ROYAL NAVY TRAPS GRAF SPEE, GERMAN BATTLESHIP
Montevideo, Uruguay · December 15, 1939
In the first months of World War II only Great Britain’s Royal Navy, under the leadership of 65-year-old First Lord of the Admiralty (in May 1940, Prime Minister) Winston Churchill, prosecuted the war against Nazi Germany with energy. After U‑boats had sunk the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous and the battleship Royal Oak early in the war, British warships sought out German surface commerce raiders, which Adolf Hitler had unleashed on Allied merchant traffic. The most notorious of these was the flagship of the German Navy, the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, whose formidable triple gun turrets had sunk nine Allied ships (50,000 tons) in the Indian and South Atlantic oceans since the outbreak of war on September 3, 1939.
On this date in 1939 three British cruisers brought the Admiral Graf Spee to bay off the Uruguayan coast of South America, having fought a fierce action known as the Battle of the River Plate two days before. In the span of an hour the Admiral Graf Spee’s 11‑in guns had inflicted severe damage on the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter (armed with 8‑in guns) and driven off the light cruisers Ajax and Achilles (armed with 6‑in guns). The Admiral Graf Spee then retired to the port of Montevideo, capital of neutral Uruguay, where its 45‑year‑old commander, Capt. Hans Langsdorff, obtained permission to stay no more than 72 hours to repair battle damage. Langsdorff’s original request for a two‑week layover had been turned down by Uruguayan authorities.
The British devoted this period to intense diplomatic and intelligence activity, including spreading rumors of superior British naval forces fast approaching Uruguay, in order to keep the Admiral Graf Spee bottled up while they bought time to bring in heavy reinforcements. (There were none in the area.) Two days later, on December 17, 1939, the Admiral Graf Spee unexpectedly put to sea again, only to be dramatically scuttled in full view of 20,000 onlookers on Montevideo’s waterfront. This was the first notable British success of the war, and British media made the most of it. (See video below.) Three days later in a Buenos Aires hotel room, Langsdorff, in full dress uniform, killed himself.
Payback Time: The Last Days of Germany’s Admiral Graf Spee
Above: The Admiral Graf Spee was built to outgun and outrun any British or French warship fast enough to try to catch her. With a top speed of 28 knots (32 mph), only a handful of ships were capable of chasing her and powerful enough to sink her when caught. The Admiral Graf Spee’s primary armament consisted of six 11‑in (28 cm) guns mounted in two triple‑gun turrets, one forward and one aft of the superstructure, as shown here in this 1936 photograph. Amidships was a secondary battery of eight 5.9‑in (15 cm) guns in single turrets and two Arado Ar 196 seaplanes. Her antiaircraft battery consisted of six 4.1‑in (10.5 cm) guns, four 1.5‑in (3.7 cm) guns, and ten 0.79‑in (2 cm) guns. A formidable 16,000‑ton weapon, the Admiral Graf Spee inflicted serious damage on Allied merchant shipping in the last months of 1939.
Left: Damaged portside bow of Admiral Graf Spee caused by an 8‑in (15 cm) shell. One of HMS Exeter’s 8‑in shells destroyed the steam boilers needed to operate the ship’s fuel-cleaning system. With no hope of replacing or repairing the system at sea, and suffering engine fatigue that reduced her top speed to 23 knots (26‑1/2 mph), Capt. Hans Langsdorff sought sanctuary and time for making emergency repairs in the Uruguayan harbor of Montevideo, arriving in the early afternoon of December 13, 1939.
Right: A close-up view of the Admiral Graf Spee’s port side, showing hull damage near the third 5.9‑in gun turret and the destroyed Arado Ar 196 seaplane. The two British light cruisers, HMS Ajax and HMS Achilles, using their 6‑in guns, scored 20 hits on the Admiral Graf Spee, damaging food stores and bakeries.
Above: Uruguayan authorities followed international treaties and, although extending the normal 24‑hour period of safe sanctuary to 72 hours, demanded the Admiral Graf Spee leave port by 8 p.m., December 17, 1939, or else be interned for the duration of the war. The Kriegsmarine instructed Langsdorff not to let the damaged ship be interned in Uruguay (which was sympathetic to Britain in her war against Germany) or allow her to fall into enemy hands. Left to choose a strategy on his own, Langsdorff decided to scuttle the Kriegsmarine’s flagship, largely to spare his crew further casualties (36 dead and 60 wounded). (Hitler was said to be infuriated with Langsdorff’s decision.) At the limit of Uruguayan territorial waters, ten miles from shore, the ship stopped and her crew evacuated by barge to Buenos Aires, where they were interned. Shortly thereafter, two of three planted explosives blew up the Admiral Graf Spee and she settled into the shallow estuary of the River Plate, the border between Uruguay and Argentina, burning for the next seven days.