Propaganda, PQ 17, and the full spectrum of convoy experience

The discussion separates propaganda about attacks on merchant crews from incidents that can be documented. More than 450 convoy series meant thousands of individual convoys on routes extending far beyond the North Atlantic; PQ 17 was catastrophic, but the uneventful PQ 4 represents another end of the experience. New Liberty, Victory, Park, and Fort ships also mattered because their wartime construction often improved accommodation and replaced older merchant tonnage. Meanwhile, well-maintained prewar ships could remain useful for decades, so the wartime merchant fleet combined mass-produced new hulls with much older vessels. Routes reached the Mediterranean, Africa, South America, Canada, Iceland, and the Soviet Arctic, creating a transport demand that even the world's largest merchant fleet could not fully satisfy. In wartime, schedules were driven by military need and enemy action rather than peacetime economics.