It’s a story that would be worthy of one of CDR Salamander’s Fullbore Friday posts. (Yes, he mentioned the German commander in one post, but that wasn’t his main point there). I mentioned it in brief with the Rule 5 post about Exeter. It was the Battle of the River Plate, and the more I read about it, the more fascinated I became.
Only a few months after the German invasion of Poland, the first major naval battle of World War II took place in waters far removed from the frigid North Atlantic. No, the first clash between German and British naval vessels would also be the last and only battle to happen in the South Atlantic, in South American waters near Argentina and Uruguay. The combatants would be the German pocket battleship KMS Graf Spee, and British Commonwealth cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Achilles, and HMS Exeter.
Spee had set sail before the actual onset of hostilities, with orders to begin operating independently as a commerce raider once war broke out. This, of course, was a threat that could not be allowed to continue, and the British sent what ships they could muster to try and deal with the threat.
Individually, none of the British cruisers would have stood a chance against Spee. The pocket battleship was better armed, and heavier armored, with guns that outranged anything on the British ships. Even three to one the outcome was questionable, but the hope was that they could do enough damage to Spee that if she were forced to try and limp back to the German ports she’d be forced to fight her way through a large force of the British Home Fleet.
But the British commander, Commodore Henry Harwood, had a plan. He’d split his forces into two elements, forcing Spee to either focus fire on one target while being flanked by the other, or split her fire. It worked. In the ensuing battle, Exeter took the brunt of Spee’s firepower, but was able to land several significant hits, while Ajax and Achilles were able to close and damage Spee as well.
Even so, the tactical battle was a near thing. The strategic picture was likely set the moment the three cruisers engaged Spee, but had Spee managed to limp to an Argentinian port rather than a Uruguayian one, the immediate outcome might have been different. As it was, Spee put into the neutral port of Montevideo and was trapped.
With a seventy-two hour deadline to leave the port looming over his head, and no way to effect sufficient repairs of fighting his way back to friendly territory, Spee’s commander, Captain Hans Langsdorff did the only thing that he could: ordered his men to surrender, and scuttled the ship. Three days later, he shot himself, rather than return to Germany.
Back when the British and American film industries were interested in making war movies that audiences wanted to see, this battle was turned into a movie. The Battle of the River Plate, made in 1956, looks like something Sarge would rather enjoy. I may have to pick up a copy myself, as used DVD copies seem to be pretty reasonable on Amazon.
(Amazon link, for which I get a tiny affiliate percentage, if anyone’s interested). https://amzn.to/4akzRnZ