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Warship Wednesday 20 May 2026: Long Night of the Wolf

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger 

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday 20 May 2026: Long Night of the Wolf

Naval History and Heritage Command NH 85868

Above we see the modified Spica (Alcyone)-class torpedo boat Lupo at sea during maneuvers likely at the “H” naval review off Naples on 5 May 1938. Note her “LU” hull identifier, 3.9″/47 OTO M1937 forward, and four 17.7-inch torpedo tubes aft.

Lupo had a short career– as did most of her assorted three dozen sisters– but she was exceptionally well-fought (or lucky, depending on the outlook) some 85 years ago this week.

The Spicas

The Italian navy was huge, and I mean huge, fans of torpedo boats.

Going back to the 80-foot Thornycroft-built Nibbio and Yarrow-built Avvoltoio in 1881, they had already built and discarded more than 60 Aldebaran and Euterpe class boats before the Great War began.

In the early 1920s, the fleet had almost 100 newer torpedo boats on hand (Condore, Pellicano, Gabbiano, four Sirio class, 18 Perseo class, four Oriones, 38 1PN-class, 39 40PN-class) that went 200~ tons, were good for 25-27 knots, and carried a few 350mm or 450mm tubes with a couple of light guns.

Italian torpedo boat 54 AS during World War I. She was one of 39 40PN-class boats built during the war. At 150 tons, they ran 139 feet oal, could make 27 knots, and carried two 76mm guns, two 450 TT, and had space for 10 mines.

That’s not even counting the 422 small 20-30 ton mosquito boats of the MAS (Motoscafo Armato Silurante) type that were ordered during the Great War, of which 244 were completed.

As we said, the Italians really liked torpedo boats. I mean, if you look at the Italian coastline and consider the short ranges involved in fighting in the Adriatic and chokepoints such as the Strait of Messina and Strait of Bonifacio, it makes perfect sense.

Fast forward to the late-1920s/early 1930s and, with Italy’s 100 Great War vintage large torpedo boats slow, poorly armed, and aging, the Italian admiralty moved to replace them with a new class of faster (34 knots) boats that were much better armed (three 3.9-inch guns, four Vickers 40mm AAA guns, four 450mm tubes, as many as 28 mines).

To allow the weight and space for needed engines (two sets of Tosi geared steam turbines and two Yarrow boilers generating 19,000hp, good for 37 knots) and extra armament, this new class of TBs would come in just under 600 tons (on paper) to take full advantage of the London Naval Conference of the 1930s minimum tonnage threshold for regulated warships.

This left a fairly large 269-foot hull with a layout similar to a downsized Italian Freccia class destroyer (1,200 tons, 315 feet oal, 44,000hp). When compared to other navies, these ships would be more akin to destroyer escorts or frigates, only faster and without the ocean-crossing range, the latter a feature that the Italians didn’t need.

The Italian Freccia-class light (1,200 ton) destroyer Saetta, probably at the 5 May 1938 fleet review off Naples. The Spicas could be seen as essentially just downsized Freccias at 45 feet shorter and half the weight.

Main gun armament was three OTO 100/47 Mod. 1931 guns in single mounts, backed up by a AAA battery of eight 13.2 mm machine guns in four twin Breda Mod. 31 mounts.

Torpedo armament was four 17.7-inch tubes arranged either in a twin turnstile with a single tube on each side of the bow, as in class-leader Spica, or in four single tubes, two on each side of the bow, as in the Vega and her flight.

17.7-inch torpedo tube mount on an Italian torpedo-boat, summer 1941

450 mm (17.7 inch) torpedo being launched by the Italian Spica class torpedo boat Pallade during an exercise, 1936

See below from Jane’s 1938 edition:

Jane’s 1938 entry. Disregard the mention of 37mm guns. Only Spica and Astore had two twin 40/39 Vickers-Ternis. None had 37s. The typical pre-war AAA mounting was M.31 Breda mounts with twin 13.2mm guns. These were later replaced by twin Breda 20/65 Mod. 1935 and then by four single Scotti-Isotta-Fraschini 20/70 Mod. 1939 mounts.

They also had weight and space reserved for two depth charge throwers, although they had no listening gear, at least pre-war.

When it came to mines, they could both mechanically sweep (with embarked cables and paravanes) and lay mines (able to carry up to 28) if needed.

Lupo’s stern showing her paravane stowed with a good look at her two aft 3.9″/47 OTO mounts.

A good stern view of Lupo showing her beam-mounted tubes, aft 3.9s, and “peppermint” aerial recognition pattern over her bow

Named for constellations, the first two of the class, Spica and the Astore, both built in the Bacini & Scali Napoletani (BSN) yard between 1933-35, were sold to Sweden in 1940 and commissioned as the destroyers (jagaren) Romulus and Remus, respectively, serving that Scandinavian Navy until 1958.

HSwMS Romulus (Jagare Nr 27) Swedish Marinmuseum  D 14939:179

Plan of HSwMS Romulus (Jagare Nr 27) in her 1950s layout, sans torpedo tubes and with sonars and M/48 Bofors 40mm guns fitted. Swedish Marinmuseum

The next 30 were built in three flights (16 “Alcyone” type, 6 “Climene” type, and 8 “Perseus” type) with very minor variations in armament. Besides BSN, which built four more vessels, CT Riva Trigoso built two (Canopo and Cassiopea), CNR Ancona built four, Ansaldo Genoa built 12, and CNQ Fiume 6, all entering service by November 1938.

The brand new Italian Spica-class torpedo boat Calipso setting sail from Naples. She was sunk on 5 December 1940, by mines from submarine mine-layer HMS Rorqual east of Tripoli

Launch of Italian Spica-class torpedo boat Altair in 1936. She was sunk on 20 October 1941 in the Saronic Gulf, also by mines laid by HMS Rorqual

They proved prolific in pre-war images of the Regia Marina at play.

Several Italian Spica-class torpedo boats photographed in 1938. The Circe (1938-1942) appears in the left foreground. NH 85999

Italian Trento-class heavy cruiser and Spica-class torpedo boats in the late 1930s, probably photographed at the 5 May 1938 naval review off Naples, Italy. NH 86334

Italy Torpedo Boats. CG=Cigno, SI=Sirio, VG=Virgo, SG=Sagittario, PS=Perseo, AD=Andromeda (classe di Climene). Spica – Partenope class, circa 1938. New York Times Files. NH 111510

Several Italian Spica-class torpedo boats, probably photographed at the 5 May 1938 naval review off Naples. NH 111485

Meet Lupo

Lupo was one of a dozen of the Spicas built by CNQ (Cantieri navali del Quarnaro S.A.) in Fiume in spitting distance of the old Whitehead torpedo factory with her direct sisters Libra (LB), Lince (LC), and Lira (LR), all having the same armament and arrangement.

