HOW THE GRAF SPEE WAS BEATEN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24205, 25 January 1940, Page 13

HOW THE GRAF SPEE WAS BEATEN

DRAMATIC STORY OF NAVAL ACTION • A thrilling account of what it calls the Battle of Uruguay, between the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and the British cruisers Exeter, Ajax and Achilles, is given in the latest number of the American magazine Time to reach New Zealand. The action was fought from 6 a.m. until midnight on December 13.

T)AWN: Dark enough to strike withouf giving too much away, light enough to set the victim up in silhouette. It was to be a simple operation. All the Admiral Graf Spee 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.

By now the Achilles and the Exeter were deployed and sheering in. The Admiral Graf Spee had to train both big turrets on the Exeter, and just keep the others off with 5.9'5. The engagement settled down to a running dog-fight. Tactic of th*e Britons, directed from the Exeter by Commodore Henry H. Harwood, Commander of the South American Division of the Royal 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 Admiral Graf Spee never knew where to look for trouble, and when it came had to react quickly. Only way that the Admiral Graf Spee 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 aeroplane perched on the catapult —blocking the catapult so the other aeroplane was also useless, and thus

Already there were prisoners in the Admiral Graf Spee's brig from nine such helpless victims. This line 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 Spee'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 on the Formose were fools. Suddenly from the lookout came a message: Enemy light cruiser sighted., Convoy; Off the starboard bow. Alarm gongs 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 rangefinders swung in the sleepy caliththenics of limbering and checking. In the control tower the Dlotters 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 Admiral Graf sDee. 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 Spee. pocket battleship. 10,000 tons, last word in naval power for its size, was ready. But not for what happened next. From the lookout came a new alarm. Two more enemy sighted. Light cruiser. Heavy cruiser. Starboard beam. Three cruisers to fight. She should be able to wallop them. The two light cruisers carried 6-inchers —too light to pierce the Admiral Graf Spee'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 knots and a-half better than the Admiral Graf Spee, maybe 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 about —eightinchers (they could crack most of the Admiral Graf Spee's plate, including the control tower, from close range), and the vessel had an edge in speed. But the Admiral Graf Spee had two turrets of 11-inchers. That is power. A direct hit with 670 pounds of explo-sive-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 Admiral Graf Spee had a 3-to-l advantage in armament and firepower 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. The Ajax fires and set a smoke screen, behind which the Formorse 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 Admiral Graf Spee. Thi& 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. , "* ■

virtuallly blinding the Admiral Graf Spee. Despatches by week's end had not made it clear whether the British used their five available aeroplanes. 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 Admiral Graf Spee's bowels the 62 British seamen—the youngest was 15, the oldest 72, every sort from captain to cabin boy—hollered their happy heads off every time they felt the Admiral Graf Spee take a hit. , According to one of the German sailors, the enemy used torpedoes. None of them hit, but they made the Admiral Graf Spee alter course and lose manoeuvring advantages For a while Captain Langsdorff himself took the wheel.

Marksmanship on both sides must have been keen. Percentage of hits to tries in battle averages two 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 Admiral Graf Spee suffered two especially bad hits —which must have been 2561 b 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 Admiral Graf Spee's control tower fair and square. Lights went out. Telephone went dead. The central fire control went out of whack. Some of the Admiral Graf Spee'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 ])y hand had to be resorted to.

The Admiral Graf Spee 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, so that the Exeter 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 Admiral Graf Spee, and badly. Some of her guns were silenced—one 5.9 turret tilted. Captain Langsdorff ordered his vessel to the nearest haven, Montevideo

All the way in they fought, ten hours and a-half more. Within full sight of the headland called Punta del Este, where Uruguayans gathered in crowds as if to watch a pelota match, the Ajax and the Achilles craftily slipped round the Admiral Graf Spee inshore of her, leaving the enemy silhouetted in the east by the reflected light of the setting sun, themselves under the shore's gloom. Just before dark there were two sharp clashes, and it was evidently in one of those that the Admiral Graf Spee 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 Admiral Graf Spee limped away, turned about, ingloriously 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, enmity is lost."

The battle shifted from shells and smoke screens to words and laws. How long should Uruguay allow the Admiral Graf Spee 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 Admiral Graf Spee's seaworthiness impaired, granted a 72-hour stay. The Admiral Graf Spee 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 to hospital. Thirty-six bodies were putinto swastika-draped coffins, carried ashore, buried far from home. Aboard the Exeter as she limped off toward the British base of Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, 1000 miles to the south, were 61 dead men and 23 wounded. Commodore Harwood was notified by radio that he had been knighted and promoted to rear admiral. The Ajax and the Achilles got off comparatively lightly; between them only 11 dead and eight wounded.

A diplomatic storm raged. Gerfuriously 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 yellow silt, the Ajax and the Achilles waited exultantly for the dead-line. Reinforcements came up fast. The much-dis-puted aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the battle cruiser Renown put in at Rio.-de Janeiro to refuel—evidently on their way to Montevideo. The 31,000ton battleship Barham, and the French battleship and the Renown two of five Allied ships which can both outrun and outgun German pocket battleships—and the 10,000-ton cruiser Cumberland were rumoured to be waiting just over the horizon. The Admiral Graf Spee'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 radio broadcaster set up his equipment on the dock. At 6.20, two hours and to spare before the deadline, the Admiral Graf Spee weighed. Slowly she started moving for the breakwater mouth. The evening was clear—sun at the set, halfs-moon already up, 'lazy little clouds. The supply ship Tacoma, with all the Admiral Graf Spee's married men aboard, picked up after her. What would she do? To try to run that Allied gauntlet would be suicide. The Admiral Graf Spee had had time to make herself seaworthy, but not battleworthy. 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 Admiral Graf Spee anchored. Over the sides into barges and launches scrambled

the crew. Captain Langsdorff stepped into a launch which, as it drew away from the Admiral Graf Spee. 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 Admiral Graf Spee was on the bottom, her superstructure still showing ablaze Darkness settled around the hissing remains. This dramatic curtain was Adolf Hitler's . pleasure, communicated by wireless. There was no apparent reason for it. Assuming that the Admiral Graf Spee 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 Admiral Graf Spee scuttled merely that his enemies would never lay hands on her, World War II was already half lost in his own head.