GERMAN FLEET

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1940, Page 4

GERMAN FLEET

A SHOCK TO ITS MORALE

THE RIVER PLATE ACTION

BRITISH NAVAL NET

6 j The other day, when, in accordance - with the laws of war at sea, a British s submarine refused to sink the Bremen r without warning, the friends of Gere many assured us that the "mastery of i the sea" had "passed to enemy hands," 1 writes. Admiral Sir Howard Kelly in 2 the London "Daily Telegraph." s Their argument was hardly affected 3 .by the fact Mat the British submarine " preferred to sink an enemy submarine, and. to torpedo one of the Bremen's 3 escorting cruisers, t Perhaps the submarine commander also remembered that, if she were still i afloat, the Bremen would come into 1 our possession in the normal course Eat the end.of the war, and if she had ■ been sunk all the neutrals in the world ; would rightly have been up in arms i at such a flagrant breach of our stated i principles on the war at sea. : This "mastery of the sea" was also i (less broadly) hinted at when a Geri "man pocket battleship took refuge in ■ a neutral port—while engaged by an ■inferior British force. : There must be a wide difference bei tween such "mastery,", and the--com- : mand of the sea, by which we claim ■to keep open the trade routes of the I world 'for the free passage of our com- \ merce, while denying it to the ships of ; the enemy. ■■ ■ / . Our ships are sailing the seas on ! all the trade routes, whilst the Ger- ; man merchant fleet of fine , modern' ships' are sheltering in neutral ports . all the world over. Occasionally some of them put out to sea, but their hopes of escaping our world-wide patrol can-j not be realised, and capture, or the now popular scuttling, is almost ,in-j variably their: fate; ~ { RESULT OF PLANNING. The engagement off the mouth of the River ..Plate was not <the result of a fortuitous.meeting; it; was the result of sound planning, and the Admiralty —so often the target of ill-informed criticism—should have their share of the credit. The immensity of the ocean is rarely appreciated when enemy ships are at large. When such ships are powerfully armed they must be searched for by squadrons capable of engaging, the enemy with hope of success, and that entails a careful distribution ■qf our naval forces to ensure that adequate means may be available at the shortest notice wherever the enemy may be reported. It was on November 1 that the last certain information of the movement of the Graf Spec was received. Then, as the. Admiral Scheer, she sank the small tanker Africa Shell, at the south end of the Mozambique Channel, and ' at' about the same time several movements of German ships were reported from St. Paul de Loanda, where they had Been laid up since the commencement of the war.'Not long afterwards; it seems that the battleship Re- ; I pulse and the aircraft-carrier Ark l-1 Royal were in these waters, carrying out their search. The area for search of the Ark Royal is very considerable, and British merchant vessels have been astonished to 1 see British land planes flying over ■ the middle of the.South Atlantic. For a more methodical search, the .methods employed uv'the last w,ar are probably .followed. 'Store, ships and colliers or oilers can be sent ahead as bait with the cruisers at visibility distance -astern, or the cruisers and supply ships can be spread on a line, at visibility distance or more apart, and concentrating at full speed when suspicions are.aroused. ORGANISATION NEEDED. The maintenance of these patrol lines requires the most careful organisation, especially in the,. South Atlantic where shelter for fuelling is most difficult to find. I have vivid memories of a patrol on the Equator in 1915 looking for the raider Kronprinz Wilheim, and of the horrors of coaling in a heavy swell, wondering whether the ship'would break to, pieces before we had got enough coal in. Oiling at sea is more easy, but in the open ocean -there -is always movement, and the operation is thus one of anxiety,, .calling for skill in the handling of both ship's. The bait in the case of the Graf Spec was the French steamer Formose, though this was probably an entire accident. Soon the Exeter had sighted, the enemy, whose position she at once communicated to the ships in the' vicinity. - The Graf Spec opened fire,: and the action with the Exeter began, j According to the available information the A j ax, flying the broad pennant of . Commodore • Harwood, commanding the South-East Coast of America Station, and the Achilles, one of tiie New Zealand cruisers detached to strengthen this ■ squadron, were sighted almost immediately, and joined in the action as soon as they were within range. , The. Graf Spec was armed with six llin guns, mounted in, turrets, arid eight 6in guns; the Exeter mounted six Bin guns, and the-two smaller cruisers, Ajax and Achilles, eight 6in guns each. The British ships were all small ships of "their class, as most of the Bin gun cruisers carry eight guns instead of six, and the bigger 6in cruisers carry 12 guns instead of eight. A FORMIDABLE UNDERTAKING. To engage a pocket battleship with a squadron of this type was a formid- \ able undertaking. With a squadron of four of the better-armed cruisers the engagement would have been a 'reasonable proposition; you would expect to lose two cruisers, and that the other two would sink the enemy.- Commodore Harwood accepted the risks, and his brilliant victory was well deserved. He knew that the broadside fired by the Graf Spec was half as much again "as the total broadside of all of his ships when all their guns were firing, and early in the action the enemy, who was concentrating on the Exeter as the most powerful ship, got in :a. lucky salvo and the Exeter dropped out of the action, after having with great gallantry sustained the fire of her greatly- superior adversary until her consorts could arrive. The tactics employed by the British were perfectly adapted to the situation. The main system of fire control in all ships' is fitted for engaging' one enemy with the full force of the ship's armament. There are secondary systems of control, and, finally mdi- ' vidual systems; but to obtain the most • exact results the main control is essen- ; tial. This being so, two or more ] weaker ships engaging a more power- 1 ful adversary must spread so as to ] divide the target—and therefore its 1 armament, unless the bigger ship con- " centrates on the smaller ships one at a time, in which case the ship which is not being fired at should be/ able to cause great;;damage as a consolation to. her suffering partner. .. :.:■ WftRK OF SMALL;CRUISERS. : When the Exeter dropped out of < the action owing to damage to her J machinery, the two small cruisers had ■ c a tremendous task in front of them, { i and most gallantly they tackled it U

