![]() ![]() From then on it was a thunderous cacophony of sound as these great guns belched. At 6:14 am, the Admiral Graf Spee fired the first shots of the day, straddling the Ajax and the Exeter. As the two larger ships raced toward each other, the advantage held by Graf Spee with its larger guns was fast disappearing, as she was rapidly coming within Exeter’s range. Harwood was on the Ajax and would direct from there. But the massive German 11-inch guns could far outshoot the biggest guns the British carried.īritish Commodore Henry Harwood had decided to have Ajax and Achilles act as one unit and the Exeter as another. The Germans and the British were steaming straight toward each other. However, it was soon discovered that the two destroyers were actually two light cruisers: the British HMS Ajax and and the New Zealander HMNZS Achilles, each with 6-inch main armament. German Captain Hans Langsdorff believed that the Exeter and the destroyers were protecting a convoy. The two vessels with Exeter were thought to be protecting destroyers. The first mast was identified as the larger ship, the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, with 8-inch guns. ![]() At first light on December 13, 1939, the Graf Spee’s lookout shouted the alert-two masts were sighted on the dimly lit horizon. In the early weeks of World War II, the South Atlantic was a hunting ground for German raiders. One of the new and innovative ships was the Admiral Graf Spee. ![]() ![]() In spite of the 20-year-old Treaty of Versailles, Germany had successfully built a massive military machine for land and sea. The year 1939 pitted the Axis forces, pushing for war, against the Allied forces of France, Great Britain, and the Low Countries, which were trying desperately to avoid conflict. Let us Out!” they cried as a third, and then a fourth shell hit, and then the room went silent. They were seasoned sailors, these captains and mates of the nine British ships captured and sunk by the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, and not happy to be pounded by British gunfire.Ī second shell landed near their prison, and more alarm was heard from the stalwart sailors. There were oaths and shouts, but no Germans appeared to undo the hatches that held the prisoners hostage. When the first shell hit in the dimly lit interior of the German ship, a subdued chorus came from the 29 ships’ officers held prisoner on board. ![]()
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