Late model boats, they suffered a bit from mission creep and had grown to 785 tons standard, 1,035 full load, on a hull some six feet longer than the original Spica design but with the same engineering plant. This dropped the maximum speed down to just over 30 knots, a big difference from the blistering 37 that Spica got in light load on trials.

Italian torpedo boat Libra (Fiume-built Alcione type Spica class). Circa 1939. Note her two stern 3.9″/47s, twin paravanes, beam-mounted torpedo tubes, and Breda 13.2mm AAA guns on bandstands amidships. NH 111428

To be sure, by this stage, they were more DE than TB.

Jane’s 1938 entry putting Lupo and the rest of the “L” boats built by CNQ as part of the 16 Alcyone/Alcione type vessels listed as Partenope type.

Laid down 7 December 1936, Lupo launched 7 November 1937, and commissioned 20 February 1938, under the command of LCDR (capitano di corvetta) Pio Valdambrini, based in Sicily.

Lupo at launch, when she carried an “LP” pennant. This was soon changed to “LU.”

War!

By the time Italy entered WWII on the side of the Axis during the Fall of France, Lupo and sisters Lince, Libra, and Lira, were part of the VIII Torpedo Squadron (Squadriglia torpediniere) based at Torpediniere Rhodes in the Aegean Naval Command.

Beginning the war under the command of LCDR Gennaro Cioppa, by December 1940, Lupo’s skipper was 37-year-old LCDR Francesco Maria Mimbelli. A Livorno-born regular from a Dalmatian family who put on his cadet uniform at age 15, by 1923, he was serving as a junior officer on the gunboats Caboto and Carlotto on China Station. Part of the Italian delegation sent to the London Naval Conference, he later served on the cruiser Trento and commanded torpedo boats during the 1939 invasion of Albania.

Lupo drew her first blood at 18:00 on 31 January 1941 when, taking part in a patrol of the Caso Channel in the Dodecanese with sister Lince, spotted part of British Convoy AN.14 and went in to attack. Headed from Alexandria to Piraeus, the small (Aegean Northward) convoy element had two merchantmen escorted by the light cruiser HMS Calcutta and two corvettes.

With Lince pulling away Calcutta with a torpedo attack that failed, Lupo went after the largest merchie, the big Shell tanker Desmoulea (8,120 GRT), and hit her with two fish (the British say one), badly damaging the vessel. Abandoned by her crew in a sinking condition, the tanker was later towed the next day to Suda Bay with her cargo intact.

Notably, along with torpedo damage inflicted on the cargo ship Clan Cumming (7,264 GRT) of Convoy AS.10 on 19 January by the Adua-class submarine Neghelli (NG), Lupo’s hit(s) on Desmoulea were the only Italian naval successes against British convoys in the Aegean.

Lupo and her sisters were soon pressed into service shuttling troops around the Greek littoral.

On 25 February, she and Lince, along with the old destroyers Crispi and Quintino Sella, carried a reinforcement force of 240 soldiers and 88 marines to the embattled islet of Castelrosso (Kastellorizo​) in the Levantine Sea, which was being assaulted by British 50ME Commandos in the rather slapstick Operation Abstention. This led to a swirling night action between the two TBs and the British destroyers HMS Hereward and Decoy, with no casualties on either side. Finally able to land their troops on the 27th, Lupo and Lince also turned their 3.9-inch guns on said Commandos (reportedly causing three deaths and seven wounded), which withdrew the next day.

This brings us to the…

Night of the Wolf

As part of the epic German airborne assault on Crete, while Kurt Student’s Fallschirmjäger made their last ride-of-the-Valkyries level jump to glory in Operation Merkur, a two-pronged seaborne assault was attempted by the mountain troops of Julius Ringel’s 5. Gebirgs-Division.

One of these convoys of mountain troops was made up of 21 overloaded requisitioned Greek caiques, coasters, and barges, carrying 2,331 men, which left Piraeus on 19 May, bound for Maleme on the Allied-held Greek island at a lumbering seven knots. A second, larger, flotilla of 42 vessels would carry 4,000 mountain troops to Heraklion.

Both convoys were surveilled by RAF reconnaissance aircraft and duly reported.

The smaller Gebirgsjäger convoy was escorted at first by the Spica-class torpedo boat Sirio, but had to be replaced as she lost her starboard propeller. Her intended replacement, the old de-rated destroyer Curtatone, was sunk by mines on 20 May.

This left Lupo to answer the call alone.

Assigned to the defenseless convoy of wallowing caiques, she arrived on scene on the 21st of May and by that night made contact with British RADM Irvine Glennie’s Force D north of Canea, still 18 miles from their intended landing beaches at Maleme.

First involved was the destroyer HMS Janus, which Lupo fired two torps at from 1,000m at 2233.

Then came another vessel looming out of the night, the cruiser HMS Dido, which got a third and fourth torp fired at her from 700m at 2235.

Then came a second cruiser, HMS Orion, which she avoided ramming by just a few feet.

A third, the legendary HMS Ajax of Graf Spee fame, was on scene, as were the destroyers Hereward, Hasty, and Kimberley.

There was no way one Italian torpedo boat could compete with that kinda pressure, especially when the Brits had radar on their side. Just counting the cruisers, Lupo had three 3.9-inch guns against the British cruiser’s 10 5.25-inch and 16 6-inch guns. Then add the 20 4.7-inch guns on the four British greyhounds.

Lupo broke contact, and the Brits were able to sink 10 caiques in the night, sending over 300 German troops to the bottom of the Med, decimating the III Battalion of the 100th Gebirgsjäger regiment. Two caiques, altogether loaded with 113 Germans, made it to shore on Crete at Cape Spatha. The other caiques were able to slip away in the confusion and made it back to Piraeus.

Lupo during the Battle of Crete convoy action

The second, larger, convoy was recalled to prevent a similar fate.

The only damage done to the RN was via friendly fire, with Orion suffering 11 casualties due to 40mm (2-pounder) hits (which Lupo didn’t carry). The Brits also fired a tremendous amount of ammunition in the clash, with the cruisers firing some two-thirds of their magazines (Orion had 38 percent of her shells left, Ajax 42 percent, and Dido just 30 percent). Further, Ajax rammed and sank a troop-carrying barge, damaging her bow in the process, her stem fractured and bent over waterline level, and her forepeak flooded.

Lupo had been hit at least 18 times by 6-inch and 4.7-inch shells from British destroyers and cruisers, although most of the AP rounds passed cleanly through her without exploding. She suffered two dead, quartermaster Orazio Indelicato and gunner Nicolò Moccole, and 26 wounded. This against a complement of 116 officers and men. She nonetheless returned to the scene of the convoy massacre at dawn on the 22nd to pick up survivors, with Lupo, seaplanes, and rescue launches picking up 242 waterlogged Gebs by 1600 that afternoon.

The 5th Gebirgs-Division reported 506 missing in the Crete campaign, with most having drowned with the caiques, delivered to Posiedon by Force D.

