END OF GRAF SPEE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 23, 27 January 1940, Page 12

END OF GRAF SPEE

A VIVID STORY

AN AMERICAN ACCOUNT

BRAINS AND, SMOKE

A vivid account of the battle of the three British cruisers against the Admiral Graf Spec and the win of British naval brains, plus smoke, -ver the far more heavily armed German pocket-battleship was given by the American magazine "Time":—

Dawn: Dark enough to strike without giving too much away, light enough to set the victim up in silhouette. It was to be a simple operation. All the Admiral Graf Spec had to do was warn the plodding French freighter not to send out' radio.alarms, take off her jittery crew, shell her or set some T.N.T. below, and give her a one-way ticket to Davy Jones. Then get away. Already there were prisoners in the Spec's brig from nine such helpless victims. This life of raiding was good. Risks, yes, but mostly just an easy kill every three or four days. Two Limeys in one day off Africa a week ago; now a Frenchman off Uruguay.

In the tower, one of the Admiral Graf Spec's wireless hands ticked out the warning. A couple of 5.9's were cleared —to fire across the Frenchman's bow, or just in case the boys.ori the Formose were fools.

Suddenly from the lookout came a message: Enemy light cruiser sighted. Convoy. Off the starboard bow.

Alarm gong clanged violently from lookout to keelson; bugles sounded to-your-stations. On the bridge the young officers put on their earphones-and checked with the fire-control room and plotters.. Observers focused their binoculars. The T-shaped range finders swung in the sleepy calisthenics of limbering and checking. Ih the control tower the plotters laid out their instruments —parallel,, slide, caliper, is-was.

In the" conning tower, Captain Hans Langsdorff talked quickly and confidently with the navigator. This job should be easy. Overwhelming superiority in armament and fire-power. The cruiser—identified now as the' Ajax, 6985 tons —would not dare come in close enough to dent the Spec.

Gun crews slid into the two heavy turrets fore. and aft and dogged the traps after them. The huge barrels nodded as if eager to belch. Lines of fire hose were dragged out on deck and left sputtering into the waterways. The decks emptied of men. ■The Admiral Graf Spec,. pocketbattleship, 10,000 tons, last word in naval power for its size, was ready. But not for what happened next. ACHILLES AND EXETER. From the lookout came a new alarm: Two more, enemy sighted. Light cruiser. Heavy cruiser. Starboard abeam; Three cruisers to fight. She should be able to wallop them. The two light cruisers carried 6-inchers—too light to pierce the Spec's heavy armour, but plenty big enough to do damage far forward and aft, where the skin was thin, and' in parts of the superstructure. And. they could "do'six and a half knots better than the Spec, ltiaybe eight and a half with all the truck and barnacles the German had picked up in the southern seas. The heavy cruiser was something to think aboixt —8-inchers (they could crack most of the Spec's plate, including the control tower, from close range), and the vessel had an edge in speed. But the Spec had two turrets of 11* inchers. That is power. A direct hit with 670 pounds of explosive-packed armour-piercer could blow a hole big as a suite at the Hotel Adlon in any of these ships. Then she had the eight 5:9-inchers as well. Roughly, the Spec had a' 3-to-l advantage in armament and fire-power over all , three cruisers put together. Tactics: watch the light cruisers but .concentrate on the heavy; cripple her first, then the others would be meat. USE OF SMOKE. The Aj ax dampered her fires and set a smoke screen behind which' the Formose escaped. Meanwhile the other two—now identified as the light Achilles (7030 tons) and the heavy Exeter (8390 tons)—were, flanking out to sea. The Ajax apparently did the same, astern of the Spec. This meant two disadvantages for the German—shoals and shore to starboard, glaring rising sun behind the enemy to port. Captain Langsdorff gave the order to work out to sea into deeper water. By now the Achilles and the Exeter were deployed and sheering in. The Spec had to train both big turrets on the Exeter, and just keep the others off with 5.95. The engagement settled down to a running dogfight. Tactic I of the Britons, directed from the Exeter by Commodore Henry H. Harwood, Commander of the South American Division of the Hoyal Navy since 1936, was one the Italians have developed: Using curtains of smoke, the cruisers drove through from behind, showed themselves just long enough to get off a salvo, and then plunged back into the screen. This meant that the Spec never knew where to look for trouble, and when' it came, had to react quickly. The only way that the Spec could have overcome the British tactic was to get her two planes in the air for reconnoitring. It must have been early in the battle that a lucky British hit stripped to her fuselage the plane perched on the catapult—blocking the catapult so the other plane was alsoi useless, and thus virtually blinding the, Spec. Dispatches by week's end had not made it clear whether the British used their five available planes. '

Out to sea went the four, zigzagging, varying speed, roaring steel at each other. The cruisers kept dashing in from all angles like hounds baiting a boar. In the'"Spe.e's guts, the 62 British seamen—the yo,ungest was 15, the oldest 72, every sort from captain to cabin boy—hollered their happy heads off every time they felt the Spec take a hit. •

According to one of the German sailors, the enemy used torpedoes. None of them hit, but they made the Spec alter course and lose manoeuvring .advantages. For a while Captain Langsdorff himself took the wheel. '*•".

