An official law enforcement motorcycle may be used as a primary escort flag vehicle for a permitted vehicle traveling within the limits of an incorporated city if a highway patrol officer, sheriff, duly authorized deputy or municipal police officer operates the motorcycle. Supporters have been urged not to walk around the city and to avoid wearing club colours or emblems that identify them as Chelsea fans. Tanks and aircraft supplied by the British helped the Soviet counter-offensive force back the Germans further than might have been possible. In January and February 1941, deliveries of tanks and aircraft allowed the Russians to have a margin of safety should the Germans attempt to counter-attack. In October 1941, the unloading capacity of Arkhangelsk was 300,000 long tons (300,000 t), Vladivostok (in the Pacific) 140,000 long tons (140,000 t) and trusted london's escorts 60,000 long tons (61,000 t) in the Persian Gulf (for the Persian Corridor route) ports. The Soviet authorities had claimed that the unloading capacity of Arkhangelsk was 300,000 long tons (300,000 t), Vladivostok 140,000 long tons (140,000 t) and 60,000 long tons (61,000 t) by the Persian Gulf route. When surveyed by British and US technicians, the capacity of the ten berths at Arkhangelsk was assessed as 90,000 long tons (91,000 t) and the same from Murmansk from its eight berths.

The convoy was escorted from Iceland by the armed trawlers HMT Hamlet and HMT Macbeth and then met by the cruiser HMS Kenya and the destroyers HMS Bedouin Intrepid; Macbeth making the journey straight through to Murmansk. North of Norway the drift splits, one stream of the North Atlantic Drift goes north of Bear Island to Svalbard and the southern stream follows the coast of Murmansk into the Barents Sea. Arriving at the south-west of England, the drift moves between Scotland and Iceland. The position of Cape Corso is not known, Briarwood was forced out the convoy with ice damage and returned to Iceland. The convoy consisted of the British SS Briarwood, SS Cape Corso, SS Cape Race, SS Cocle, SS San Ambrosio, SS Trekieve, SS Wanstead and the Panamanian-flagged SS El Capitan. RA 55B consisted of eight merchant ships which departed from Kola Inlet on 31 December 1943. Close escort was provided by the two destroyers, Whitehall and Wrestler, and three corvettes. RA 55A was however threatened by a U-boat force of some thirteen boats in a patrol line, code-named Eisenbart, in the Norwegian Sea, which had operated against all the December convoys.

The convoys delivered 75 ships out of 77, with one early return and one loss to a U-boat. Built for Arctic conditions, trawlers were coal-burning ships with sufficient endurance. The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, made a commitment to send a convoy to the Arctic ports of the USSR every ten days and to deliver 1,200 tanks a month from July 1942 to January 1943, followed by 2,000 tanks and another 3,600 aircraft more than already promised. It sailed at the end of December 1943, reaching British ports in early January 1944. All ships arrived safely. British supplied aircraft and tanks reinforced the Russian defences of Leningrad and Moscow from December 1941. The tanks and aircraft did not save Moscow but were important in the Soviet counter-offensive. RA 55A sailed from Kola with its escort on 31 December 1943, accompanied by an eastern local escort of three minesweepers. On 1 January 1944 the local escort returned to Murmansk, leaving RA 55B to continue. The Soviet destroyer Sokrushitelny and the Halcyon-class minesweepers HMS Bramble, Seagull and Speedy of the eastern local escort, joined for the last leg to Arkhangelsk on 20 November.

The Soviet leaders needed to replace the colossal losses of military equipment lost after Operation Barbarossa the German invasion began, especially when Soviet war industries were being moved out of the war zone and emphasised tank and aircraft deliveries. The Soviets wanted to concentrate the resources that remained on items that the Soviet war economy that had the greatest comparative advantage over the German economy. Machine tools, steel and aluminium was needed to replace indigenous resources lost in the invasion. Japan's desire for economic independence and the establishment of a commanding presence in East Asia required access to resources, particularly oil for the military machine. A motley of British, Allied and neutral shipping loaded with military stores and raw materials for the Soviet war effort assembled at Hvalfjörður (Hvalfiord) in Iceland, convenient for ships from both sides of the Atlantic. Convoy PQ 7 was the eighth of the Arctic convoys of the Second World War by which the Western Allies supplied equipment, weapons, munitions and raw materials to the Soviet Union, after the invasion of 22 June 1941 by Nazi Germany.