German assault on Crete – May 1941 via USMA collection

Most of the Gebs involved in Operation Merkur that arrived on Crete did so as fly-in reinforcement, with 5,000 brought by Junkers 52s.

As for Lupo, she sailed back into Taranto looking like Swiss cheese.

The clash saw Mimbelli awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour, while Lupo had the Silver Medal placed on her ensign.

Continued campaigning

Repaired and refitted, Lupo picked up a more ASW-oriented battery to include landing her 13.2mm guns for four twin Breda 20/65 Mod. 1935s, and taking on hydrophones and as many as 40 depth charges, with many of her sisters so converted.

Italian Libra (Fiume-built Alcione type Spica class), late in the war with camouflage. Note her depth charge racks instead of torpedoes and twin Breda 20/65 Mod. 1935 on port beam. Aldo Fraccaroli collection.

Thus rearmed, the Spicas became a fixture on Italian convoys in the Med, supplying outposts in occupied Greece and running troops to North Africa.

Italian Spica class torpedo boat Lupo, May 1941

Italian Spica class torpedo boats Libra, Lupo, and Lira in Mytilene, 4 May 1941

Italian torpedo boat Lupo and hospital ship Gradisca Tobruk, Libya, on 28 May 1941

While escorting a convoy of four steamers with the torpedo boats Altair and Monzambano and the auxiliary cruiser Barletta on the evening of 19 October 1941, Altair struck a mine laid eleven days earlier by the British submarine Rorqual in the Gulf of Athens, and her sister Lupo came to her aid. Taking 124 men aboard from Altair, Lupo tried to tow the vessel, whose bow had been blown off, but had to cut ties and let the stricken TB sink.

On 23/24 November 1941, Lupo and sistership Cassiopea, while escorting two German steamers, Maritza and Procida, to Benghazi with supplies for Rommel, bumped into British Force K, which had been birddogged to the convoy by deciphered Ultra messages. This pitted the two Italian TBs against the light cruisers HMS Aurora and Penelope and the destroyers HMS Lance and Lively. The resulting night action in the rain left the two German steamers sunk, but the Italians survived to fight again. Lupo is generally credited with hitting Penelope’s superstructure with her 3.9s, causing minor damage, and in turn, picking up some minor damage herself.

Lupo was with another convoy, from Piraeus to escort to Suda, again with sister Cassiopea, escorting three merchies when they escaped an attack from HM Submarine Porpoise on 17 January 1942.

In March 1942, the now-famous Mimbelli was sent to command the IV MAS Flotilla operating in the Black Sea, leaving Lupo in the hands of her third wartime skipper, LCDR Giuseppe Folli.

Committed to a series of Piraeus to Tobruk convoy runs, it was on one of these sorties on 2 September 1942 that Lupo’s convoy came under the combined attack of USAAF B-24s and HM Submarine Thrasher.

On her next run to Tobruk, with sister Sirio and three small freighters, Lupo survived an attack from HM Submarine Taku.

The extremely lucky Lupo’s run ended on the evening of 2 December 1942 when, along with the TBs Ardito, Aretusa, and Sagittario, she was escorting three steamers from Naples to Tripoli. After dodging Albacore bombers of NAS 828 out of Malta, which struck the steamer Veloce, the convoy again found its old nemesis, Force K, this time composed of the radar-equipped destroyers HMS Jervis, Nubian, Kelvin, and Javelin.

Lupo, at the time attempting to tow Veloce and bathed in the light of 40-inch searchlights, was smothered in 4.7-inch shells at 2,000 yards, and sank in the Gulf of Gabès at 2345.

Lupo carried LCDR Folli and 134 other souls to the bottom of the sea. Just 29 survivors were picked up by Ardito.

The shattered wreck of the ship, missing her bow and stern, was found approximately 96 miles SW of Lampedusa and 20 miles off the Kerkennah Islands in December 2011 by AHTS Buccaneer, some 435 feet down. It has been extensively surveyed.

Epilogue

The Italians recycled the name “Lupo” for Battaglione Lupo, a marine infantry unit within the infamous Xª Flottiglia MAS in 1944. It fought with Mussolini’s rump Italian Social Republic in Northern Italy against Allied forces and partisans until the end of the war.

Lupo Battalion Italian Marines of X MAS division, La Spezia, Italy, 1944. Note the “samurai” mag carriers and MAB 38 Beretta SMGs.

The modern Italian Navy commissioned a frigate (F 564) using the Lupo name in 1977, which served until 2003. She is still in service with Peru as BAP Palacios (FM-56).

Italian frigate Lupo (F564)

Of Lupo’s 30 Spica-class sisters in Italian service, 23 were lost during the war. Seven survivors returned to Italian service, modernized as fast corvettes outfitted with radar, sonar, and Hedgehog ASW devices. The last two, Sagittario and Libra, were only retired in 1964.

As for Lupo’s only victim during the war, the Greenock-built Shell D-class tanker Desmoulea was patched up, survived a second torpedoing in May from an Italian S.79 bomber, was patched up again, survived German He. 111s, and continued sailing until 1961. A tough-to-kill tanker for sure!

The Shell tanker, Desmoulea, Fremantle, 1948. Fremantle History Collection LH004488

Lupo’s most famous skipper, LCDR Mimbelli, earned two Iron Crosses (EK1 and EK2) for the Sevastopol campaign and picked up two companion Silver Medals and five Bronze to his Gold for leading several actions with his speedy MAS boats along the Calabrian and Sicilian coasts. Post-war, he commanded the battleship Vittorio Veneto and the cruiser Garibaldi before heading the Naval Academy in Livorno.

The Italian fleet’s CNO from September 1959 to April 1961, Ammiraglio di Squadra Francesco Maria Mimbelli, moved to the retired list in 1964 and passed in 1978, having spent 57 of his 72 years in uniform.

As noted by the Marina Militare, “The mission report of the Royal Torpedo Boat Lupo, written by Commander Mimbelli in a dry and elegant style, is kept by the Historical Office of the Navy in Rome, for current and future generations.”

In 1993, an Ammiragli-class destroyer, ITS Mimbelli (D 561), was commissioned with his name and remains in service.

The destroyer Francesco Mimbelli in Valletta, Malta, 17 May 2005. Wiki Commons by Anthony Vella.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday Dec. 11, 2024: Cathedral Slugger

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024: Cathedral Slugger

Above we see the magnificent modified York-class heavy cruiser HMS Exeter (68), entering Grand Harbour, Valetta, Malta, likely during her service with the Mediterranean Fleet’s 1st Cruiser Squadron at Alexandria, during the Abyssinian crisis between October 1935 and July 1936.

Simultaneously the final British warship to be built with 8-inch guns and the last “Washington” treaty cruiser built for the Royal Navy, she would use her guns to good effect against a tough “pocket battleship” some 85 years ago this week.

