence that UK sent any aid with convoys to Russia in WW1. Why not? Surley after the Tannebergbattle UK and France would see the need for Russia to get more weapons.

Murmansk railway was built between 1914-1917. There also was rail connection from Norway to Finland which was extensively used.
 

NoMommsen

Donor
There were. Port : Archangelsk

IIRC I read about at least in Strachan about it.

Esp. that the Entente observers there (Archangelsk) were quite pissed about the conditions :
  • lack of fire regulations => quite some explosions of delivered munitions
  • lack of a proper railway : there was only a small gauge railway from the actual harbour over the rivever "Northern Dwina" to the "russian normal gauge" railway station some miles away, which also regularly vanished in the mud in spring and summer as well as ice and snow in winter.
  • lack of (almost any) organized logistic for getting the goods down south. There were lamentations, that goods delivered in summer 1914 were still there in winter 1915. ... same lamentations also in 1916.
Vladiwostok was available from 1914. ... But the Trans-Sib capacity was not up to the task and it took some time to convince a major supplier to deliver on own risk ... also regarding payment in time : the USA.
(IIRC it were the Brits, who at the beginning enabled the russian to order in the USA by granting sureties]



However, what I don't know is :
tried the germans to interrupt these deliveries ? ... by cruisers, destroyers, subs ?
 
More practical: When was the convoysystem of merchant shipping started? This was not before mid 1916! One year later Russia was not longer an ally, due to internal problems, so there was no way of having Russia bound convoys in the timeframe of WW1. Priorities, priorities, priorities.
 
1914...

Vladivostok? The railways were not done yet.
Murmansk? Did not exist yet.
Sevastopol? Not through the Dardanelles.
St. Petersburg? The Baltic Sea was a German lake.

Murmansk and Vladivostok become possible late in the war but that's too late.

Ah, thought they had a Murmansk railway by then
 
Convoying didn't start until well into 1917, so there was only a "window" of a few months in which any could have gone to Russia. Also most U-boat activity was around the Brisih Isles c=so there was less need for convoying on voyages to Russia.

Quite a bit of war material was taken to Murmansk and Archangel, but due to limited Russian transport, a lot of it was still there at the end of the war. Iirc, one reason for the Allied landings there in 1919 was to stop these weapons falling into Bolshevik hands.
 
Convoying didn't start until well into 1917, so there was only a "window" of a few months in which any could have gone to Russia. Also most U-boat activity was around the Brisih Isles c=so there was less need for convoying on voyages to Russia.

Quite a bit of war material was taken to Murmansk and Archangel, but due to limited Russian transport, a lot of it was still there at the end of the war. Iirc, one reason for the Allied landings there in 1919 was to stop these weapons falling into Bolshevik hands.

Same thing at Vladivostok. Mountains of equipment and materials, munitions and weapons. It was all improperly stored, deteriorated in the appalling weather conditions, and exploded periodically.
 
I would suggest getting a hold of Halpern's excellent A Naval History of World War I. p. 134-137 answers your question in detail. Yes there were convoys organized in the White Sea starting in 1915 but that was mostly to counter German minelaying. The RN also sent some warships to act as icebreakers. In the fall of 1916 the KM sent 5 U-Boats to that area but they sank only about 3% of the traffic.
 
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