How accessible was the port of Archangelsk from the east?
score:5
Assuming that there was not significantly less ice during WW2 than there is today, you might want to refer to this YT video (or, actually, any other animation of artic ice cover data).
You will see that there is only a very small window of opportunity -- two, or three months at best -- during which a passage Alaska -- Archangelsk would have been possible.
If you stick very close to the coast, that is...
If you miss that window of opportunity by just a little bit, your path is blocked.
Too early and you won't be able to get through...
...or just a little bit too late, and you will be stuck for a year (if you're lucky and don't get crushed).
No, the eastern approach by sea is not a viable alternative, and going via Vladivostok / train was the far superior solution.
Upvote:1
These days, the Arctic route is reasonably accessible, thanks to nuclear-powered icebreakers. These have the vast amounts of installed power required to break through the ice reliably.
During the winter, the ice along the Northern Sea Route varies in thickness from 1.2 to 2.0 metres (3.9 to 6.5 feet). The ice in central parts of the Arctic Ocean is on average 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) thick.
Before that (the first nuclear-powered icebreaker, Lenin was commissioned in 1957), I suspect building an ice breaker with enough power and endurance would have been difficult: 100,000 shp burns a lot of fuel.
Upvote:5
I guess ice poses some danger, or outright makes Archangelsk unreachable from the east. To quote from the Wikipedia article on the North-East passage:
In 1932, a Soviet expedition on the icebreaker A. Sibiryakov led by Professor Otto Yulievich Schmidt was the first to sail all the way from Arkhangelsk to the Bering Strait in the same summer without wintering en route. After trial runs in 1933 and 1934, the Northern Sea Route was officially defined and open and commercial exploitation began in 1935. The next year, part of the Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where armed conflict with Japan was looming.
A special governing body Glavsevmorput (Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route) was set up in 1932, with Otto Schmidt as its director. It supervised navigation and built Arctic ports.
During the early part of World War II, the Soviets allowed the German auxiliary cruiser Komet to use the Northern Sea Route in the summer of 1940 to evade the British Royal Navy and break out into the Pacific Ocean. Komet was escorted by Soviet icebreakers during her journey. After the start of the Soviet-German War, the Soviets transferred several destroyers from the Pacific Fleet to the Northern Fleet via the Arctic. The Soviets also used the Northern Sea Route to transfer materials from the Soviet Far East to European Russia, and the Germans launched Operation Wunderland to interdict this traffic.
If the ships had to be escorted by icebreakers during summer, my guess is that during winter the route was unnavigable. Thus, shipping from Britain to Archangelsk allows all-year shipping.
Wikimedia also has a map of Arctic showing the North-East passage.
More post
- 📝 Did Napoleon plan to invade India?
- 📝 Will we ever get anything like the LBJ & Nixon White House recordings for contemporary presidents?
- 📝 Has there ever been a case where a tribe/nation tried to reclaim the land they had left before?
- 📝 Was Casablanca a "safe" place for the Allies to hold a global conference in January, 1943?
- 📝 How did the United States treat POWs in Vietnam?
- 📝 Why didn't the Allies use a naval invasion to retake Norway?
- 📝 What were the dimensions of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem?
- 📝 Is there any evidence to corroborate the claim that Rudolf Höss was physically abused by the Allies after his capture?
- 📝 Did the communication lag become a problem for the ever expanding Roman Empire?
- 📝 Why didn't Great Britain give the colonies voting rights?
- 📝 When did military leaders in the field start to put units or ships as tokens onto a map and to move them around?
- 📝 How were nobles 'promoted' in aristocracies?
- 📝 How was Abd al-Rahman I recognized when he arrived in Islamic Hispania?
- 📝 Did medieval stores have names?
- 📝 Why was Germany held accountable for WW1?
- 📝 Where can I find documents from the Nuremberg trials about war crimes of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Were the Axis Powers really obligated to attack USSR and USA?
- 📝 How popular was the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Why were steering wheels so big, even in 20th century ships?
- 📝 In the United States government, has there been cases that electoral colleges don't vote for the candidate the majority of their state voted for?
- 📝 What was the cleanest war ever fought?
- 📝 Why was the Mughal Empire Persian oriented?
- 📝 What similarities exist between the Kalapas theory from Subcontinental Indians, and the modern theory of atom?
- 📝 Was bribery instrumental to the approval of the Thirteenth Amendment?
- 📝 How many Jewish refugee have been expelled out of Arab lands and when?
- 📝 How did the Greeks keep a prytaneum alight in storms?
- 📝 Why did the introduction of European firearms have such an impact on warfare in Africa and the Americas?
- 📝 Was the 1977 sale of a submarine to Indonesia controversial in Germany at the time?
- 📝 Why were Norwegian crews flying for Bomber Command paid more than other RAF crews?
- 📝 Why did Austronesian/Polynesian people not colonize Australia?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How accessible was the port of Archangelsk from the east?
- 📝 How long was a sea journey from England to East Africa 1868-1877?
- 📝 How difficult was to escape from a naval battle after engaging into one during the Age of Sail?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 How was life in the Iron Age different from life in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 How stable was the Middle East under Ottoman rule?
- 📝 How was the transfer of personnel from British women's military services managed?
- 📝 How widespread was dueling in the United States from its formation to 1860?
- 📝 How was debt handled in the change over from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian?
- 📝 During the Battle of Britain, how prepared was the East Front?
- 📝 How was Napoleon able to take power from the Republic
- 📝 How was the Lanfang Republic set up if emigration from China was illegal?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 Why was Poland spared from the Black Death?
- 📝 Aside from the Pyramids, what is the tallest man-made structure still standing in Europe & the Near East from ancient times?
- 📝 How serious was Fermat's statement about the ancients?
- 📝 How and when was the modern company ownership structure invented?
- 📝 How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- 📝 What was the reason for Soviet troops to withdraw from Yugoslavia in World War II?
- 📝 How was the United States able to produce excellent tanks in 1942?
- 📝 How popular was the Soviet Union?
- 📝 How was titanium transported from Soviet Union to Area 51 for Oxcart?
- 📝 Was the Dutch State independent when the Dutch East India Company was founded?
- 📝 How likely is it that any non-Celtic language was spoken in the British Isles when the Romans invaded?
- 📝 How significant was the Fall of Constantinople as an event leading to the Age of Exploration?
- 📝 Was Rosie the Riveter sourced from a Michelangelo painting?
- 📝 How difficult was it to spoof the sender of a telegram in 1890-1920's in USA?
- 📝 How was the modern geographic boundary between Europe and Asia decided?
- 📝 How was the Luftwaffe able to destroy nearly 4000 Soviet aircraft in 3 days of operation Barbarossa?
- 📝 When was the last documented occasion that Arab or Ottoman slave traders abducted people from Europe?