09.09.2010
Text: Northern Fleet Information Support Group
Photo: On board USS Tailor. Northern Fleet Information Support Group
A memorable ceremony was held on Sept 7 in Murmansk at Polar Defenders' Memorial; among attendants were WW2 veterans – members of the Arctic Convoys Association, Northern Fleet (NF) officers, representatives of Murmansk regional authorities, officials from US Consulate General in St. Petersburg, and crewmen of USS Taylor.
The ceremony was sacred to the memory of allied mariners lost while escorting convoys sailed from US ports to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk under leasing program during the Great Patriotic War.
After wreath-laying ceremony, the attendants proceeded to the international cemetery where American and British participants of the Arctic Convoys are buried.
Prior to that, the veterans were honored aboard USS
Taylor. Cmdr Lyle Hall, the frigate's CO gifted the ship's emblem to the Arctic Convoys Association. Capt 1 rank retired Yury Aleksandrov, the president of the association in his turn presented a memorable plaque with gun shell fragment found by NF divers inside sunken USS
Thomas Donaldson.
On Sept 8 Veterans, NF top-ranking officers, crew of USS
Taylor, and US Consul General sailed to the shipwreck site of USS
Thomas Donaldson by salvage tug
Nikolai Chiker to lay wreaths and honor the memory of lost sailors.
