About Spee
Admiral Graf Spee
Warship Girls R - Germany
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The Admiral Graf Spee is a classic work of the German Navy's Deutschland-class armored ship.
On 1 October 1932, Her keel was laid in Wilhelmshaven.
On 30 June 1934, she was launched and named Admiral Graf Spee.
On 6 January 1936, she was commissioned into the German fleet.
On 20 May 1937, Admiral Graf Spee stopped in Great Britain to represent Germany in the Coronation Review at Spithead for King George VI on 20 May.
On 21 August 1939, when Admiral Graf Spee was sent to the coast of South America to carry out a destructive engagement, Captain Hans Langsdorff and over a thousand crew members were tasked with destroying as many enemy merchant ships as possible in order to disrupt the supply lines of their war rivals, Britain and France.
In mid December 1939, Admiral Graf Spee had sunk nine enemy merchant ships, but had not killed any of their crew members. Instead, he had these crew members onboard and provided them with food and water. However, this practice was criticized by the Wehrmacht Supreme Command.
War Experience
In December 1939, the Royal Navy sent a fleet in the South Atlantic to search for and sink Admiral Graf Spee.
At 6:22 on the 13th, three British cruisers —HMS Exeter, Ajax and Achilles began to sail towards Montevideo.
The three cruisers were divided into two groups. The Exeter attacked from the north, while the Ajax and Achilles attacked from the south. Dense bursts of artillery fire blasted the sea around Spee into columns of water. Captain Langsdorff ordered a counterattack and focused fire on the Exeter.
In less than half a minute, the front deck of the Exeter was hit by a 280mm shell from Spee, followed by a second hit on the bridge, and the Exeter was on the brink of sinking. But Spee was also heavily injured by two other cruisers, so he stopped attacking and withdrew towards Montevideo Port. The Ajax and Achilles launched rescue operations on the Exeter without pursuing Spee.
According to the Hague Convention, the neutral Uruguayan government ordered Langsdorff to evacuate Spee from the port before December 17th. And Langsdorff understood that if Spee left the port, the British fleet would definitely not let Spee go. But the British side used diplomatic means and media offensive, claiming to send more warships to intercept Spee. (In fact, only the Ajax, Achilles and the new County-Class heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland stopped outside the port. It is worth mentioning that the latter had the privilege of playing himself in the post war film depicting Spee's sinking.)
Langsdorff had no choice: leaving the port meant being sunk by the British; Entering Argentina may run aground due to shallow river channels; It's better to go out and confront the British Navy head-on than hand it over to the Uruguayan government.
On December 17th, Langsdorff applied to extend Spee's stay at the port, but was rejected, so Langsdorff decided to sink Spee himself. That evening, Langsdorff made his final military salute to the burning Spee, and the sailors watched Spee leave with moist eyes. Langsdorff did not attend the surrender ceremony, but silently took out his Luger pistol in the room and chose to commit suicide.
This was the first naval battle in World War II, but it was Spee's last naval battle.
Ending and Others
In January 1940, USS Helena was ordered as a neutral vessel ordered to confirm the condition of Spee's wreckage, the US military encountered German crew members still stranded at Montevideo Port. Subsequently, they were sent to Argentina until the end of the war. But due to loose supervision, some sailors fled back to Germany to participate in the war again.
Between 1942 and 1943, the British government purchased permits from the German government to salvage the wreckage, but the cost of salvage was too high and was not resolved.
It was not until April 2004 that a survey team funded by the Uruguayan government began salvage work. As of 2006, one of Spe's rangefinders and the Nazi eagle emblem at the stern of his ship had been salvaged, which was preserved at the Uruguayan Naval Museum.
The 1956 British film 'Pursuit of the Graf Spee' was also adapted from Spee's final battle.
It is said that Captain Lonsdorff is very charismatic and even made friends with some captured British merchant ship crew members.
There are still people from different positions and perspectives commenting on the achievements and mistakes of this ship during World War II. But there is no doubt about it: she and her experience are both worth thinking about.
Naming Source
Maximilian von Spee, an admiral of the German Empire during World War I and commander of the East Asia Subfleet, commanded the armored cruiser SMS Scharnhorst (flagship), Gneisenau and the cruisers SMS Emden, Nürnberg and Leipzig. After the beginning of World War I, Spee commanded the fleet to withdraw from the Jiaozhou Bay surrounded by powerful enemies, and sank the Royal Navy armored cruiser HMS Good Hope (1901) and Monmouth (1901) at the cost of three people injured in the Coronaire Sea Battle off the coast of Chile. But this great victory attracted the attention of the Royal Navy, dispatching the Invincible-Class battlecruisers HMS Invincible (1907) and Inflexible (1907), as well as other ships, to encircle and suppress. In the Battle of the Falkland Islands, Spee's fleet encountered superior British forces led by the Invincible and Inflexible, and the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were sunk. Spee and his two sons sank alongside the ship.
A girl scared to death by HMS Renown
As mentioned earlier, when Spee was moored at the port of Montevideo, Britain announced that it would dispatch more warships to intercept Spee, claiming that flagship ships such as HMS Renown would come. The captain of Spee knew that the Renown was no match, so he made a self sinking decision. In a sense, he was "scared to death" by the Renown. In fact, according to the situation at that time, the Renown could not catch up at all. Perhaps as a result, the character reflected in the lines is quite timid.
But Spee was seriously damaged at that time. Even if the Renown did not come, it would be sunk by those heavy cruisers. The captain's order was also a wise move.
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