The Yorks

Sometimes referred to as the “Cathedral” class cruisers, York and her near-sister HMS Exeter (68) were essentially cheaper versions of the Royal Navy’s baker’s dozen County-class cruisers, the latter of which were already under-protected to keep them beneath the arbitrary 10,000-ton limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Weighing in at 8,250 tons, the Yorks were intended not for fleet action but for the role of sitting on an overseas station and chasing down enemy commerce raiders in the event of war.

York mounted six 8″/50 (20.3 cm) Mark VIII guns in three twin Mark II mounts. Fairly capable guns, they could fire a 256-pound SAP shell out past 30,000 yards at a (theoretical) rate of up to six rounds per gun per minute. Importantly, they carried 172 rounds per gun, up from the 125-150 carried by the preceding County class, a factor which allowed a slightly longer engagement time before running empty.

Bow turrets of HMS York. Photograph by Mrs. Josephine Burston, via Navweaps

Notably, Exeter was completed with the same main gun but in Mark II* mounts, which allowed for a shallower 50-degree elevation.

Cruiser HMS Exeter training her 8-inch guns to starboard

Exeter vessel also had a slightly different “straight” arrangement for her funnels and masts, whereas York’s carried a slant, giving each sister a distinctive profile.

Exeter’s 1930 rigging plan

HMS York. Note the slant to her masts and stacks. Photograph by Walter E. Frost, City of Vancouver Archives Photo No. 447-2863.1

Rounding out the cruisers’ offensive armament was a half-dozen deck-mounted 21-inch torpedo tubes a battery of DP 4-inch guns and a few Vickers machine guns to ward off aircraft.

Built with overseas service in mind, they could cover 10,000nm at 14 knots. Able to achieve 32.3 knots due to having 80,000-ship via Parsons geared steam turbines, they sacrificed armor protection for speed and magazine space, with just 1 inch of steel on their turrets and a belt that was just 3 inches at its thickest.

Exeter, Janes 1931

As noted by Richard Worth in his excellent tome, Fleets of World War II:

In trimming down the County layout, designers managed to retain several features, though sea keeping suffered. Protection also received low priority; the armor scheme (similar in proportion to the County type) included some advances, but all in all, the Yorks seemed even more vulnerable, especially in the machinery spaces.

 

Meet Exeter

Ordered as part of the 1926 Build Programme, Exeter was the fifth RN vessel to carry the name since 1680 and carried forth a quartet of battle honors (Adras 1782, Providien 1782, Negapatam 1782, and Trincomalee 1782) from these vessels. Constructed for £1,837,415 by HMNB Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth, she launched on 18 July 1929.

Her sponsor at the christening was Lady Madden.

Anchored off Plymouth, England, during her builder’s trials in May 1931. NH 60806

 

Bestowed with the familiar motto, Semper fidelis, Ever Faithful, she long maintained a relationship with her ancient namesake cathedral city along the River Exe.

On 23 May 1931, just before she was commissioned, HMS Exeter’s skipper and officers visited the town’s Mayor H W Michelmore, at the Exeter Guildhall. By tradition, Royal Navy ships named after a town are given a small gift by the town, and the Mayor announced that a model of the hall, paid for by public subscription, would be made of silver. Michelmore and a crowd of local dignitaries presented the finished model, about the size of a breadbox, three months later.

“On behalf of myself, my officers and ships crew, and of those who will come after us, I thank you most heartily and sincerely for the beautiful gift you have given us,” her plankowner skipper, Captain (later RADM) Isham W. Gibson, told the delegation. “We hope that you will count us as citizens of Exeter, afloat.”

NH 60803

Exeter, August 1931. NH 60804

Peacetime idyllic cruising

She was a striking vessel for her age. A true peacetime cruiser.

For the next decade, she would embark on a series of “waving the flag” port visits around the globe as she shifted between North America and West Indies Station, based in Bermuda, to the Mediterranean Fleet. This would involve roaming along the coast of Latin America, trips through the Panama Canal with corresponding port calls on the West Coast of America as far north as Esquimalt, BC, and cruising along the Caribbean.

On one such port call, the U.S. Navy dutifully took lots of close-up photographs of her armament and layout that were no doubt forwarded to the ONI, hence their preservation for posterity.

Exeter, .50 cal quad Vickers anti-aircraft machine gun mount. Note the Bluejackets aboard. NH 60811

Shagbats! Exeter with Supermarine Walrus amphibians on catapults. NH 60809

Same as above, NH 60810

Exeter 4″ anti-aircraft gun. NH 60808

Exeter At Montevideo, Uruguay in 1934. NH 60816

Exeter in Balboa harbor, canal zone, 24 April 1934. NH 60812

HMS Exeter, Panama Canal, 1930s. 33rd infantry honor guard at the Miguel locks. N-173-3

HMS Exeter, Northbound, Gamboa Signal Station, March 8, 1935, 185-G-2031

HMS Exeter returning to Devonport from the Mediterranean in July 1936, note her “homeward bound” pennant.

British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, 1936

HMS Exeter at the Royal Naval Dockyard, on Ireland Island, Sandys Parish, in the British Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, with Gibb’s Hill Lighthouse beyond, circa 1936

Aerial view of HMS Exeter, Panama Canal Zone, circa early 1939. NH 60807

Exeter off Coco Solo canal zone, circa 1939. NH 60814

Get the Graf!

Skipping a planned dockyard period at Devonport in early August 1939 due to rising tensions in Europe, Exeter’s crew was recalled from leave and prepared to return to service with the South Atlantic Division of the West Indies Squadron, escorting the troopship Dunera to Cape Verde before diverting to Freetown.

On her bridge was newly promoted Capt. Frederick “Hooky” Secker Bell, a fighting sailor who served as a mid on HMS Challenger in the Cameron Campaign in 1914, on board the battleship HMS Canada at the battle of Jutland in 1916, and, as a young lieutenant in 1918, was one of only two survivors of his destroyer when it was sunk from under his feet by one of the Kaiser’s U-boats. He had been XO of the battlewagon HMS Repulse just before moving into Exeter’s captain’s cabin– a battleship man in a cruiser.

When Hitler sent his legions into Poland in September, Exeter was in passage to Rio de Janeiro, and, clearing for war service, she soon took up station off Rio for the purpose of trade defense and interdicting German shipping.

By early October, with German surface raiders afoot in the South Atlantic, Exeter joined Hunting Force G along with the older but more heavily armed County-class heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland (9,750 tons, 8×8″ guns, 31 knots, 4.5-inch belt) and the Leander-class light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles (7,270 tons, 8×6″/50s, 32.5 knots, 4-inch belt), with the force ranging from the Brazilian coast to the Falklands.

