After an exchange of gunfire with HMS Ajax and Achilles, during which Admiral Graf Spee knocked out two of Ajax’s turrets while managing to evade return torpedo fire, she finally turned away to limp towards the neutral port of Montevideo. He quickly realised his mistake when the light cruisers, HMS Ajax and Achilles, started steaming toward Admiral Graf Spee, forcing him to break off from the Exeter, probably saving her in the process.īadly damaged herself, the Exeter withdrew but she had already done enough one of her shells had destroyed the Admiral Graf Spee’s fuel processing system, effectively leaving the ship with just sixteen hours’ worth of fuel and no friendly port to repair or refuel. On board the Admiral Graf Spee, Langsdorff had been willing to accept battle with the British ships, thinking them a single cruiser (he had identified the Exeter correctly) and two destroyers that were perhaps escorting a nearby merchant fleet.
The Admiral Graf Spee’s guns immediately proved accurate and hit the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter hard, taking two turrets out of action and filling the bridge with shrapnel.
Thus, commenced the first naval battle of the Second World War. When Harwood’s force finally encountered the Admiral Graf Spee, Langsdorff moved to engage the British ships, in the mistaken belief at first that had encountered another convoy. A Norwegian merchant added to Harwood’s hunch when she spotted the Admiral Graf Spee en route using her searchlights and radioed the information on. Commodore Harwood, leading the Royal Navy ships from the light cruiser Ajax, correctly guessed that the German cruiser would head to South America to start hitting shipping near the River Plate estuary (between Uruguay and Argentina).
The merchant ship Doric Star, sunk by the Admiral Graf Spee off the coast of South Africa, managed to broadcast a distress alert. On 13 December 1939, the Admiral Graf Spee was intercepted off the coast of South America by a hunting group comprising the cruisers HMS Ajax, Achilles and Exeter. Admiral Graf Spee was so successful that the Royal Navy had little choice but to hunt her down (aided by the French battleships Dunkerque and Strasbourg), though it should be remembered that the Admiral Graf Spee’s captain, Hans Langsdorff, had a policy of taking on board all survivors of the ships he attacked. The Admiral Graf Spee (pronounced Sch-Pay, not Sp-Eee) was deployed to the South Atlantic and was soon creating havoc for the merchant ships of the British Empire, who now had to contend not only with U-boats but also a marauder that was much faster than their own boats and had weaponry that could literally sink a battleship.