Various Explanations For Flag

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31142, 19 August 1966, Page 1

Various Explanations For Flag

This photograph of German casualties from the Admiral Graf Spee on the wharf at Montevideo is one of a set owned by Mr L. A. Ogilvie of Christchurch.

It shows coffins draped with German flags, and as a backdrop, a flag which appears to be identical to the one given to the Navy Office and said to have been flown by the Graf Spee during the battle of the River Plate. Other photographs in the set show the shell-battered German warship before she was scuttled, flying a similar dark-coloured flag from the aft mast.

Mr Ogilvie was given the photographs by a petty officer from H.M.S. Achilles when she returned to Auckland after the battle. He was stationed at H.M.N.Z.S. Philomel at the time, awaiting draft, and the sets of photographs were sold at the naval base as official photographs. Official History

The official history of the Royal New Zealand Navy records that the Admiral Graf Spee landed a funeral party at Montevideo on the morning of December 15, 1939, to bury her 36 dead. The Uruguayan Government ordered the warship back to sea by 6.45 p.m. on December 17, and at 6.17 p.m. on that day she hoisted a large ensign on her foremast as well as one at the main, and left the harbour. She stopped eight miles from the entrance and after the crew left in boats, the Graf Spee blew up. When her commander, Captain Langsdorff, learned that he was to be interned, he committed suicide in a Buenos Aires hotel—by shooting himself while lying on a German naval ensign. In a letter to the German Am-

bassador, he wrote: “For a captain with a sense of honour, it goes without saying that his personal fate cannot be separated from that of hi. ship . . .” The flag recently handed over to the Navy Office was said to have been acquired by a New Zealander in Montevideo when the crew of the Achilles mixed with sailors off the Graf Spee. ' The official history says that the German seamen from the Admiral Graf Spee were still in uniform in Buenos Aires at that time and seemed to have no restrictions on their movements.

“Such' contacts as they made with the ship’s company of the Achilles were of a friendly nature, drinks and cap ribbons being exchanged,” the history says. German Flags

More comment on the German flag has come in a letter to the editor of “The Press” from Mr D. G. Rumpit, of Wellington. He says the flag given to the Navy Office was the official flag of the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) from some time after 1933 until the surrender of Germany in 1945. “The flag was known officially as the Reich war flag (Reichskreigsflagge),” he says. “It was a red flag with black markings, edged white or on white, and was flown by all three branches of the armed forces—namely the army (heer), air force (luftwaffe), and navy (kriegsmarine). I do not know whether it was also flown by the formations lof the so-called combat S.S. |(waffen S.S.) because these I units did not form part of the Wehrmacht.

“It is therefore quite impossible that this flag has been used as a courtesy flag by a British merchant ship visiting Germany because that would in effect have amounted to the equivalent of a non-British merchant ship visiting a British port flying the White Ensign. “The flag would have been flown during action at sea and, to that extent, may therefore be called a battle flag of the Navy but it must be born in mind that it was also flown by Army and Air Force. The German Navy during World War II did not possess a flag exclusively its own as does, for instance, the Royal Navy. "What Mr Williamson may have meant by a white battle flag was either the command flag of the German Navy, which was white with black markings, or the old Imperial naval flag which went out in 1918.

“This was a white flag with markings similar to those in

the 1933-1945 flag except that it had the Imperial eagle in the centre and the colours black, white, and red in the left upper corner with the Iron Cross superimposed. This flag was not flown by the other services being exclusively a naval flag. “All German flags of the 1933-1945 era were red with the black emblem on a white disc and the distinction among the various types of flags did not lie in their colours, as suggested by Mr Williamson, but in differing and additional emblems and designs. “Finally, the fact that the flag bears an English maker’s name may not necessarily indicate that it did not derive from a German warship because it is quite possible for the German Navy to have imported its flags from England. On the other hand, it has to be admitted that Messrs Williamson and Harvey could be

right with their contention that the flag is British property.” Another Photograph A photograph of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee taken in 1937 showed her flying the same flag as that illustrated in “The Press” on Wednesday, said Mr M. A. White-Johnson, of West Melton, yesterday. Mr White-Johnson said he had a 1943 edition of "Jane's Fighting Ships” which contained the photograph. The flag the Graf Spee was flying was definitely not white, and according to “Jane’s” this particular German naval flag had a red background. The flag with a white background sometimes flown by German naval vessels was an admiral's ensign. Further, the flag illustrated in “The Press” was quite different from the German merchant navy flag of the period, he said.