These hounds would eventually find fruit in the chase for the German Deutschland-class panzerschiff cruiser KMS Admiral Graf Spee (14,890 tons, 6×11″/52, 8×5.9″, 28.5 knots, 3.9-inch belt), however, its strongest asset, Cumberland, was in the Falklands under refit at the time, leaving our Exeter and the two lighter cruisers, Ajax and Achilles, to fight it out.

Kriegsmarine Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee im Spithead U.K. 1937. Colorised photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

A detailed retelling of what is now known to history as the Battle of the River Plate would be out of the scope of this post, but, beginning with Graf Spee’s sighting of Force G at 0520 on the morning of 13 December, and ending when the engagement broke off around 0730 with the big German cruiser retreating into the River Plate estuary, is the stuff of legend.

In those swirling two hours, Graf Spee had been hit at least 70 times by British 8- and 6-inch guns, with the German suffering 36 killed and another 60, including her captain, Hans Langsdorff, wounded– in all about a fifth of her complement. While in no danger of sinking and still very much able to fight– albeit with only a third of her 11-inch shells left in her magazines– the panzerschiff had her oil purification plant, desalination plant, and galley destroyed, factors that would make a 6,000 mile run back to Germany likely impossible.

Graf Spee also gave as good as she got, with Exeter, pressing the fight against the larger ship repeatedly, getting the worst punishment in the form of hits from seven 660-pound 11-inch shells– ordnance she was never expected to absorb. Listing and with her two front turrets knocked out, Exeter had 61 dead and 23 wounded crew members aboard and could only make 18 knots. With only one turret still operable– and under local command only– Captain Bell had vouched that he was ready to ram Graf Spee before the German had retired.

As detailed by Lt Ron Atwill, who served in Exeter during the battle:

  • ‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets were out of action from direct hits.
  • ‘Y’ turret firing in local control.
  • The Bridge, Director Control Tower, and the Transmitting Station were out of action.
  • A fire was raging in the CPO’s and Serving Flats.
  • Minor fires were burning on the Royal Marine messdeck and in the Paint Shop.
  • There were no telephone communications – all orders had to be passed by messengers.
  • The ship was about four feet down by the bows due to flooding forward and had a list to starboard of about eight degrees due to some six hundred and fifty tons of water which had flooded in splinter holes near the waterline plus accumulations of fire fighting water. This degree of list is quite considerable and makes movement within the ship very difficult when decks are covered with fuel oil and water.
  • Only one 4-inch gun could be fired.
  • Both aircraft had been jettisoned.
  • W/T communications had completely broken down – mostly due to aerials having been shot away.

HMS Exeter (68) as seen in 1939, shows splinter damage to ‘A’ and ‘B’ turrets and the bridge from the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee. While her rear ‘Y’ turret was intact, its electrical system had suffered a short from saltwater intrusion and was down to manual control. CDR RD Ross photo IWM HU 43488

Swiss cheese splinter damage to Exeter’s stacks. Splinters had riddled the ship’s funnels and searchlights, wrecked the ship’s Walrus aircraft just as it was about to be launched for gunnery spotting, and slaughtered her exposed torpedo tube crews. Shrapnel swept the bridge, killing or wounding almost all the bridge personnel and knocking out most of the ship’s communications and navigational tools, forcing the vessel to be directed by one of the compasses pulled from a launch. CDR RD Ross photo IWM HU 43505

With no means to fight left at her disposal other than the single 4-inch open mount still working, Exeter remained on watch with the lighter Ajax and Achilles, both damaged and nearly out of shells, keeping station at the Plate’s mouth should Graf Spee attempt to escape. Cumberland, rushed 1,000 miles from the Falklands in just 34 hours, arrived to reinforce the force late on the night of 14 December and relieve Exeter, who was ordered to retire to the Port Stanley for emergency repairs.

Ordered by Berlin not to have his ship interned in Uruguay, options were limited to Langsdorff, Graf Spee’s skipper. Partially due to his ship’s damage, and partially because the three British cruisers at the river’s mouth could bird-dog him should he put to sea, a factor acerbated by openly exaggerated signals that RN carriers and battlewagons were rapidly inbound (they were in fact still five days away), Langsdorff landed his crew– who he refused to sacrifice in vain– scuttled his ship in Montevideo, and then blew his brains out.

Admiral Graf Spee in flames after being scuttled in the River Plate estuary, 17 December 1939. IWM 4700-01

Later Allied inspection of Graf Spee’s hull showed Exeter got in at least three hits from her “puny” 256-pound 8-inchers, including the key destruction of her oil purification plant, the blow that cut off the big cruiser’s legs.

Admiral Graf Spee, ship’s port bow, taken while she was at Montevideo, Uruguay in mid-December 1939, following the Battle of the River Plate. Note crew members working over the side to repair damage from an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter. The notation The ‘Moustache’ refers to the false bow wave painted on Admiral Graf Spee’s bows. The original photograph came from Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s World War II history project working files. NH 83003

Admiral Graf Spee photograph of a shell hole in the ship’s forward superstructure tower, made by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter. The sketch below shows the location of the hole, and describes it as large enough to crawl through. Taken on board the ship’s wreck in the River Plate, near Montevideo, Uruguay, where she had been scuttled in December 1939. Page from an intelligence report prepared by USS Helena (CL-50) during her shakedown cruise to South America. The photograph was taken on 2 February 1940 by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN. NH 51986

Admiral Graf Spee photograph of the interior of the ship’s forward superstructure tower, showing damage caused by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter during the Battle of the River Plate. Cut wires and the absence of a fire control tube were noted on the original report in which this image appeared. Taken on board the ship’s wreck in the River Plate, near Montevideo, Uruguay, where she had been scuttled in December 1939. Photographed on 2 February 1940 by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN, for an intelligence report prepared by USS Helena (CL-50) during her shakedown cruise to South America. NH 51987-A

Arriving at Port Stanley on 20 December, Exeter would remain there for a month, patched up with steel plate salvaged from the old Grytviken whaling station while her wounded were cared for in local homes, until the battered cruiser began her slow voyage back to England. She arrived at Plymouth on 15 February 1940.

HMS Exeter arrives back in the UK after emergency repairs at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands following the battle of the river Plate. Lighter paintwork can be seen where the damage was patched up.

Churchill, at the time First Lord of the Admiralty, visited the cruiser and addressed the crew. The bulldog had come “to pay my tribute to her brave officers and men from her shattered decks in Plymouth Harbor”

Arrival at Plymouth with Churchill coming aboard. IWM HU 104428

On 23 February, her celebrated crew marched through the City of London. Bell was made a companion knight of the Bath while the other members of the crew would pick up two DSOs, seven DSCs, and nearly 40 DSMs.

Leap Day 1940 saw Bell lead 87 members of his crew on a Freedom of the City parade with fixed bayonets through Exeter, where seemingly the entire town turned out. The cruisermen brought with them a host of souvenirs to hand over to the city including Exeter’s shell-torn White Ensign and her bell, left with the city for safekeeping.

