The Destruction of the Admiral Graf Spee

On receipt of this decision, Captain Langsdorff signalled to the German Naval High Command as follows:

Renown and Ark Royal, as well as cruisers and destroyers off Montevideo.1 Close blockade at night. No prospect of breaking out into the open sea and getting through to Germany. Intend to proceed to the limit of neutral waters. If I can fight my way through to Buenos Aires with ammunition still remaining I shall endeavour to do so. As a break through might result in the destruction of Spee without the possibility of causing damage to the enemy, request instructions whether to scuttle the ship (in spite of the inadequate depth of water in the Plate estuary) or submit to internment.

The German Ambassador, in a telegram to the German Foreign Office, endorsed Langsdorff's appreciation and pointed out that a stay of fourteen days would not alter the situation and would merely assist the concentration of enemy forces. He regarded internment of the Admiral Graf Spee as the ‘worst possible solution in any circumstances.’ It would be preferable, in view of her shortage of ammunition, to blow her up in the shallow waters of the Plate and have her crew interned. The German Foreign Office replied ordering the Ambassador and Captain Langsdorff to seek to prolong the ship's stay and also sent the following telegram:

According to English press reports the Ark Royal is in the Plate area. As you know, we believe that the Ark Royal has already been sunk. By order of the Fuehrer you are to attempt to take photographs of the supposed Ark Royal. Signal results and forward the photographs.

The Germans in Montevideo noted that this order was impossible to fulfil since the ship had merely been allegedly sighted on the horizon and no aircraft could be got for reconnaissance.

Meanwhile, in Germany, Admiral Raeder was conferring with Hitler, who was opposed to internment ‘since there was a possibility that the Graf Spee might score a success against the British ships in a break-through’. The Fuehrer approved the instructions the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy sent to Captain Langsdorff, who was to ‘attempt by all methods to extend the time limit for your stay in neutral waters in order to retain freedom of action as long as possible’. Langsdorff's proposal to proceed to neutral limits and, if possible, fight through to Buenos Aires was approved. He was also told that the Admiral Graf Spee was not to be interned in Uruguay and that if the ship was scuttled he was to ‘ensure effective destruction.’

Late in the afternoon of 16 December Captain Langsdorff discussed his plans with his senior officers, while the German Ambassador was having an interview with the Uruguayan Foreign Minister, which at times was very heated. The Ambassador finally requested an audience with the President, but the Foreign Minister insisted that this could not be granted unless the Ambassador acknowledged the seventy-two hours' time limit. The Uruguayan government adhered to its decision that the Admiral Graf Spee must put to sea by 6.45 p.m. on 17 December or be interned. The Ambassador reported the result of his interview to Captain Langsdorff, who thereupon wrote protesting against the time limit imposed and intimating his decision to scuttle his ship.

This was defeat, naked and brutal, and to it was added the sting of a sense of disgrace. All through the midsummer day of 17 December preparations for the self-destruction of the German ship went forward. By mid-afternoon the most important secret equipment and documents had been destroyed. Most of her crew were transferred to the German merchant ship Tacoma, Captain Langsdorff with four officers and thirty-eight ratings remaining on board to take the ship out and scuttle her. The Tacoma was to follow her, and the whole crew were to be transhipped to Argentine tugs which were to take them to Buenos Aires for internment.

Out at sea the three British cruisers steamed to and fro south-east of English Bank. ‘We all expected that she would break out at any moment,’ wrote Rear-Admiral Harwood in his despatch. ‘. … At this stage the most cheerful optimism pervaded all ships in spite of the fact that this was the fifth night of waiting for the enemy.’ The instant that word was received that the German ship was weighing anchor, the squadron assumed the first degree of readiness for action, increased speed to 25 knots, and steamed towards the whistle buoy at the entrance to the five-mile dredged channel leading into Montevideo. The Ajax flew off her aircraft to observe and report the enemy's movements.

At 6.17 p.m. the Admiral Graf Spee hoisted a large ensign on her foremast, as well as one at the main, and left the harbour before the eyes of wondering crowds. She steered to the south-westward and stopped about eight miles from the entrance, the Tacoma, which had followed, anchoring about two miles north-east of her. By 7.40 p.m. the fuses of the scuttling charges had been set and Langsdorff and his demolition party left in the ship's boats for the Tacoma, while two tugs and a lighter from Buenos Aires neared the latter vessel.

The first explosion occurred exactly at sunset. All the crew of the Admiral Graf Spee paraded on the deck of the Tacoma, making the Nazi salute. A fierce jet of flame leaped up from the doomed ship, followed by a dense cloud of smoke and the loud rumble of an explosion. Then a gigantic ball of flame burst aft as a second great explosion took place. There ensued a long succession of explosions accompanied by leaping flames and a great pillar of brown smoke rising against the red evening sky. Fires continued to burn in the ship for six days. Her destruction in the shallow waters of the Plate estuary was watched by tens of thousands of awed spectators crowded on the roofs of Montevideo and along the seafront, while radio broadcasts and press cables flashed their graphic stories round the world.

