German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee
Admiral Graf Spee in 1936
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History | |
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Nazi Germany | |
Name | Admiral Graf Spee |
Namesake | Maximilian von Spee |
Builder | Reichsmarinewerft, Wilhelmshaven |
Laid down | 1 October 1932 |
Launched | 30 June 1934 |
Commissioned | 6 January 1936 |
Fate | Scuttled, 17 December 1939 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Deutschland-class cruiser |
Displacement | |
Length | 186 m (610 ft 3 in) |
Beam | 21.65 m (71 ft) |
Draft | 7.34 m (24 ft 1 in) |
Installed power | 54,000 kW ) |
Propulsion | 2 propellers; 8 × diesel engines |
Speed | 28.5 knots (52.8 km/h; 32.8 mph) |
Range | 16,300 nautical miles (30,200 km; 18,800 mi) at 18.69 knots (34.61 km/h; 21.51 mph) |
Complement |
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Sensors and processing systems |
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Armament |
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Armor | |
Aircraft carried | 1 × Heinkel He 60 floatplane |
Aviation facilities | 1 × catapult |
Admiral Graf Spee was a
The ship conducted five
Design
Admiral Graf Spee was 186 meters (610 ft)
Admiral Graf Spee's
Admiral Graf Spee's armored belt was 100 mm (3.9 in) thick; her upper deck was 17 mm (0.67 in) thick while the main armored deck was 45 to 70 mm (1.8 to 2.8 in) thick. The main battery turrets had 140 mm (5.5 in) thick faces and 80 mm thick sides. [2]
Service history
Admiral Graf Spee was ordered by the Reichsmarine from the
Admiral Graf Spee spent the first three months of her career conducting extensive
After the conclusion of the Review, Admiral Graf Spee returned to Spain for a fourth non-intervention patrol. Following fleet maneuvers and a brief visit to Sweden, the ship conducted a fifth and final patrol in February 1938.[12] In 1938, KzS Hans Langsdorff took command of the vessel;[9] she conducted a series of goodwill visits to various foreign ports throughout the year.[12] These included cruises into the Atlantic, where she stopped in Tangier and Vigo.[13] She also participated in extensive fleet maneuvers in German waters. She was part of the celebrations for the reintegration of the port of Memel into Germany,[12] and a fleet review in honor of Admiral Miklós Horthy, the Regent of Hungary. Between 18 April and 17 May 1939, she conducted another cruise into the Atlantic, stopping in the ports of Ceuta and Lisbon.[13] On 21 August 1939, Admiral Graf Spee departed Wilhelmshaven, bound for the South Atlantic.[11]
World War II
Following the outbreak of war between Germany and the
On 11 September, while still transferring supplies from Altmark, Admiral Graf Spee's Arado
On 5 October, the British and French navies formed eight groups to hunt down Admiral Graf Spee in the South Atlantic. The British
On the same day as the formation of the Anglo-French hunter groups, Admiral Graf Spee captured the steamer Newton Beech. Two days later, she encountered and sank the merchant ship Ashlea. On 8 October, the following day, she sank Newton Beech,[21] which Langsdorff had been using to house prisoners.[22] Newton Beech was too slow to keep up with Admiral Graf Spee, and so the prisoners were transferred to the cruiser. On 10 October, she captured the steamer Huntsman, the captain of which had not sent a distress signal until the last minute, as he had mistakenly identified Admiral Graf Spee as a French warship. Unable to accommodate the crew from Huntsman, Admiral Graf Spee sent the ship to a rendezvous location with a prize crew. On 15 October, Admiral Graf Spee rendezvoused with Altmark to refuel and transfer prisoners; the following morning, the prize Huntsman joined the two ships. The prisoners aboard Huntsman were transferred to Altmark and Langsdorff then sank Huntsman on the night of 17 October.[23]
On 22 October, Admiral Graf Spee encountered and sank the steamer Trevanion.
