Читать книгу Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II - Len Deighton - Страница 21
The Admiral Graf Spee action
ОглавлениеSubmarines were not the only threat to Britain’s sea lanes. Admiral Graf Spee and Deutschland had put to sea a few days before war began. Construction of these cruisers had been started before Hitler came to power, when the peace treaty restricted Germany to ships of less than 10,000 tons. Perhaps in reaction to the way in which the Royal Navy had lost three cruisers at Jutland by single well placed shots, these Panzerschiffe (‘armour ships’) were given thick armour and big guns. Newspaper writers called them ‘pocket battleships’ but they were designed to prey upon merchant shipping. Their innovations included electrically welded hulls. Welding requires metal to be heated to an even temperature; for that reason the welding of thick steels is vastly more difficult than welding light aircraft alloys. The new ships had very shallow draught, and their honeycombed hulls reduced the danger from torpedoes. Heavy top-side armour protected them from air attack and their 11-inch guns had a range of 20 miles. They were powered by diesel engines – which until that time had only been used as auxiliary engines in such vessels – and could steam at 26 knots, an unimpressive speed for a cruiser but suitable for a raider. Each warship had a tanker at its disposal.
The Deutschland was assigned to raid the routes of the North Atlantic. She sank two merchant ships and captured a third (the City of Flint sailing under a US flag) and then returned to Germany, skilfully using the long November nights to elude the Royal Navy blockade. Her two-month voyage had destroyed 7,000 tons of small shipping; it was a disappointing debut for the ‘pocket battleship’. Soon she was renamed Lützow because Hitler feared the propaganda effect of a mishap to a ship named Deutschland.
Admiral Graf Spee was sent to the sea lanes of the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. By 7 December 1939, in a voyage that included the South African coast and South America, she had sunk nine merchant ships. The captain, Hans Langsdorff, a handsome fifty-year-old, had strict ideas about the rules of war. His targets were sunk without loss of life, his prisoners were all treated well and German morale was high. His only setback was a cracked engine block in the battleship’s spotter plane and no spare to replace it.
When Graf Spee sank the Trevanion in the South Atlantic on 2 October 1939, the men in the Admiralty had looked at their charts and guessed that the raider would head for the shipping lanes of South America. They stationed HMS Ajax off the River Plate, the New Zealand warship Achilles off Rio de Janeiro, and HMS Exeter off Port Stanley in the Falklands. But the next signal was an RRR – ‘raider sighted’ – from the tanker Africa Shell off the East African coast. Had Graf Spee’s captain immediately sent a signal to inform Berlin of his success things might have ended quite differently for him; there would have been no way of guessing whether he was bound for the Indian Ocean or back into the South Atlantic. But Langsdorff waited ten hours, and when his signal was transmitted, three British Direction Finding Stations took a bearing on the signal. These bearings were sent to London on priority channels but even the Hydrographic Section at the Admiralty had no charts large enough to plot them.
Fortunately Merlin Minshall, a young officer of the Volunteer Reserve, had bought a globe four feet in diameter. It was, he calculated, ‘equivalent to a flat chart nearly twelve feet from top to bottom … Within seconds I had placed three thin loops of rubber round my newly acquired globe. Their intersection clearly showed that the Graf Spee was heading not north up into the Indian Ocean but south back into the Atlantic.’7 It was 4 o’clock in the morning. Rear Admiral ‘Tom Thumb’ Phillips, the vice-chief of naval staff, arrived dressed in a scruffy kimono to see the globe which was too big to be moved. ‘Good idea using the globe,’ he said. (Admiral Dönitz had come to the same idea as Lieutenant Minshall and was using a similar globe in his situation room.)
More sinkings confirmed this route. Graf See was in the southern hemisphere and 13 December 1939 was an idyllic calm summer’s day. Visibility was perfect and at 0614 hours Graf Spee’s spotters saw the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter (8-inch guns) and turned towards her. The Graf Spee had six 11-inch guns and Langsdorff assumed that the two vessels with Exeter were destroyers escorting a merchant shipping convoy of the sort that Graf Spee was seeking as prey, but without the use of his spotting aircraft he was unable to confirm this.
In fact Langsdorff was heading towards one of the many ‘hunting groups’ that were looking for him. Exeter had seen Graf Spee’s smoke and had turned towards it. And the destroyers Langsdorff had spotted were actually light cruisers: HMS Ajax and the New Zealand navy’s Achilles (each with eight 6-inch guns). He was probably misled by the fact that both ships were of unusual profile, having single funnels serving boilers sited together so as to economize on weight.
These three ships provide three different answers to the question that had plagued the world’s navies for half a century: what should a cruiser be? Should it be a light vessel, fast at 32 knots with small 6-inch guns like the Ajax and Achilles; should it be of medium weight like the Exeter, with 8-inch guns; or should it be a heavy ship with massive 11-inch guns that make it so formidable that it is called a pocket-battleship but unable to exceed 26 knots? No wonder the camouflage experts had painted a huge white wave curling from the Graf Spee’s bow. It would never make such a wave in real life – and now it could not speed away.
Ajax – the group’s flagship – catapulted a Seafox aircraft into the air. The difficulties of launching and recovery made this the only time such a warship used aircraft in a surface action.8 On most Royal Navy ships, space designed for aircraft, catapults and hangars was soon to be occupied by radar and AA guns. With the reconnaissance plane in the air searching for her, Graf Spee turned away and made smoke. The encounter presented tactical problems for both sides. The Graf Spee’s guns far outranged her adversaries, but with enemy ships to both port and starboard the German captain hesitated before choosing his target.
