WW2 - The Graf Spee (And apparently, anything to do with Battleships . . .)

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Anyone heard of this ship? I just watched a documentary on it. It's hilarious. Bear with me, this be a long post for me...

We'd joined the war and Hitler thought he'd pummel the **** out of lil' old Britain within a few weeks. We were completely unprepared to go to war, but had to because the Germans attacked Poland, in a nutshell. I'm sure everyone knows this, but I doubt many people know about the Graf Spee.

Basically, the Germans made a massive beast of a battleship called the Graf Spee. Hitler decided the turn his new little pet to making life difficult for Britain and tried to choke us to death. This beast was under the command of a certain Captain Langsdorff, by all accounts a thoroughly nice bloke (for a Nazi). He was given the charge of stopping trade ships from reaching Britain. So all this food we were buying to try and help us hold out against the assault of the German airforce, was all getting stopped before it reached us. This was having a devastating effect on us. After a while, it was obvious this guy wasn't going away, so the British high command ordered 3 ships to go and take him out. Now, bear in mind that our ships were, in a word, ****. They were relics from the first world war, completely out-dated.

So these 3 little ships found this German battleship and surrounded it. The Gerrie ship pummelled one of them to **** and turned on the other 2, who realised they weren't going to get any joy and legged it. They fled to Uruguay which was neutral, so no fighting there. Langsdorff went to the Uruguayan president or whatever and asked him if he could stay in Uruguay for 2 weeks whilst he repaired his ship (the rule of war was 4 days in a neutral place). The president was like... "hmm... I dunno you know". The British got wind of this and went to the president and said "hey, come on pal, let's play right, this guy can stay for 4 days, that's the rules old boy", so the president told the Germans they could only stay for 4 days.

Meanwhile, the British hatched a plan. Knowing the Germans could intercept radio messages, they radio'd back to command and made out that they had dozens of big battleships just waiting for the Graf Spee to leave port, so they could shoot it to hell (obviously, we didn't).
Langsdorff was worried to ****. He radio'd back to Hitler or whoever and said "I say Hittles, these lads have a great fleet of battleships waiting for us, whadda we do?", "Just DON'T let those British get ahold of the Graf Spee" Hitler replied. So, Langsdorff sent his ship out to sea, completely empty of men but full of exlosives and blew it up, in his mind it was pointless letting his mates die for nothing.

When the german high command heard what he did, they hammered him with "Ya bloody coward, whadda ya think ya blowing up the pearl of our navy, achstung god damn!! blah blah!!". So this got to Langsdorff, after his mistake and all this stuff, shot himself in his head.

So, a few crappy little British ships, took out one of the best ships of the second world war just like that. This was the biggest bluff of the second world war.

Sorry for boring you, but had to share this and I think it's bloody hilarious. Just shows little Britains great attitude and grit if you ask me. Always outnumbered, always outgunned, always out-techied, but manage to pull it out of the fire. Great story I reckon!

Shame about the other Germany king ship, the Bismarck, which hammered us to kingdom come before we finally sunk her. We even made a great new flag-ship, the Hood. Sent it out to take the Bismarck out and it got sunk in about 5 mins . Gutted.


[Added to the title because I couldn't help but laugh at the posts after mine - - dmc]

[ February 04, 2006, 01:24: Message edited by: dmc ]

 

Great story, BA, although the Captain's suicide tempers the hilarity of it for me. But you're right, it does say some great things about the Brits.

 

Yeah, I saw that documentary too, on History Channel, this week will be about 5 documentaries about that as well, today was about the U-boats.

 

Just few corrections Barmy. Firstly the british ships that faced Graf Spee were the cruisers Exeter (made in 1931), Ajax (made in 1935) and Achilles (made in 1933), which were inferior to Graf Spee but certainly not WWI relics. Secondly Graf Spee could certainly escape from them but with 12 cruisers, 3 battlecruisers and 4 aircraft carriers searching for it in the same area, it's very doubtfoul that it could return to Germany.

 

Good story, but another slight correction. The Admiral Graf Spee was a very small battlecruiser. It was only 610 feet in length and 16,000 tons fully loaded. Armament was less than 3 inches thick. It had six 11-inch guns. Compare that to the British battlecruiser the HMS Hood at 46,000 ton displacement armed with eight 15-inch guns.

This was a small ship, not the pride of the German fleet (the Bismarck was 50,000 tons with eight 15-inch guns). That the Captain chose to scuttle his ship rather than have it fall into the hands of the British is not all that unusual -- the Bismarck was sunk using her scuttling charges, not even the hundreds of 15-inch rounds and several torpedoes could sink her.

[ January 30, 2006, 23:27: Message edited by: T2Bruno ]

 

Hey, come on, being Americans you must appreciate the 'Hollywood approach' .

Still a top story!

 

I knew all about it, including the fact that the Graf Spee wasn't a real battleship, not like the Bismarck anyway, but that doesn't make the story less interresting.

 

I think the story about the Tirpitz, the sistership of the Bismarck, is better.

The Tirpitz lay most of the war in one of Norway's numerous fjords, because she had no battle group to accompany her. Her few missions were quite unsuccesful. But her mere presence in reach of the supply lines between GB and the USSR had an degrading effect on the morale of british navy soldiers.

There were many attempts to sink her, including a british commando mission using limpet mines and a torpedo run by a sowjet submarine (!). All happend at the landing place on the nowegian cost.
After she was damaged by said mines, british Lancaster bombers sunk her using bombs especially made for this task.

It's quite hilarious: One of the biggest white elephants in military history uses up that much resources and is attacked and sunk while in port, which it almost never left.

 

While we're discussing famous naval "sinkings" of WW2, nothing beats the story of the USS Indianapolis .

An amazing and tragic story.

Here's more detailed info. ...you'll have to click on the "Indianapolis (CA-35)" link because I can't post the full link here.

 

Modern warships have GUNS not cannons. Cannons do not have rifled barrels.

The largest guns on a battleship are called the Main Battery.

 

pedant

 

BA: It comes from BEING a gunnery officer on a battleship. There's a bit of pride and arrogance in every battleship sailor.

 

You served on a battleship? Looks like you just dated your military service .

 

True, the last battleship was decommissioned 15 years ago.

 

Dammit AMaster, you sank T2Bruno's battleship!

 

...but I think he still has his carrier

Wasn't there some talk a while ago about bringing some of the old battleships back into service? Does anyone know what's come from that?

 

For what purpose? Granted they are bigger, but they do not provide any tactical advantage that cannot be gained from using another type of ship. Plus, being out of service for 15 years, they'd need some pretty hefty upgrades.