Admiral Graf Spee's Arado floatplane located the merchant ship Doric Star: Langsdorff fired a shot across her bow to stop the ship.[28] Doric Star was able to send out a distress signal before she was sunk, which prompted Harwood to take his three cruisers to the mouth of the River Plate, which he suspected might be Langsdorff's next target.[29] On 3 December, Admiral Graf Spee sank the steamer SS Tairoa.[30] On 6 December, she met Altmark and transferred 140 prisoners from Doric Star and Tairoa. Admiral Graf Spee encountered her last victim on the evening of 7 December: the freighter Streonshalh. The prize crew recovered secret documents containing shipping route information.[29] Based on that information, Langsdorff decided to head for the seas off Montevideo. On 12 December, the ship's Arado 196 broke down and could not be repaired, depriving Admiral Graf Spee of her aerial reconnaissance.[31] The ship's disguise was removed, so it would not hinder the ship in battle.[32]
Battle of the River Plate
At 05:30 on the morning of 13 December 1939, lookouts spotted a pair of masts off the ship's starboard bow. Langsdorff assumed this to be the escort for a convoy mentioned in the documents recovered from Tairoa. At 05:52, however, the ship was identified as
Langsdorff thought the two light cruisers were making a torpedo attack, and turned away under a smokescreen.[34] The respite allowed Exeter to withdraw from the action; by now, only one of her gun turrets was still in action, and she had suffered 61 dead and 23 wounded crew members.[33] At around 07:00, Exeter returned to the engagement, firing from her stern turret. Admiral Graf Spee fired on her again, scored more hits, and forced Exeter to withdraw again, this time with a list to port. At 07:25, Admiral Graf Spee scored a hit on Ajax that disabled her aft turrets.[34] Both sides broke off the action, Admiral Graf Spee retreating into the River Plate estuary, while Harwood's battered cruisers remained outside to observe any possible breakout attempts. In the course of the engagement, Admiral Graf Spee had been hit approximately 70 times; 36 men were killed and 60 more were wounded,[35] including Langsdorff, who had been wounded twice by splinters while standing on the open bridge.[34]
Scuttling
As a result of battle damage and casualties, Langsdorff decided to put into Montevideo, where repairs could be effected and the wounded men could be evacuated from the ship.[35] Most of the hits scored by the British cruisers had caused only minor structural and superficial damage, but the oil purification plant, which was required to prepare the diesel fuel for the engines, was destroyed. Her desalination plant and galley were also destroyed, which would have increased the difficulty of a return to Germany. A hit in the bow would also have negatively affected her seaworthiness in the heavy seas of the North Atlantic. Admiral Graf Spee had fired much of her ammunition in the engagement with Harwood's cruisers.[36]
After arriving in port, the wounded crewmen were taken to local hospitals and the dead were buried with full military honors. Captive Allied seamen, consisting of 6 captains, 9 chief engineers, 25 officers, and 21 seamen[37] still aboard the ship, were released. Repairs necessary to make the ship seaworthy were expected to take up to two weeks.[38] British naval intelligence worked to convince Langsdorff that vastly superior forces were concentrating to destroy his ship, if he attempted to break out of the harbor. The Admiralty broadcast a series of signals, on frequencies known to be intercepted by German intelligence. The closest heavy units—the carrier Ark Royal and battlecruiser Renown—were some 2,500 nmi (4,600 km; 2,900 mi) away, much too far to intervene in the situation. Believing the British reports, Langsdorff discussed his options with commanders in Berlin. These were either to break out and seek refuge in Buenos Aires, where the Argentine government would intern the ship, or to scuttle the ship in the Plate estuary.[35]
Langsdorff was unwilling to risk the lives of his crew, so he decided to scuttle the ship. He knew that although Uruguay was neutral, the government was on friendly terms with Britain and if he allowed his ship to be interned, the Uruguayan Navy would allow British intelligence officers access to the ship.
On 20 December, in his room in a Buenos Aires hotel, Langsdorff shot himself in full dress uniform while lying on the ship's battle ensign.[41] In late January 1940, the neutral American cruiser USS Helena arrived in Montevideo and the crew was permitted to visit the wreck of Admiral Graf Spee. The Americans met the German crewmen, who were still in Montevideo.[40] In the aftermath of the scuttling, the ship's crew were taken to Argentina, where they were interned for the remainder of the war.[41]
Wreck
The wreck was partially broken up in situ in 1942–1943, though parts of the ship were visible for some time after; the wreck lies at a depth of only 11 m (36 ft).[10] The salvage rights were purchased from the German Government by a Montevideo engineering company for £14,000, a front for the British. The British had been surprised by the accuracy of the gunnery and expected to find a radar range finder, which they did. They used the knowledge thus acquired to try to develop countermeasures, under the leadership of Fred Hoyle at the British radar project. The Admiralty complained about the large sum paid for the salvage rights.[43]
In February 2004, a salvage team began work raising the wreck of Admiral Graf Spee. The operation was in part being funded by the government of
A court case involving the private salvage company that had been involved in the effort to raise the wreck ended in 2019 with a court order for the government to sell the ornament and give some of the proceeds to the salvage company. The decision was later overruled and the government received full custody.[47] On 2 January 2022, a newspaper in Punta del Este reported that an Argentine Jewish businessman, Daniel Sielecki, had offered to buy the eagle and swastika crest from the Admiral Graf Spee from the naval warehouse. Sielecki said he wanted to explode the crest into “a thousand pieces" in order to keep it out of the hands of neo-Nazis.[48][49]
On 17 June 2023, the New York Times reported that the eagle and crest would be melted down and recast into a dove by Uruguayan artist Pablo Atchugarry.[47] A day later, however, Uruguayan president Luis Lacalle Pou dropped the plan claiming that "there is an overwhelming majority that does not share this decision" and that "if one wants to generate peace, the first thing one has to do is to generate union. Clearly this has not generated it."[50]
Footnotes
Notes
- rangefinder. See Williamson, p. 7.
Citations
- ^ Pope, p. 7.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Gröner, p. 60.
- ^ Pope, p. 3.
- ^ Koop & Schmolke, pp. 33–34.
