The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1940. ACHILLES DAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 45, 22 February 1940, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1940. ACHILLES DAY.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the tcrong that -needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

It- is to be Auckland's privilege to-morrow to give New Zealand's first welcome to a ship which played a full part in the most significant naval action of the war to date. Any unit of the Royal Navy which was engaged in the Battle of the River Plate would be assured of a glad welcome in any port of the Dominion, but New Zealanders take especial pleasure in the fact that H.M.S. Achilles is with much reason looked upon as our own ship. More than half of her complement were born and bred in New Zealand and trained in naval ways in the New Zealand Squadron. It fell to their lot to be the first New Zealanders to take part in a. sea battle, and all the world knows how they acquitted themselves. Of all the tributes paid to the quality of the British fighting on that day we shall choose the one which is the least likely to have been exaggerated—the tribute of the late Captain Langsdorf—whom we like to think of as a German rather than a Nazi. The commander of the Admiral Graf Spee, in his declarafion to the Uruguayan maritime authority to justify his entry into Montevideo, gave a summary description of the battle. He said that when one of his forward guns hit H.M.S. Exeter the most" powerful of his enemies was thereby put almost out of action, but at the same time Achilles and Ajax got two broadsides home, damaging his ship and inflicting many casualties. In these circumstances he attempted to escape by enveloping the Graf Spee in a smoke sereen.

But the manoeuvre was defeated, since with inconceivable audacity the English Commodore ordered the other two units to close. Ajax and Achilles, in an incredible manoeuvre, plunged into the smoke screen until they were about a mile from the German ship, which they hit on both sides. . . . Her advantage in gun range was" thus neutralised by the heroic tactics of the enemy, who engaged her from an incredibly short range, turning round her and compelling her to divide her fire, while the Exeter from time to time succeeded in getting home a hit.

Captain Langsdorf related that he was thus obliged at all cost to break off the action, and there followed a dramatic raee to the south, with his enemies continuing their obstinate attack, until the Graf Spee reaehed the onter roads of Montevideo.

This narrative, though not written for British readers, tells them with more satisfying effect than any language of patriotic hyperbole just what His Majesty's ships Exeter, Ajax and Achilles did in the battle and how well they did it. It is H.M.S. Achilles which Aucklandcrs are to weleome, but in welcoming'her with a full-hearted enthnsiasm (which it is safe and easy to predict) they will remember that it is not her New Zealand ratings alone that they honour, but all her complement, and especially Captain Parry, and not one ship, but three. It is an opportunity, in circumstances unlikely to recur in a lifetime, to show New Zealand's appreciation of the Navy as a whole, of what it has meant to us in the Dominion's first century, and, above all, what it means to us to-day.