In late December 1943, there was a Russia-bound convoy JW 55B consisting of 19 cargo vessels under the command of the Commodore, retired Rear-Admiral Maitland Boucher, accompanied by a close escort of two destroyers, HMCS Huron and HMCS Haida, among others, and an ocean escort of eight Home Fleet destroyers led by HMS Onslow. Operation Ostfront was an attempt by the German Kriegsmarine to intercept the expected Arctic convoys. To ward off the threat of Germany's capital ships in the Arctic and to escort convoys with a high level of success, the Royal Navy had to outlay great assets. Even the threat of these ships' presence was enough to cause disastrous consequences for the convoys, such as Convoy PQ 17 that was scattered and mostly sunk by German forces after false reports of the Tirpitz sailing to intercept them. A key concern were German Kriegsmarine battleships such as Tirpitz and Scharnhorst.

These endured much hardship, frequently attacked by German naval and air forces stationed in occupied Norway. Since August 1941, the western Allies had run convoys of ships from the United Kingdom and Iceland to the northern ports of the Soviet Union to provide essential supplies for their war effort on the Eastern Front. It was also the penultimate engagement between battleships in history, the last being the October 1944 Battle of Surigao Strait. The outcome increased the British advantage in major surface units. The battle was the last between British and German big-gun capital ships. The German battleship Scharnhorst, on an operation to attack Arctic convoys of war materiel from the western Allies to the Soviet Union, was brought to battle and sunk by the Royal Navy's battleship HMS Duke of York with cruisers and destroyers, including an onslaught from the destroyer HNoMS Stord of the exiled Royal Norwegian Navy, off the North Cape, Norway. The Battle of the North Cape was a Second World War naval battle that occurred on 26 December 1943, as part of the Arctic campaign.

Wiki duke of york world of warships