• Marksmanship on both sides must have been keen. The percentage of hits to tries in battle averages 2 per cent. At Jutland, where the firing was tops, the Germans got 1.5 per cent., the British 2.6 per cent. Here the average may well have been 2 per cent, in the first phases. The Spec suffered two especially bad hits—which must have been 2561b shells from the Exeter, since they both pierced heavy armament. One of them, high on the port quarter, detonating a split second after getting inside, ripped gaping holes in side and deck. The other probably decided the battle. It pocked the Spec's, "control tower fair and square. Lights went out. Telephones went dead. The central fire control went out of whack. Some of the Spec's best plotters, gunnery officers, observers lay dead or wounded. From then.

on, orders had to go from less skilled men in secondary control stations. Speaking tubes, portable lights, messages by hand had to be resorted to. EXETER HAMMERED TOO. The Spec was not without success. She gave the Exeter an awful raking ! —practically " demolished her superstructure, and blew one turret to bits. 'Finally she got at the Exeter's vitals, crippled her speed, sc that the Exeler fell out. It was 10 o'clock. The battle was four hours old. Next for the light pair. But the Ajax and the Achilles turned out to be meat by no means. With spectacular co-ordination they, kept each other smoked while driving in for bite after bite. They hurt the Spec, and badly. Some of her guns were silenced—one 5.0 turret tilted. Captain Langsdorft ordered his vessel to the nearest haven, Montevideo. AU the way in they fought, ten and a half hours more, Within full sight of the headland called Punta del Este, where Uruguayans gathered in crowds as if to watch a peJota match, the Ajax and the Achilles craftily slipped around the Spec Inshore of her, leaving the enemy silhouetted in the east by the reflected light of the setting sun, themselves under shore's gloom. Just before dark there were two sharp clashes, and it was evidently in one of those that the Spec suffered a final disaster: a hit at the forefoot, at bow and waterline, so that as she went through the sea she shipped water. At last night fell, the Spec limped away, turned about, inglpriously backed into Montevideo, and wearily dropped her anchor. She was out and all but down. Captain Langsdorff called up the 62 captives, and as he set them free (under parole not to give away naval secrets), said to them: "The cruisers made a gallant fight. -When people fight like that, personal enmity .is lost." THE DIPLOMATS DO BATTLE. The battle shifted from shells and smoke screens tp words and laws. How long should Uruguay allow the Spec to stay? Articles 14 and 17 of The Hague Convention of 1907: A belligerent ship may remain in a neutral port only 24 hours, unless to repair damages affecting seaworthiness; under no circumstances may she repair armaments. Uruguayan officials went aboard, found the Spec's seaworthiness impaired, granted a 72-hour stay. The Spec took on oxygen welding torches and steel plates and went to work. There was sad work to do, too. Sixty wounded men were treated: two went ashore v to hospital. Thirty-six bodies were put into swastika-draped coffins, earned ashore, buried far from home. Aboard the Exeter as she limped off towards the British base of Port Stanley, in the Falkland Islands, 1000 miles to the south, were 61 dead men, and 23 wounded. In a great battle off Port Stanley, 25 years ago this month, Admiral Graf yon Spec, namesake of the pocket-battleship, lost his ship, his battle, his life. Commodore Harwood was notified by radio that he had been knighted and promoted to RearAdmiral. The Ajax and the Achilles got off comparatively lightly:; "between them only eleven dead and . eight wounded. ' ' A diplomatic storm raged. Germans furiously charged the use of mustard gas, then dropped the charge. American Governments helplessly; talked over what to do about this, violation of their 300-mile neutral. zone. Germany accused Uruguay of not allowing enough time for repairs. , Outside the mouth of the Rio de la Plata where it spews its. ye,llow silt, the Ajax "and the Achilles, Vaited exultantly for the deadline. " Reinforcements came up fast. The muchdisputed aircraft carrier Ark Royal and /the battle-cruiser Renown put in •it Rio to" refuel—evidently on their way to Montevideo. The 31,000-ton battleship Barham, and the French battleship Dunkerque—it and the Renown two of five Allied ships which can both outrun and outgun German; pockeMaattleships—and the 10,000-ton cruiser Cumberland were rumoured to be waiting just over the horizon. The Spec's sister Admiral Scheer and German submarines were also rumoured on their way. As the zero hour approached, Montevideans rushed down to the harbour to watch. Correspondents got up on a hotel roof. A N.B.C. radio broadcaster set up his equipment Non. the dock. THE GRAF SPEE WEIGHS. At 6.20, two hours to spare' before : the deadline, the Spec weighed.' Slowly she started moving . for the breakwater mouth. The evening was clear—sun at the set, half" moon already up, lazy little clouds. The supply ship Tacoma; with all the Spec's married men aboard, picked up after her. What would she do? To, try to run that Allied gauntlet would be suicide. The Spec had had time to make herself seaworthy, but not battleiworthy. A rumour got around that Captain Langsdorff would slip her across the Plata's mouth to Buenos Aires, there perhaps to intern. Outside in the river the Spec anchored. Over the sides into barges and launches scrambled the crew. Captain Langsdorff stepped into a launch which, as it drew away from the Spec, dragged a long, thin cable. Just as the rim of the' sun dipped into the sea, Captain Langsdorff, surrounded by his officers, saluting, pressed a button on the end of the cable. A dull explosion. In three minutes the Spec was on the bottom, her superstructure still showing ablaze. I Darkness settled around the hissing t remains.

This dramatic curtain was Adolf Hitler's pleasure,,'communicated by .vireless. There was no apparent reason lor it. Assuming that the Spec was in no condition to engage even the light British cruisers, Hitler had nothing to lose by allowing her to be interned—unless he expects to lose the war, he could expect to recover the interned ship when war is over. World War I had been lost when the Germans scuttled their fleet at Scapa Flow. If Hitler ordered the Spec scuttled merely that his enemies would never lay hands on her, World War II was already half lost in his own head.