Pacific maelstrom

Exeter’s extensive repair would stretch for a year and included rebuilding her gun houses, installing new catapults and torpedo tubes, as well as modernization that saw a Type 279 search radar, Type 284 gunnery control radar, tripod masts, and improved anti-aircraft armament shipped aboard. The latter included landing her old 4.1-inch singles for four twin 102/45 QF Mk XVIs along with two massive octuple 40mm 2-pounder MK VIII mounts.

In that period, her near-sister, York, was lost to MTMs of Xª Flottiglia MAS in Suda Bay.

HMS Exeter, off Devonport after refit, March 1941, by Harold William John Tomlin. IWM A3553

HMS Exeter, off Devonport after refit, March 1941 hoisting Walrus, by Harold William John Tomlin. IWM A 3555

Stern view, same place and time as above. A 3552

Exeter’s ninth and final skipper, Capt. Oliver Loudon Gordon, took command on 11 March 1941.

Following post-refit workups with the Northern Patrol in April 1941, Exeter was transferred to the East Indies Squadron, which was beefing up as tensions with the Empire of Japan were at an all-time high. Likewise, Bell was ordered to a new position as Flag Captain to the Flag Officer, Malaya,

Sailing south with a military convoy on 22 May– while keeping an eye out for the raiding Bismarck and Prinz Eugen— she arrived in Freetown on 4 June and Durban two weeks later before spending the next six months as escort a series of different slow convoys (CM 014, BP 012, CM 017, and MA 001) shuttling around the Indian Ocean.

On 7 December 1941, she was ordered to Singapore to join the ill-fated Force Z– the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse. She didn’t make it to join the force before it was destroyed by Japanese land-based bombers three days later in the South China Sea.

Instead, Exeter leaned into her speed and, under the combined ABDA Command in Java, she spent January and February 1942 as part of several different Allied convoys (DM 001, BM 010, BM 011, BM 012, JS 001, and SJ 5) running troops to Singapore and around the Dutch East Indies.

HMS Exeter firing at Japanese aircraft which unsuccessfully attacked convoy JS1 in the Bangka Strait during the 14/15 February 1942, NIMH 2158_017924

A harbor tug crosses the bow of the 8-inch gun cruiser HMS Exeter as she lies anchored in the congested harbor of Tanjong Priok, the port for Batavia, now Jakarta, in the first days of February 1942. Exeter helped clear the congestion, taking thirty merchant ships to sea. AWM P04139.003

On 25 February, Exeter, along with the RAN Leander-class light cruiser HMAS Perth (sister to Ajax and Achilles) and destroyers HMS Electra, Encounter, and Jupiter, were detailed to join the ABDA’s Eastern Striking Force under Dutch RADM K.W.F.M. Doorman at Soerabaja, which was then renamed the Combined Striking Force. Doorman’s force was slight, made up of just the Dutch light cruisers HrMs De Ruyter and HrMs Java, the heavy cruiser USS Houston (CA-30), and a mix of nine Dutch and American destroyers, mostly old “flush deckers” from the Great War.

Of the five allied cruisers, only Houston was more powerful than Exeter, carrying nine cramped 8″/55 guns in her thin hull. However, only six of Houston’s 8-incher were operable as her aft turret had been knocked out in an earlier air attack. Further, only Exeter had radar.

Rushing out to confront a force of 30 Japanese troops transports on 27 February 1942 protected by RADM Takeo Takagi’s two heavy cruisers, two old light cruisers, and 14 destroyers, things got pear-shaped pretty fast in what became known as the First Battle of the Java Sea.

A flurry of over 90 Long Lance torpedoes sank a Dutch destroyer while a lucky 7.9-inch hit from the Japanese Myoko-class heavy cruiser Haguro penetrated to Exeter’s aft boiler room and knocked six of her eight boilers offline, dropping the British cruiser’s speed to just five knots.

Retiring South towards Surabaya via the Sunda Strait with Encounter and the American destroyer USS Pope (DD-225) escorting, Exeter had the supreme misfortune of running into the four Japanese heavy cruiser sisters Nachi, Haguro, Myoko, and Ashigara, along with their four escorting destroyers, supported by the carrier Ryujo over the horizon, on the morning of 1 March.

Although Exeter had managed to increase her speed to 23 knots by this time, it was far too slow to avoid being overtaken by the armada of bruisers and fast greyhounds. The disparity in ordnance in big guns alone– 40 7.9″/50s vs six 8″/50s– was staggering before even taking into account smaller guns and torpedo tubes.

Japanese shells rain down around HMS Exeter during her ill-fated encounter in the Java Sea

Despite Encounter and Pope bravely making smoke and attempting torpedo runs against impossible odds– the same sort of bravery later seen by American escorts in the defense of Taffy 3 in October 1944– it was all over in about three hours and all of the Allied vessels were sent to the bottom piecemeal.

Exeter sinking on 1 March 1942 after engagement with Japanese Cruisers off Java. This Japanese photo was captured by U.S. Forces at Attu in May 1943. Collection of Admiral T. C Kinkaid, USN. NH 91772

NH 91773

Exeter sinking after engaging Japanese heavy cruisers in the Java Sea, 1 March 1942. Image taken from the captured Japanese wartime booklet “Victory on the March” 80-G-179020

Exeter earned three battle honors (River Plate 1939, Malaya 1942, and Sunda Strait 1942) to add to the four she carried forward.

Epilogue

Over the next two days, Japanese destroyers would pick up some 800 Allied survivors from the three lost warships in the water after the battle including 652 men of the crew of Exeter, the cruiser remarkably “only” losing 54 in the battle itself. A large reason why so many of Exeter’s crew survived the battle was that Capt. Gordon, his ship lost, ordered her evacuated before the final bloody game could play out. Like Capt. Langsdorff at Montevideo, Gordon owed it to his men not to ask them to perish in vain.

Tossed into the hell that was the Japanese POW camp systems no less than 27 of Pope’s sailors, 37 of Encounter’s, and 30 from Exeter died in the prison camps, usually from either malaria or pneumonia. When it came to Japanese camps, they typically lost a full quarter of those housed within.

Recovered from camps in the Celebes, Macassar, and Nagasaki in September 1945, Exeter veterans were given emergency medical care and repatriated. AWM photos

The wrecks of Encounter, Exeter, and Pope have been extensively looted by illegal salvagers.

Capt. Gordon, while being removed from Japan on USS Gosper (APA-170) in October 1945, finally had a chance to deliver his 12-page report on Exeter’s final battles to the Admiralty, via U.S. channels. With the traditional English gift of understatement, he noted that, during the evacuation of the cruiser, “The ship was evidently leaking oil fuel considerably, which, with a slight lop, made conditions in the water decidedly unpleasant, at first.”