- ^ a b Stephen & Grove, p. 11.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 74.
- ^ Gröner, p. 61.
- ^ Sieche, p. 227.
- ^ a b c Williamson, p. 39.
- ^ a b Gröner, p. 62.
- ^ a b c Bidlingmaier, p. 73.
- ^ a b c d Williamson, p. 40.
- ^ a b Whitley, p. 72.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, pp. 76–77.
- ^ a b Bidlingmaier, p. 77.
- ^ a b Slader, p. 25.
- ^ Slader, p. 26.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 78.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 6.
- ^ Jackson, pp. 61–63.
- ^ Williamson, pp. 40–41.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 79.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 80.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 41.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 81.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 8.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 82.
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 83.
- ^ a b Bidlingmaier, p. 86.
- ^ Miller, p. 100.
- ^ Pope, p. 101.
- ^ a b Bidlingmaier, p. 88.
- ^ a b Jackson, p. 64.
- ^ a b c d Bidlingmaier, p. 91.
- ^ a b c Jackson, p. 67.
- ^ a b Williamson, p. 42.
- ^ Green Final, Saturday, December 16, 1939; Section: Front page, Page: 1
- ^ Bidlingmaier, p. 92.
- ^ "Convention (XIII) concerning the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers in Naval War". International Committee of the Red Cross. 18 October 1907.
- ^ a b c Bonner, p. 56.
- ^ a b c d Bidlingmaier, p. 93.
- ^ Williamson, p. 43.
- ^ Mitton, p. 83.
- ^ BBC 2004-02-26.
- ^ BBC 2006-02-10.
- ^ BBC 2014-12-15.
- ^ a b c Schuetze.
- ^ "Quieren hacer explotar en pedazos el águila nazi del admiral Graf von Spee | Diario Correo de Punta del Este" (in Spanish). 2 January 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- ^ "Jewish businessman offers to buy and blow up 800-pound eagle and swastika crest from Nazi ship". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 12 January 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
- ^ "Uruguay abandons plan to melt, recast Nazi bronze". Yahoo News. 18 June 2023. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
See also
- The Battle of the River Plate (film) (titled in the United States as Pursuit of the Graf Spee) is a 1956 British war film about the battle
References
- Bidlingmaier, Gerhard (1971). "KM Admiral Graf Spee". Warship Profile 4. Windsor: Profile Publications. pp. 73–96. OCLC 20229321.
- Bonner, Kermit (1996). Final Voyages. Paducah: Turner Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-56311-289-8.
- "Divers recover piece of Graf Spee". BBC News. 26 February 2004. Retrieved 10 February 2008.
- "Graf Spee's eagle rises from deep". BBC News. 10 February 2006. Retrieved 10 February 2008.
- ISBN 978-0-87021-790-6.
- Jackson, Robert, ed. (2001). Kriegsmarine: The Illustrated History of the German Navy in WWII. Osceola: MBI Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-7603-1026-7.
- Koop, Gerhard & Schmolke, Klaus-Peter (2014). Pocket battleships of the Deutschland class: Deutschland/Lützow, Admiral Scheer, Admiral Graf Spee. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84832-196-0.
- Miller, David (2013). Langsdorff and the Battle of the River Plate. Command Decisions. Barnsley: Pen & Sword. ISBN 978-1-4738-2234-4.
- Mitton, Simon (2011). Fred Hoyle, a Life in Science. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139495950.
- Pope, Dudley (2005). The Battle of the River Plate: The Hunt for the German Pocket Battleship Graf Spee. Ithaca: McBooks Press. ISBN 978-1-59013-096-4.
- ISBN 978-1-59114-119-8.
- Schuetze, Christopher F. (17 June 2023). "Uruguay Has a Large Bronze Nazi Eagle. It's Turning It Into a Dove". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
- Sieche, Erwin (1992). "Germany". In Gardiner, Robert; Chesneau, Roger (eds.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. London: Conway Maritime Press. pp. 218–254. ISBN 978-0-85177-146-5.
- Slader, John (1988). The Red Duster at War. London: William Kimber & Co Ltd. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-0-7183-0679-3.
- Stephen, Martin; Grove, Eric (1988). Sea Battles in close-up : World War 2. Ian Allan ltd. ISBN 978-0-7110-1596-8.
- "What should Uruguay do with its Nazi eagle?". BBC News. 15 December 2014. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
- Whitley, M. J. (1998). Battleships of World War II. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-184-4.
- ISBN 978-1-84176-501-3.
Further reading
- Holme, Richard (February 2022). "The Covert 1940 Mission to View the Graf Spee Wreck". Marine News Supplement: Warships. 76 (2): S1418–S153. ISSN 0966-6958.
- Whitley, M. J. (2000). German Capital Ships of World War Two. London: Cassell & Co. ISBN 978-0-304-35707-9.
External links
- Contemporary newsreel of the sinking
- "Graf Spee and the Battle of the River Plate (Audio recordings, 1960s)". Nga Taonga (NZ). 2023.
34°58′S 56°17′W / 34.967°S 56.283°W