Passing north of English Bank, the British cruisers were nearing Montevideo when at 8.45 p.m. the aircraft signalled: ‘Graf Spee has blown herself up.’ It was almost dark when the Ajax stopped to make an excellent recovery of her aircraft which had alighted on the water, and as the Achilles swept past her the ships' companies cheered each other. All three cruisers then switched on their navigation lights and steamed past the whistle buoy about four miles off the flaming wreck. ‘It was now dark,’ wrote Rear-Admiral Harwood, ‘and she was ablaze from end to end, flames reaching almost as high as the top of her control tower – a magnificent and most cheering sight.’

It was an ignominious end for a great ship which bore the name of the German admiral who twenty-five years before had fought his ships to the last against great odds and perished with both his sons in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. Speaking at the launching of the Admiral Graf Spee at Wilhelmshaven on 30 June 1934, Admiral Raeder had recalled that, off Coronel on 1 November 1914, a German admiral – he whose name she took – ‘for the first time in German history went into battle far from the German fatherland against an enemy of equal rank.’ The Admiral Graf Spee had been chosen to represent the German Navy at the Coronation naval review at Spithead on 20 May 1937 and had carried Hitler triumphantly to Memel.

The first official German announcement of the end of the ship was in the following terms: ‘The time necessary to make the Graf Spee seaworthy was refused by the Government of Uruguay. In the circumstances Captain Langsdorff decided to destroy his ship by blowing her up.’ At three o'clock in the morning of 18 December, according to Raeder's diary, the second sentence was altered to read: ‘Under the circumstances the Fuehrer ordered Captain Langsdorff to destroy his ship by blowing her up. This order was put into effect outside the territorial waters of Uruguay.’

Captain Langsdorff and his ship's company numbering 1039 officers and ratings arrived at Buenos Aires in the tugs in the afternoon of 18 December, after Uruguayan officials had tried unsuccessfully to get them back to Montevideo. The Tacoma was compelled by a Uruguayan warship to return to harbour. On the following day the Argentine Government decided to intern the crew of the Admiral Graf Spee, despite the German claim that they were shipwrecked seamen.

That night, after the German Ambassador had informed him of this decision, Langsdorff committed suicide by shooting himself in his room in a Buenos Aires hotel, the melodrama of this act being heightened by the fact that he lay on a German naval ensign. In a letter to the Ambassador, written shortly before he died, he recounted the reasons for his decision to scuttle the Admiral Graf Spee. ‘I am convinced,’ he wrote, ‘that under the circumstances, no other course was open to me, once I had taken my ship into the trap of Montevideo. For with the ammunition remaining, any attempt to fight my way back to open and deep water was bound to fail. … It was clear to me that this decision might be consciously or unwittingly misconstrued by persons ignorant of my motives, as being attributable entirely or partly to personal considerations. Therefore I decided from the beginning to accept the consequences involved in this decision. For a captain with a sense of honour, it goes without saying that his personal fate cannot be separated from that of his ship. …

After to-day's decision of the Argentine Government, I can do no more for my ship's company. Neither shall I any longer be able to take an active part in the present struggle of my country. It only remains to prove by my death that the men of the fighting services of the Third Reich are ready to die for the honour of the flag. I alone bear the responsibility for scuttling the Graf Spee. I am happy to pay with my life for any reflection on the honour of the flag. I shall face my fate with firm faith in the cause and the future of the nation and of my Fuehrer. …’

The burial of Captain Langsdorff's body with full military honours took place in the German cemetery in Buenos Aires. The burnt-out wreck of the Graf Spee was sold some weeks later to a Senor Julio Vega of Montevideo, who employed divers and workmen to salvage fittings and other material as ‘scrap iron’.

However we regard his typically German sense of ‘honour’, it is impossible not to feel a good deal of sympathy for the unhappy man who wrote thus from the ‘jaws of measureless tribulation’. The British shipmasters who had been his prisoners spoke well of Captain Langsdorff; and in his official report Captain McCall, British Naval Attaché at Buenos Aires, paid him the tribute that he was ‘obviously a man of very high character and he was proud of the fact that he had not been the cause of a single death as the result of any of his various captures’ of merchant vessels.

Of the part played in the River Plate drama by the British cruisers, Rear-Admiral Harwood wrote in his despatch to the Admiralty: ‘I have the greatest pleasure in informing you of the very high standard of efficiency and courage that was displayed by all officers and men throughout the five days of the operation. … Within my own knowledge and from the reports of the commanding officers, there are many stories of bravery and devotion to duty, and of the utmost efficiency which shows that His Majesty's ships have been forcefully trained and made thoroughly ready to deal with the many and various exigencies of battle. … The main impression left on my mind is of the adequacy of our peace training. Little that had not been practised occurred, particularly among the repair parties. …’

In a message to the New Zealand Naval Board, as well as in his despatch to the Admiralty, the Rear-Admiral said he was ‘deeply conscious of the honour and pleasure of taking one of His Majesty's ships of the New Zealand Squadron into action. The Achilles was handled perfectly by her captain and fought magnificently by her captain, officers and ship's company.’ In his despatch he said he fully concurred with the remark of Captain Parry that ‘New Zealand has every reason to be proud of her seamen during their baptism of fire.’