July 1942 portrait of Capt. Oliver L Gordon, RN, HMS Exeter, who was captured in the Java Sea. Capt Gordon was a prisoner of war in Zentsuji Camp, Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. He later wrote of his experiences both in command of the Exeter and as a prisoner of war in Japan in the book Fight It Out, published in 1957, and passed in 1973. AWM P04017.059

As for “Hooky” Secker Bell, Exeter’s commander during the fight with Graf Spee, he escaped Singapore before the fall in 1942 and survived the war. In January 1946 he took command of the battleship HMS Anson, was named an ADC to King George VI, and retired on health grounds in January 1948.

In 1956, he served as an advisor to the film The Battle of the River Plate which included the huge Des Moines class heavy cruiser USS Salem as the Graf, Achilles as herself, the light cruiser HMS Sheffield as Ajax, and the light cruiser HMS Jamaica as our Exeter.

Her 1931-marked bell and River Plate battle-damaged ensign, along with a scale model of the cruiser, are in Exeter as part of the city’s archives.

St Andrews Chapel in Exeter has several relics and a memorial stained glass window which incorporates the ship’s badge.

She is celebrated in maritime art, and for good reason.

HMS Exeter at Plymouth in 1940: Back from the Graf Spee action, by Charles Ernest Cundall. IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 1848)

Battle of the River Plate, 13 December 1939 watercolor by Edward Tufnell, RN (Retired), depicting the cruisers HMS Exeter (foreground) and HMNZS Achilles (right center background) in action with the German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee (right background). NH 86397-KN

Admiral Graf Spee vs Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter painting by Adam Werka

The Battle of the Java Sea, painting by Van der Ven. From left to right two American destroyers (Four stackers), cruiser Hr.Ms. De Ruyter, HMAS Perth, HMS Exeter, Hr.Ms. Witte de With, Hr.Ms. Kortenaer (sinking) and HMS Jupiter. NIMH 2158_051001.

The Royal Navy, when passing through the Sunda Strait, typically holds a memorial service for the lost cruiser and her escorts.

HMS Montrose showers the now-calm waters of the Java Sea with poppies over the site where 62 men lost their lives when cruiser HMS Exeter and destroyer HMS Encounter fell victim to the Japanese, 2019. MOD photo

In 1980, a Type 42 destroyer, HMS Exeter (D 89), joined the fleet to perpetuate the name. She earned the ship her eighth battle honor (Falklands- 1982) and was only decommissioned on 27 May 2009.

October 1987. Gulf Of Oman. A starboard beam view of the British destroyer HMS Exeter (D-89) underway on patrol while stationed in the region as part of a multinational force safeguarding shipping during the war between Iraq and Iran. PH1 T. Cosgrove. DN-ST-93-00902

A veterans organization for all the past Exeters endures. 

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Warship Wednesday (on a Tuesday), Dec. 17, 2019: The Count’s Bones

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday (on a Tuesday), Dec. 17, 2019: The Count’s Bones

Photo by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 51977

Here we see the aftermath of this very day in history some 80 years ago– the scuttled German “pocket battleship” SMS Graf Spee, resting on the bottom in 25 feet of water off the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay, following the 1939 Battle of the River Plate.

While internet warships commentators and naval museum fans will fight to the death that Graf Spee and her fellow 1930s-era Deutschland-class “Panzerschiff” (armored ships) were an abomination when compared to regular battleships– vessels the Germans were unable to build due to Versallies limits– they did pack a half-dozen bruising 11-inch SK C/28 guns and another eight 5.9-inch SK C/28 guns in a 16,000-ton hull with a minimum of 3.9-inches of belt armor.

While incapable of holding off even a serious pre-dreadnought battlewagon, by nature of their 28-knot speed and amazing 16,000nm range (at 18 knots!) they were ideal for commerce raiding and able to chew up anything that could catch them that was smaller than a battlecruiser.

Admiral Graf Spee Preliminary artist’s impression of the ship by Dr. Oscar Parkes, Editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, circa 1932. When completed in 1936, Admiral Graf Spee’s superstructure differed from that shown here. NH 91874

Named after Vizeadmiral Maximilian Johannes Maria Hubert Reichsgraf (Count) von Spee, who was lost at the December 1914 Battle of the Falkland Islands along with his two sons, our pocket battleship was laid down 1 October 1932 at Reichsmarinewerft, Wilhelmshaven when Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was still Germany’s president, she was commissioned 6 January 1936 after the Machtergreifung brought Hitler to power. In a nod to the latter, she picked up a giant bronze Nazi eagle on her stern to complement her Von Spee coat of arms on her bow, a blend of Kaiser and Fuhrer, if you will.

Admiral Graf Spee moored in the harbor, circa 1936-1937. Note the coat of arms mounted on her bow. NH 81110

Her brief peacetime career was filled with intrigues as the ship participated in the Spanish Civil War and the lead up to the Big One in 1939.

Kriegsmarine Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee in Spithead U.K. 1937. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

With that, she was soon at her job of reaping British merchantmen in the Atlantic and had sunk nine such vessels (taking care to preserve the lives of their mariners) before a force of three much smaller British cruisers– HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax, and HMNZS Achilles-– fought a running battle with the big German at sea off the coast of Uruguay near the mouth of the River Plate on 13 December.

While all four ships involved were damaged, they were all still afloat at the end of the engagement with 36 of the Graf Spee‘s complement killed and the Royal Navy consigning 72 of their own to the sea at the end of the day.

Watercolor by Edward Tufnell, RN (Retired), depicting the cruisers HMS Exeter (foreground) and HMNZS Achilles (right center background) in action with the German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee (right background). Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, DC. Donation of Melvin Conant, 1969. NH 86397-KN

HMS ACHILLES against the ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE off River Plate. by John S. Smith, via Royal New Zealand Navy

Admiral Graf Spee vs Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter, painting by Adam Werka

For a more detailed account of the battle, which would be wasted here, see the Royal Navy’s “The Battle of the River Plate: An Account of Events Before, During and After the Action Up to the Self Destruction of the Admiral Graf Spee, 1940” at the National Archives. It is 16-pages including three great maps.

Suffering from over 30 hits from the British guns, the German vessel needed time to lick her wounds and bury her dead ashore.

Admiral Graf Spee anchored off Montevideo, Uruguay in mid-December 1939, following the Battle of the River Plate. NH 59657

Denied a lengthy stay in neutral Montevideo, German CPT Hans Langsdorff believed a British bluff that a much stronger force was waiting for him offshore and scuttled his vessel on 17 December to comply with the local demand that he leave the port in 72 hours. This included misinformation that the battlecruiser Renown was offshore when, in fact, she was not.

With most of his crew looking on from shore, Graf Spee began to sink, ablaze. She would burn for three full days.

As Graf Spee only had enough fuel for about one more day of steaming anyway, and the Uruguayans would not transfer any more, it was an academically sound choice to scuttle the German ship. Even if it managed to break out, she would have been dead in the water the next day in a very unfriendly South Atlantic more than 6,000 miles from home. Instead of a watery grave, the surviving crew of the pocket battleship lived to see another day.

