RAIDER'S DAMAGE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 44, 21 February 1940, Page 5

RAIDER'S DAMAGE

ADMIRAL'S REVIEW. FEW 11-INCH SHELLS LEFT. i NAVY FACES OLD PROBLEM. The manner in which the Navy is meeting the problem of the commerce raider—a problem nearly as old as seafighting—and a critical view of the battle between the Graf Spee and the British cruisers Exeter, Ajax and Achilles, are discussed by Rear-Admiral H. G. Thursfield in the January issue of the British publication, "The Navy." "When the Spee entered Montevideo at midnight, after an 18-hour fight with her smaller but pertinacious and determined opponents," he writes, "two of her llin guns and one 5.9 m gun were out of action, her control tower and installation were wrecked, six of her eight torpedo tubes were out of action and —most important of .all—she had only 28 rounds of llin ammunition left! She was indeed sea-worthy, or was made so by the patching of her holed plating carried out at Montevideo; but her career as a raider was at an end in any

case, whatever her ' subsequent fate might be." In a tribute to Captain Langsdorff, who later committed suicide, Admiral Thursfield says, "Captain LangsdorfTs work was done and had been well done. He said to one of the British merchant captains . . . that he was glad to think that he had the deaths of no merchant seamen to his account. That was typical of a gallant man and a sea officer of the best type. He had fought well; he deserved well of his country, and he earned the respect of his enemies. What he himself thought of the last action imposed on him by his country's ruler is indicated in his end."

Graf Spee's Accomplishment. "The Admiral Graf Spec in the three months that she ranged the open seas, captured only eight British merchant ships. It may be thought from the smallncss of that result that she was of small service to her country's cause, yet that conclusion is, in reality, unsound. Practically no mention has been made of the British measures of defence of seaborne commerce, rendered necessary by the fact of an enemy raider being at large; 'but it will be realised that, on the analogy of the police and the burglar, they were far-reaching. "The only hint of them which became known to the public was the visit of the battle-cruiser Renown and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal—so often sunk by Dr. Goebbels! —to Simonstown on Cape of Good Hope, on December 3, and their arrival at Rio de Janeiro the day after the battle of the River Plate; and the arrival of the 10,000-ton Bin gun cruiser Cumberland in the River Plate while the Spee was still in Montevideo.

"Command of the sea has rarely been absolute —never, in fact, in a war in which two maritime Powers have fought with one another. It could only be absolute if one of them could destroy every warship and potential warship of the other. A close approximation has often been achieved by the method—used alike by CornvVdllis and Nelson in the 19th century and by Jellicoe and Beatty in the 20th—of shutting their enemies up in their own fortified ports, while keeping their own fleets at all times ready to engage them if they should put to sea; the 'military blockade,' as it has been called." The Raider's Part. "Xo military blockade can be close enough, or infallible enough, to prevent single ships slipping through its cordon. Single ships, commanded by officers sufficiently determined and skilful to take advantage of winter nights, fogs and gales, will always be able to gain the open sea; and submarines, of course, like the privateers of the sailing era, cannot be penned in by the blockade. "Submarines, like privateers «* old, can be mastered by the convoy system, applied in waters to which they have access. The convoy system, however, requires a very large number of ships for escort duty, and it is hardly possible to apply it throughout the world; nor indeed is it necessary to do so. But the

result of that is that a single ship of force, having eluded the scouts of the blockading fleet, has available to her thousands of targets in the ships that are voyaging all over the world. "Her task, however, is not easy, for i she is confronted with-two alternatives. Either she must conduct he.- operations where her enemy's sea traffic is dense, in which case her presence will quickly become known, she will be brought to action and her career will be short. Or if she would avoid detection in order to survive longer, she must avoid the f<ical areas of sea traffic and stick to the open ocean. In that event her depredations are likely to he few* but her services are not on that account of small value to her national cause.

"It H a truism that at se* the defence calls for much larger forces than docs sporadi; attack—just as many policemen are needed to protect * peaceful citizens against the depredations, of one burglar. One raider skilfully handled can contain many warships defending the trade she is attacking. When in 1014, for instance, the Etnden was at large in the Indian Ocean there were at one time no less than 20 cruisers searching for her—and for the Konigsberg, which was believed to be at large in the same area. If a raider, instead of being a small and lightly armed cruiser like the Emden, is a heavily armed ship like the Admiral Graf Spee, the drain on the resources of the defender of trade is, of course, all the heavier. Raiding Difficulties. "It is not, however, quite so heavy as, from a hasty consideration of the problem, one might at first conclude. For although the raider may be so heavily armed as clearly to outmatch most of the defender's cruisers, she has one marked weakness—she cannot afford to sustain any damage that is more than trivial. If she has no oversea bases of her own, once she is compelled to put into a neutral harbour which possesses facilities for ship repairs, even if she is allowed to make use of them, her position becomes definitely known and she will inevitably be brought to action when she again emerges. Thus a defending cruiser which is markedly weaker than the raider may be effective against her, on the Nelsonie principle that "By the time the enemy has soundly beaten our fleet he will do us no more harm this year."

There is, of course, a limit to the • disparity of force with which the task • of engaging a heavily armed raider may :be accepted. Sir Christopher Cradock's two ships at Coronel in November, 1914,' • for instance, proved to be too old and! , ill-fitted, and their crews of reserve] men too untrained to achieve his object' of inflicting damage on von Spec a «qnad-| ron in the conditions when they met.l For the Ajax alone to have engaged! the Admiral Graf Spec in daylight would I hardly have been sound strategy or tac-j ties—though the. mijrht well have kept touch during daylight and attacked after dark, when she would have had a very good chance of completing the business with torpedoes, if no reinforcements had reached her before. The actual outcome of any given disparity of force could only be determined in this case by battle. Commodore Harwood and his squadron—"Nelson"a grandsons," in the words of a tribute from Turkey —know that even if they were destroyed in the attempt, their task would be i well done; and like Nelson, who "never trifled with a fair wind, or with time," they did not hestitate.