During the time the cruisers of the South America Division were patrolling the River Plate estuary strong British naval forces were moving to their support, but after the destruction of the Admiral Graf Spee most of them were recalled for other duties. On Monday, 18 December, the Cumberland was left on patrol while the Ajax and Achilles went to San Borombon Bay, where they fuelled in turn from the tanker Olynthus. Rear-Admiral Harwood boarded the Achilles that evening and addressed the ship's company, praising them for their part in the recent action. Later, both ships got under way and shaped course for the Falkland Islands, where they arrived on 21 December.

The following morning the Achilles discharged her three seriously wounded ratings to the King Edward Memorial Hospital, to which a number of casualties from the Exeter and Ajax were also admitted for treatment. The Ajax and Achilles sent a number of men on board the Exeter to assist in the repair work. After fuelling from a tanker, the Ajax and Achilles sailed that evening.

Both cruisers returned to Port Stanley in the afternoon of 24 December and were joined about four hours later by the Cumberland and the Dorsetshire. The former had come down from the River Plate area and the latter arrived from Simonstown, whence she had sailed on 13 December. Christmas Day was observed by all five cruisers with traditional Navy custom. A strong south-west gale with violent hail and rain squalls was experienced from midnight of 26 December till the morning of the 29th, the Achilles riding with both anchors down and steam for slow speed. Despite the bad weather, the New Zealand cruiser managed to refuel from a tanker and to take in ammunition and stores from lighters. The three wounded ratings from the shore hospital were embarked on 29 December. The Ajax and Achilles sailed from Port Stanley in the early hours of 30 December for the River Plate.

At four o'clock in the morning of 3 January 1940 the Achilles parted company with the Ajax, which proceeded into Montevideo. The former embarked a pilot from the light vessel and steamed up the River Plate to Buenos Aires. A large crowd on the wharf gave the ship an ovation. The British Ambassador, Sir Esmond Ovey, paid the Achilles the great compliment of welcoming her personally and insisted on being the first person to board the ship on arrival. The Argentine authorities had agreed to waive all official calls, but the Minister of Marine and the Chief of the Naval Staff sent their ADCs to meet the Achilles.

In a report to the New Zealand Naval Board Captain Parry said that approximately thirty seriously wounded ratings from the Exeter and Ajax and three from the Achilles were landed at Port Stanley. The only hospital accommodation in the colony was a small cottage hospital of approximately twenty beds, of which five were reserved for maternity cases. The staff consisted of two doctors, a matron, and two trained nurses. This sufficed for the normal requirements of the colony, whose population was about 3000.

Captain Parry said that magnificent efforts were made to meet an unprecedented situation, and all difficulties were overcome so successfully that the patients could not have received better treatment and attention. They had complete confidence in the senior medical officer, Dr Kinnaird, and were full of admiration for the matron, Miss Gowans, and her staff of nurses and voluntary aids. The Governor of the Falkland Islands, Sir H. Henniker Heaton, KCMG, visited the hospital regularly.

No public recognition of their good work had been given to these people owing to the necessity of keeping secret the use made by the Royal Navy of the Falkland Islands, but Captain Parry suggested that a letter from the New Zealand naval authorities would be greatly appreciated. The Naval Secretary, therefore, on 5 March 1940 sent a letter to the Governor of the Falkland Islands, conveying the Naval Board's great appreciation of the efforts of the hospital staff.

Captain Parry also reported that, as soon as the first news of the River Plate action was received, the British Community Council in Buenos Aires provided at their own expense complete hospital equipment for 100 men and despatched it immediately to the Falkland Islands. A radiologist and fourteen trained nurses, all of whom gave up their own work at short notice, went with the equipment in the steamer Lafonia. Although this assistance did not arrive in time to help the Falkland Islanders during the first week, it relieved the situation enormously. The modern X-ray apparatus was particularly valuable.

During the visit of the Achilles to Buenos Aires from 3 to 5 January 1940, the hospitality received and the amount of presents given to the ship were incredible, said Captain Parry. The reception of the ship had been arranged by the British Community Council and the Australia and New Zealand Association of Buenos Aires. In addition, the following sums of money were presented to the Rear-Admiral, South America Division, as a contribution to the families of men killed or seriously wounded in action off the River Plate: British Community Council, Buenos Aires, £1000; British Community, Rosario Consular District, £93; British Patriotic Funds, Valparaiso and Santiago (Chile), £300. This money was divided among the three ships in proportion to the numbers of men. On 5 March 1940 the New Zealand Naval Board sent a letter to the British Ambassador, Buenos Aires, expressing its great appreciation of and thanks for the generosity and good work of the British communities concerned.