Why are they flown to Alaska?

(and they wouldn't have attacked an American ship at that time - they had quite specific orders about that)

In 1939 one tanker and three U.S. freighters were held for up to three hours after being stopped by German U-boats. It was also the year in which the Iroquois, a passenger ship, was threatened (which is a bit of an involved ordeal) and the year in which the City of Flint, a cargo ship, was seized by the Germans on the grounds that it was carrying contraband. Long story short, they had it for almost a month before the Norwegians got involved and returned it to the U.S.

These incidents and a general sense of uncertainty led to actual fears over German activity in the Atlantic at the time. Thus, the line makes sense from a historical perspective as it was legitimate for a person to be concerned about being stopped by a U-boat while carrying precious cargo.

However, keep in mind that we're talking about a fictional premise within a historical setting. I once had a conversation with someone who thought it unrealistic that a character would have fought in both theaters during WWII due to how that was handled in real life. If we were talking about grounded historical fiction that would have been a perfectly valid point. However, we were talking about a character who had superpowers so it's not illogical to think that the government would have had an interest to transfer that person to the Pacific (in secret) if they found out about his abilities.

The same applies here. Even if the above incidents didn't happen and the Germans were actually so strict that they avoided any involvement with U.S. ships altogether, we're talking about a ship that was carrying what was believed to be an alien weapon. It wasn't clear if the Germans knew that (the U.S. could have moved it because the Germans were making plans to take it from Egypt or just because of general fears that Axis forces would end up there and come upon it) but if they did (or there was the possibility that they could have found that out) would the U.S. have had cause to fear that the Germans might be actively trying to intercept it? Of course.

Note that when the captain explained that he was trying to avoid U-boats Bosun responded with skepticism that a U-boat would bother them, suggesting that the line was less based on real world historical uncertainty and more on the captain knowing that there was a threat due to the mysterious cargo that they were carrying.

and what U-boats were around were concentrated in the North Atlantic (i.e. the part the Achilles was sailing through), so they'd have been a lot safer going further south.

I agree that it's a bit weird that it ended up in the location that it did but they probably really wanted to shoot in the Arctic.

There's also the question that if the Stargate was as important as it seemed to be (to the extent that it was being shipped under conditions of apparent secrecy) why wasn't it aboard a US warship?

Well if the Germans knew they were moving it and it was feared that they would try to intercept it, it's possible that a cargo ship seemed less conspicuous. It could have even been a last minute change to try to trick them into looking for a warship headed the U.S. and ignore a little cargo ship.

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