WIPED OUT

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3445, 19 March 1932, Page 3

WIPED OUT

VON SPEE'S SHIPS.

THE FALKLAND BATTLE. HOW IT WAS FOUGHT. ■ With the dawn of December 8, 1914, German warships stood in to the Falkland Islands —and to death. They belonged to Count von Spee's pirateer squadron, the little fleet that had destroyed thousands of tons of Allied shipping in the Pacific, writes a writer in the Cape Times. For months von Spee had carried on his cruiser war. He had wiped out Craddock's ships off Coronel, and now he had decided on a bold stroke —an attack on an important British naval base. To the Gneisenau and the Nurnberg he assigned the work of destruction. The first officer of the Gneisenau that fateful morning was Captain Hans Pochhammer. The story of the battle and of the events which had preceded it he has now set down in a book "Before Jutland." At five o'clock the armoured cruiser Gneisenau and her light cruiser companion made for Port Stanley. Von Spee's flagship, the armoured cruiser Scharnhorst, and the light cruisers Dresden and Leipzig, remained to cover the action some distance from the harbour. As the raiders approached the land that hid the roadstead "columns of dark yellow smoke began to ascend as if stores were being destroyed." Disillusionment came quickly. Officers of the Gneisenau realised that warships -were hidden behind the land and the smoke. They thought that they could make out two, four, and then six ships, and wirelessed the news to the Scharnhorst. Von Spee ordered the suspension of the operations and flight.

No Escape.

Flight was of no avail. The British were in full pursuit, and towards noon the fast and powerful battle cruisers, Invincible and Inflexible, were only 18,500 yards away from the German ships. Further back were other cruisers, and the Germans could see the smoke of other vessels leaving harbour to destroy their transports.

Von Spee dismissed his light cruisers in the hope that they would escape. Quickly the smaller British ships turned after them. The Nurnberg and the Leipzig were overtaken and sunk later -in the day. The Dresden escaped, but was found and destroyed the following March. Meanwhile the Scr.rnhorst and Gneisenau were left alone with the Invincible, flying the flag of ViceAdmiral Sir Doveton Sturdee, and the Inflexible.

Even before the German cruisers had fled the British had opened fire with their 12-inch guns at 17.250 yards. The extreme range of the 8.2-inch guns of the German armoured cruisers was 16,500 yards and just after 1 o'clock the Scharnhorst fired her first broadside at that distance. Fighting at this range was fatal for veto Spee; his ships were being battered by an uninjured enemy. "With difficulty" he bore down to within 12,000 yards of the British ships. "The English " admiral must then have remarked the better effect of artillery, for at the end of threequarters of an hour's fighting he wheeled to the north. Von Spee did not follow him, but wheeled to the south, whence one might expect bad weather to come." The Germans used the interval to repair damages and attend to wounded. But Sturdee did not leave them long alone. He wheeled again and slowly but surely gained on them. At 18,500 yards the British opened fire ; and at 2.30, when the lines were 16,250 yards apart, the battle began again. "Again we tried to shorten the distance," says Captain Pochhammer. "But this time the enemy was careful not to let us approach him, and we knew that we were in for a battle of extermination."

To the Bottom. The German ships were now in a bad way. The Scharnhorst lay deeper than usual and heeled slightly to the larboard. She was holed and holed by a hail of British shells. "The admiral must have felt that his ship was nearing her ,end. Just as he had previously sacrificed his armoured cruisers to save his light cruisers, so he purposed to sacrifice the Scharnhorst to save the Gneisenau. Determined to fight as long as he could fight, and in this way facilitate the escape of our ship, he swung round to the enemy on the starboard in the hope of damaging him by firing torpedoes. A grave but splendid decision."

The Scharnhorst's fate then was sealed. Soon afterwards she sank, taking von Spee to the depths with her. And the Gneisenau was left only a brief interval before she followed her leader. Left to fight the Invincible * and the Inflexible and an armour cruiser which had come up from behind, she had no hope. Of the 2200 officers and men of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, -Nurnberg, and Leipzig, only 215 were saved. The

British casualties were seven killed and twelve wounded.

Coronel had been avenged. Then, too, it had been an unequal contest, with the weaker British ships silhoueted against the afterglow of the sunset and all the odds against them. Craddock's flagship, the Good Hope, and another armoured cruiser, the Monmouth, were sunk. The light cruiser, Glasgow, and the armed liner, Otranto, escaped, while . the other ship of the squadron, the obsolete battleship, Canopus, had dropped behind for repairs and was not in the fight. Captain Pochhammer has an axe to grind, and he grinds it with no mean vigour. The English, as a nation, were, in his eyes, the hateful authors of the war, grasping Imperialists who would not allow anybody or anything to stand in their way. At, the same time, he is -ever ready to pay tribute to them individually as sailors and to their determination to preserve their "sacrosanct sovereignty" of the seas.

Not Insulted. When allowance is made for the author's national prejudice, the one big blemish of his book is his attack upon Sturdee. The latter, he alleges, once insulted him by trying to force him to drink the toast of the King. Sturdee's adherence to the invariable custom of proposing the toast may have given Captain Pochhammer a wrong impression, but his statement that an attempt was made to force him to. honour it is given the lie direct by officers of the Invincible and Inflexible who were present. Not having been on von Spee's staff, Captain Pochhammer cannot be expected to reveal the real reason for the decision to attack the Falklands. And, the there were no survivors from the Scharnhorst, it will probably never be known. The British story is that the German admiral fell into a clever trap. A wireless message was sent out telling the Canopus to to Port Stanley, where she would be safe, as the new guns for the forts had arrived. As had been intended, the message was intercepted by the Germans, who regarded the talk of new guns as nonsense —as it was —and thought that the Canopus would be lying in port an easy prey. Von Spee, therefore, decided to destroy both her and the Falklands wireless station. Instead, he met the powerful British ships which had come secretly half across the globe to annihilate him.