They took every advantage of their' . superior speed, attacking the enemy from ever-changing angles. When they v made their final dash, closing in at full speed from opposite directions to ' almost point-blank range, completing 1 their destructive work, the spirit of their naval forefathers must indeed nave cried "Well\doneT'::'/;'Here';:i.w.as-.i'no necessity to hoist Nelson's favourite i signal, "Engage the 'enemy more closely"; it was a perfectly working team of gallant fellows, each knowing what he had to do and doing it. It was a great achievement, ; though perhaps it is only a naval expert who can fully recognise it as such. To us it is either a revelation or a confirmai i tion, according to the school of thought. [ The captain of the Graf Spec had t "evidently treated the crews of the sunk merchantmen with consideration, 'and from all reports his conduct at °. Montevideo was entirely correct. It 'is extremely unlikely. that he .was L in any way associated with the ridiculous' statement :that the British ships had fired gas shells. May ,1 here and t now .inform the .uninitiated that no- ■ body -who was riot mad would think > of loading shells, to be used against. ; ships, with poison gas, when he could fill them with high explosive with its ' immense destructive power? We want to sink the ships, that is our object; 1 casualties among the crew are quite 1 a secondary consideration,*: and sinking the ships can only be done by high explosive shell. . • . GOEBEN AND BRESLAU. I can well imagine the wave .of horror and indignation that must have swept through the German, navy when they heard that.one of the ships in which they took such pride, instead of going out to continue the action with an enemy on whom they had already inflicted damage, was to be scuttled at the entrance to a neutral ; harbour. Under cover of the darkness, for there was no moon, it would have been so easy to get out, and the watching ships would have had to be far spread to cover the wide approaches, so that there was a good chance for the Graf Spec to engage them one by one. Two of the watching ships they knew were damaged, and the third had been replaced by another Sin gun cruiser, the Cumberland. Nothing more. formidable than that —the other ships,, stationed outside by Rumour seem, all apparently, to have been some thousands of miles away. When I heard of the scuttling I could not help thinking of that August evening in 1914 when the Goeben and the Breslau steamed proudly out of Messina with their bands playing and their colours flying to meet, as they thought, the whole British Mediterranean Fleet. The fact that they only found one small light cruiser waiting for them to shepherd them on their way does not detract from the dignity of 'their gesture. The person I am really sorry for in all this is that gallant sailor, .Admiral Graf yon Spec, who met his death fighting against superior odds not far from where there will be seen, for a long time yet, the inglorious memorial of the ship named' after him, scuttled in the face of the enemy. I The Graf Spec's fellows will all be eliminated eventually; and in her disappearance one menace to our commerce, is:removed. The loss of the ship is the, fortune of war, but the act of having scuttled ...her will' have a moral •' effect in' ■.Germany Which it will be ■ difficult to overestimate. I like ~ the Rawalpindi way—with colours flying. ■'> ' : -