Of course, the Battle of the River Plate was the first chance since the loss of the auxiliary cruiser HMS Rawalpindi the month before for the Royal Navy to exact some measure of revenge for that ship’s heroic stand against the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst.

And on the 18th of December in a broadcast to the Nation, Churchill would compare the tragic but heroic end of Rawalpindi to the inglorious scuttling of the German pocket-battleship Admiral Graf Spee in Montevideo Roads (the day before) with the comment, “Once in harbour she had the choice of submitting in the ordinary manner to internment, which would have been unfortunate for her, or, of coming out to fight and going down in battle, like the Rawalpindi, which would have been honourable to her”.

On 19 December, two days after Graf Spee settled in the muck of the river, Langsdorff led 1,038 men across the border with Argentina into exile, where they would be held together under local custody. Despite telling the local press that he was “satisfied,” Langsdorff, a Great War veteran who earned his Iron Cross at Jutland, fatally shot himself in his Buenos Aires hotel room with his Mauser pocket pistol. He was lying on Graf Spee‘s battle ensign.

Some 300,000 Argentines attended the 45‐year‐old captain’s funeral.

Funeral procession of Captain Hans Langsdorff NH 85636

On 2 February 1940, just six weeks after the German ship was scuttled, the brand new light cruiser USS Helena (CL-50), with the U.S. Navy still officially neutral in the conflict, called on Montevideo while on her shakedown cruise. Soon, a boarding party that included ENS Richard D. Sampson motored over to the wreck and boarded her to collect what intel they could. After all, the Germans still had two other sisterships to Graf Spee in active service at the time.

Ship’s Number Two 10.5cm/65 twin anti-aircraft gun mount (port side, amidships), photographed on board her wreck on 2 February 1940 by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN, of USS Helena (CL-50). The shield of her Number Four 15cm/55 gun is partially visible in the lower right. Her port side crane is in the upper left. NH 50959

Photograph of the mounting for a 20mm machine gun, on the upper platform of the ship’s forward superstructure, with a sketch showing the location of that platform’s two machine gun mounts. NH 51979

Photograph of the ship’s forward broadside (15cm gun) director, with a USS Helena crew member sitting on it. The view looks aft, with the forward superstructure in the background. The director has partially collapsed to starboard. The sketch below shows the director’s arrangement, extending down to the main deck. NH 51982

Photograph of a shell hole in the ship’s forward superstructure tower, made by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter. The hole was described as large enough to crawl through. NH 51986-A

Photograph of the interior of the ship’s forward superstructure tower, showing damage caused by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter during the Battle of the River Plate. Cut wires and the absence of a fire control tube were noted on the original report in which this image appeared. NH 51987-A

Photograph of the ship’s partially collapsed smokestack, with its searchlight platform, seen from the after port end of the forward superstructure. The aircraft recovery crane’s boom is in the lower right. NH 51991-A

Graf Spee would be partially broken up above the waterline in situ, with its good German steel ironically– according to legend– going on to be used to make Ballester Molina M1911-ish pistols in Argentina for a British SOE contract.

Ian McCollum over at Forgotten Weapons opines on that in the below:

As Graf Spee‘s 1942-43 salvage was done by a British contractor, much of her salvageable secrets were uncovered.

Today, numerous parts of the ship are on public display around Latin America including a large salvaged optical rangefinder, telegraphs and several small deck guns. One of her anchors stands at a memorial in Montevideo. Further, hundreds of small relics of the vessel are in personal collections around the world.

Her 880-pound stern eagle was recovered by divers in 2006 as part of a government effort to further scrap the ship but has been the subject of much bickering over its final ownership, and it has been in storage onshore ever since.

It is set to be auctioned off in the coming weeks to comply with a court order with possible winners paying upwards of $30 million for the item, which includes a large swastika in the dirty bird’s talons.

Of Graf Spee’s foes at the River Plate, HMNZS Achilles‘ Y-turret was preserved when (as the Indian cruiser INS Delhi) she was scrapped at the end of the 1970s, and since the mid-1990s has been sitting outside HMNZS Philomel (a Royal New Zealand Navy shore station) at Devonport, Auckland. HMS Exeter (68) was sunk during the Second Battle of the Java Sea, 1 March 1942 and her wreck has been destroyed by illegal salvagers. However, Exeter’s bell, removed in a 1940 refit, is on display at the White Ensign Club in Portsmouth. HMS Ajax (22), scrapped in 1949, has her bell on a monument in Montevideo, donated by ADM Sir Henry Harwood and Sir Eugen Millington-Drake, the latter responsible for circulating the rumors that a large British force was off the port in 1939, waiting for Graf Spee.

Of the more than 1,000 Graf Spee sailors shipwrecked in South America in 1939, nearly 200 managed to escape their loose Argentine custody and, either make for Chile and other points North, or return to Germany by other means. One of these, KKpt Jürgen Wattenberg, reached Germany in May 1940 and would join the U-boat arm only to be captured again in 1942 when his submarine was sunk by the British, spending the rest of the war in the clink in Arizona. Another, Oblt.z.S Friedrich Wilhelm Rasenack, managed to make it back home by June 1941 and would later write a book about his former ship.

In all, between the sailors who never left and those who returned to Latin America after seeing how bad life was in post-war Allied-occupied Germany, some 500 survivors settled in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. They established large colonies in Bariloche, Villa Belgrano, and Cumbrecita, among others. The Waldschanke club in Buenos Aires still held raucous Graf Spee crew reunions well into the 1970s.

The last survivor of pocket battleship’s 1939 crew died at age 89 in Montevideo in 2007.

As for Langsdorff, to this day, his crew’s descendants regularly visit his grave in Argentina’s La Chacarita National Cemetery in Buenos Aires to commemorate him, with many holding that his decision saved their father’s or grandfather’s respective lives.

“The affection, gratitude and unwavering trust of many former Spee soldiers in many encounters over the years have made me proud and defined my joy at the rescue of the many men by my father,” the Captian’s 82-year-old daughter, Nedden, recently told German media. “So I hope one will find a way for him to be honored publicly as well.”

His actions are still celebrated in the German navy today.

“In this respect, it is a historical example of timeless soldierly virtues,” the spokesman for the German Defense Ministry said. “These are recognized in the Bundeswehr and his example is used at the naval school in Mürwik, in teaching and training, to support the young officer candidates in their personal confrontation with the political, legal and ethical dimensions of the military and naval service.”

Meanwhile, in Germany, the Internationales Maritimes Museum in Hamburg has an extremely detailed 1:100 scale model of Graf Spee, built by master Helmut Schmidt, on display on deck 5 of the museum. It is the closest thing to a memorial to the ship in her home country.

Photo: Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg

Specs


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They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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