Eventually Graf Spee opened fire at maximum range. At first one turret was firing to port and the other to starboard but then all six big guns were concentrated on the Exeter, whose 8-inch guns were the most dangerous threat. While the British force had no radar, the German Sextant radar provided hits on Exeter’s turret and then on her main steering. Had it not been for the fact that some of the German shells failed to explode, she would have been sunk. After an unsuccessful riposte with torpedoes, the badly damaged Exeter withdrew, listing to starboard and taking in water forward. There were serious fires below decks and a near miss had put enough water through the shell holes in her side to short-circuit the electricity to her last remaining turret. Telephones and radio links were also lost. There was a real chance that Exeter would sink.9
Langsdorff might have closed and finished off the stricken vessel had the two 6-inch-gun ships not dashed in close and forced the Graf Spee to switch her attention to them, moving fast enough to avoid mortal hits by the big German guns, which could not change elevation and bearing fast enough.
After one and a half hours, during which the British warships got close enough to use even secondary armament, all four ships had suffered damage. Having taken hits from two 11-inch shells, the Ajax lost two of her four turrets, while the hoist failed in a third turret. The main top mast was chopped off by one of Graf Spee’s last salvoes. Three of her guns were still operating but she had used up 80 per cent of her ammunition. Achilles had suffered the least damage but she had no radio gunnery control in operation. Graf Spee had been hit many times but all her armament was still in operation.
The action was broken off by the British commander, who put up a smokescreen. There is no doubt that Langsdorff would have done better to have pressed home his attack on the battered trio but he did not, and afterwards it was said he had suffered flesh wounds and been knocked unconscious during the encounter. This might have been enough to affect his decision to head for a neutral port.
According to one account the Exeter had suffered more than one hundred serious hits. Five of her six big guns were out of action and there was so much smoke and flame that the Germans expected her to blow up and sink at any moment. With 61 dead, and many wounded, she made for the Falkland Islands while the two light cruisers trailed Graf Spee to the neutral South American port of Montevideo in Uruguay.
Had the Germans gained access to the sort of port facilities that the British had provided for themselves at strategic spots throughout the world, Graf Spee could have been replenished with ammunition and her minor battle damage – which might have proved dangerous in heavy seas – quickly repaired. But Germany was unable to provide for such needs in distant seas. With a more audacious captain the Graf Spee might have turned north and braved the northern seas in winter despite the battle damage and her 36 dead and 59 wounded. It was not to be.
When the Graf Spee docked in Montevideo, many local people, many of them expatriates, warmly welcomed the Germans but diplomats began arguing fiercely about the rights of belligerent warships in neutral ports. The Uruguayan government gave Langsdorff permission to remain in port for no more than 72 hours, the minimum permitted by international law. It was not enough time for repairs to be effected. Langsdorff tried, and failed, to charter a plane from which to see any Royal Navy ships that might be waiting for him.
To deter Langsdorff from fighting his way past them, the British were keen to give the impression that a large naval force was waiting for Graf Spee. A deception plan included the BBC radio bulletins and the British naval attaché who, knowing that the phones were tapped, called the ambassador in Buenos Aires and told him the Admiralty wanted 2,000 tons of fuel oil to be made available for two capital ships that evening at the Argentine naval base of Mar del Plata. It was enough to get the story circulated. There can be little doubt that Langsdorff believed that a sizeable naval force was ready to pounce on him.
On the evening of 17 December the Graf Spee moved out of harbour watched by the world’s Press and newsreel cameras. At sunset the great ship came to a standstill and, to the astonishment of most of the spectators, blew up. Torpedo heads had been suspended above open ammunition hatches which led to the main magazines. Petrol was ignited to burn through the ropes. The explosion in the forward part of the ship went as planned but seawater came in and doused the aft fires. Graf Spee lurched forward and settled fo’c’sle down. Langsdorff shot himself. The German crew were interned but many of them escaped and got back to Germany to fight again.
Those ship designers who said the German pocket battleships were misconceived had been proved right. A commerce raider did not need 11-inch guns to sink merchant ships. With smaller guns the specifications would have been lighter and considerably faster. Raiders which fight and run away live to fight another day.
Still today little is said of the contribution that German gun-laying radar made to this or any other sea battle. Frequently throughout the war, German naval gunners seemed to enjoy ‘lucky shots’ for which we might read accurate gun-laying. In London the Admiralty was sufficiently impressed by Graf Spee’s performance to offer the government of Uruguay £14,000 for the Graf Spee’s smoking hulk, whose decks remained above water. British radar experts rowed out and boarded her to examine, sketch and dismantle the Seetakt radar. HMS Exeter and Ajax were eventually fitted with British Type 79, an air defence radar that could be used for gun-laying and gave a performance not unlike the German Seetakt.
While Raeder, the German naval chief, said the Graf Spee should have run rather than fight, Hitler found the loss of his battleship intolerable, but neither man was deterred by the sinking. During the winter of 1940–41 the Scheer, the Gneisenau and the Hipper left their ports to raid Atlantic shipping. The men in the Admiralty had cause to worry, for the German naval Enigma code10 remained unbroken and the spectre of the German surface raider was given new substance by the trouble that Graf Spee had given them. Precious warships – including battleships, cruisers and carriers – were to spend the next few years chasing phantom German commerce raiders ‘seen’ by nervous merchant seamen on distant horizons.
