The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (76 page)

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The
Deutschland,
which was to have harassed our lifeline across the Northwest Atlantic, interpreted her orders with comprehending caution. At no time during her two and a half months’ cruise did she approach a convoy. Her determined efforts to avoid British forces prevented her from making more than two kills, one being a small Norwegian ship. A third ship, the United States
City of Flint,
carrying a cargo for Britain, was captured, but was eventually released by the Germans from a Norwegian port. Early in November, the
Deutschland
slunk back to Germany, passing again through Arctic waters. The mere presence of this powerful ship upon our main trade route had, however, imposed, as was intended, a serious strain upon our escorts and hunting groups in the North Atlantic. We should in fact have preferred her activity to the vague menace she embodied.

The
Graf Spee
was more daring and imaginative, and soon became the centre of attention in the South Atlantic. In this vast area powerful Allied forces came into play by the middle of October. One group consisted of the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal
and the battle cruiser
Renown,
working from Freetown, in conjunction with a French group of two heavy cruisers and the British aircraft carrier
Hermes,
based on Dakar. At the Cape of Good Hope were the two heavy cruisers
Sussex
and
Shropshire,
while on the east coast of South America, covering the vital traffic with the River Plate and Rio de Janeiro, ranged Commodore Harwood’s group, comprising the
Cumberland, Exeter, Ajax,
and
Achilles.
The
Achilles
was a New Zealand ship manned mainly by New Zealanders.

The
Spee’s
practice was to make a brief appearance at some point, claim a victim, and vanish again into the trackless ocean wastes. After a second appearance farther south on the Cape route, in which she sank only one ship, there was no further sign of her for nearly a month, during which our hunting groups were searching far and wide in all areas, and special vigilance was enjoined in the Indian Ocean. This was in fact her destination, and on November 15 she sank a small British tanker in the Mozambique Channel, between Madagascar and the mainland. Having thus registered her appearance as a feint in the Indian Ocean, in order to draw the hunt in that direction, her Captain – Langsdorff, a high-class person – promptly doubled back and, keeping well south of the Cape, re-entered the Atlantic. This move had not been unforeseen; but our plans to intercept him were foiled by the quickness of his withdrawal. It was by no means clear to the Admiralty whether in fact one raider was on the prowl or two, and exertions were made, both in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. We also thought that the
Spee
was her sister ship, the
Scheer.
This disproportion between the strength of the enemy and the counter-measures forced upon us was vexatious. It recalled to me the anxious weeks before the actions at Coronel and later at the Falkland Islands in December, 1914, when we had to be prepared at seven or eight different points, in the Pacific and South Atlantic, for the arrival of Admiral von Spee with the earlier edition of the
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau.
A quarter of a century had passed, but the puzzle was the same. It was with a definite sense of relief that we learnt that the
Spee
had appeared once more on the Cape-Freetown route, sinking two more ships on December 2 and one on the seventh.

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From the beginning of the war, Commodore Harwood’s special care and duty had been to cover British shipping off the River Plate and Rio de Janeiro. He was convinced that sooner or later the
Spee
would come towards the Plate, where the richest prizes were offered to her. He had carefully thought out the tactics which he would adopt in an encounter. Together, his eight-inch cruisers
Cumberland
and
Exeter,
and his six-inch cruisers
Ajax
and
Achilles,
could not only catch but kill. However, the needs of fuel and refit made it unlikely that all four would be present “on the day.” If they were not, the issue was disputable. On hearing that the
Doric Star
had been sunk on December 2, Harwood guessed right. Although she was over three thousand miles away, he assumed that the
Spee
would come towards the Plate. He estimated with luck and wisdom that she might arrive by the thirteenth. He ordered all his available forces to concentrate there by December 12. Alas, the
Cumberland
was refitting at the Falklands; but on the morning of the thirteenth,
Exeter, Ajax,
and
Achilles
were in company at the centre of the shipping routes off the mouth of the river. Sure enough, at 6.14
A.M
., smoke was sighted to the east. The longed-for collision had come.

Harwood in the
Ajax,
disposing his forces so as to attack the pocket battleship from widely divergent quarters and thus confuse her fire, advanced at the utmost speed of his small squadron. Captain Langsdorff thought at the first glance that he had only to deal with one light cruiser and two destroyers, and he too went full speed ahead; but a few moments later, he recognised the quality of his opponents, and knew that a mortal action impended. The two forces were now closing at nearly fifty miles an hour. Langsdorff had but a minute to make up his mind. His right course would have been to turn away immediately so as to keep his assailants as long as possible under the superior range and weight of his eleven-inch guns, to which the British could not at first have replied. He would thus have gained for his undisturbed firing the difference between adding speeds and subtracting them. He might well have crippled one of his foes before any could fire at him. He decided, on the contrary, to hold on his course and make for the
Exeter.
The action, therefore, began almost simultaneously on both sides.

Commodore Harwood’s tactics proved advantageous. The eight-inch salvos from the
Exeter
struck the
Spee
from the earliest stages of the fight. Meanwhile, the six-inch cruisers were also hitting hard and effectively. Soon the
Exeter
received a hit which, besides knocking out B turret, destroyed all the communications on the bridge, killed or wounded nearly all upon it, and put the ship temporarily out of control. By this time, however, the six-inch cruisers could no longer be neglected by the enemy, and the
Spee
shifted her main armament to them, thus giving respite to the
Exeter
at a critical moment. The German battleship, plastered from three directions, found the British attack too hot, and soon afterwards turned away under a smoke screen with the apparent intention of making for the River Plate. Langsdorff had better have done this earlier.

After this turn the
Spee
once more engaged the
Exeter,
hard hit by the eleven-inch shells. All her forward guns were out of action. She was burning fiercely amidships and had a heavy list. Captain Bell, unscathed by the explosion on the bridge, gathered two or three officers round him in the after control station, and kept his ship in action with her sole remaining turret until at 7.30 failure of pressure put this, too, out of action. He could do no more. At 7.40 the
Exeter
turned away to effect repairs and took no further part in the fight.

The
Ajax
and
Achilles,
already in pursuit, continued the action in the most spirited manner. The
Spee
turned all her heavy guns upon them. By 7.25 the two after turrets in the
Ajax
had been knocked out, and the
Achilles
had also suffered damage. These two light cruisers were no match for the enemy in gun-power, and finding that his ammunition was running low, Harwood in the
Ajax
decided to break off the fight till dark, when he would have better chances of using his lighter armament effectively, and perhaps his torpedoes. He, therefore, turned away under cover of smoke, and the enemy did not follow. This fierce action had lasted an hour and twenty minutes. During all the rest of the day the
Spee
made for Montevideo, the British cruisers hanging grimly on her heels with only occasional interchanges of fire. Shortly after midnight, the
Spee
entered Montevideo and lay there repairing damage, taking in stores, landing wounded, transshipping personnel to a German merchant ship, and reporting to the Fuehrer.
Ajax
and
Achilles
lay outside, determined to dog her to her doom should she venture forth. Meanwhile, on the night of the fourteenth, the
Cumberland,
which had been steaming at full speed from the Falklands, took the place of the utterly crippled
Exeter.
The arrival of this eight-inch-gun cruiser restored to its narrow balance a doubtful situation.

It had been most exciting to follow the drama of this brilliant action from the Admiralty War Room, where I spent a large part of the thirteenth. Our anxieties did not end with the day. Mr. Chamberlain was at that time in France on a visit to the Army. On the seventeenth I wrote to him: