The Whale Has Wings Vol 1 - Rebirth (12 page)

The Graf Spee was first spotted by one of HMS Venerable's patrolling Swordfish to the north west of the British force at 1000 hours on the 10th December. The weather was very good, and the plane caused considerable consternation on the German vessel. The plane had already reported the ship as a warship, and a large and suspicious one - the two triple heavy turrets made it extremely likely this was a pocket battleship. On hearing of the sighting, Commodore Harwood ordered his force to close her in order to make a definite identification.

The Graf Spee had no real indication of where the plane had come from. It was most likely from a carrier, but there was also the possibility it was based on land, as it was just about close enough. The initial thought, that this was a spotting plane from a cruiser, was discarded once it was seen the plane had wheels, not floats. Unfortunately for the Germans, the British cruiser force was fairly close, and in any case had a considerable speed advantage. For a short time, the ship tried to bluff off the patrol planes increasingly pointed questions
by signal lamp, but when smoke was detected to the south east this was given up, the ship cleared to action stations and turned north at full speed. Since the British cruisers had a speed advantage of some seven knots, escape was going to prove difficult.

As per standing instructions, the Venerable allowed the cruisers to draw ahead, w
hile she spotted eight swordfish with torpedoes on deck (the other four of her swordfish were on patrol). As the Graf Spee turned away, the other patrol planes were called back, to help keep an eye on her. Such suspicious behaviour from a ship looking awfully like a pocket battleship really only had one likely cause. The initial identification of the British ships was in error; the Graf Spee thought she was being closed by a light cruiser and two destroyers (the Venerable being too far away to be spotted at this time). This led her to believe that this was the carriers (by now the idea that it was a land based plane had been discarded) escort ships, and while it was going to be very difficult to evade the carriers planes on such a glorious day, if she could destroy or at least heavily damage her escorts, the carrier might withdraw for long enough for them to make their escape that night. It was most likely a British light carrier, in which case it was known not to carry a large number of planes, and the German commander had a good expectation that he could evade or absorb their attacks without much serious damage. At this time no ship at sea had been sunk, or even seriously damaged, from the air.

Sadly
for Captain Langsdorf, as the British ships drew closer it was seen that they were in fact cruisers. By now the actions of the Graf Spee, and her lack of response to questions, had decided it for Commodore Harwood - this was an enemy pocket battleship. Final confirmation was when the ship opened fire on the Swordfish (it was later ascertained that this was to prevent it spotting for the cruiser force's gunfire). Harwood had made allowance for this sort of encounter in his preparations. Since the Graf Spee outranged the cruisers, and with heavier guns, there was no point in closing with her when the weather was good and he had a carrier full of full of planes following him. So instead of closing, the cruisers moved to keep the range at around 25,000 yards. Given the good weather conditions and the availability of at least four TBR planes, there was no worry about losing their quarry.

The first at
tack from the Venerable was by eight Swordfish using torpedoes at 1230. Since the target was on her own, they attacked in a hammer and anvil attack of four planes in each. AA fire from the Graf Spee was heavy, and fairly accurate; one swordfish was shot down, and two others damaged. However this left seven torpedoes heading towards the ship. While the pocket battleships were never going to win any prizes as the most agile of ships, Captain Langsdorf managed to avoid six of them. The seventh hit the ship forward, causing shock damage and a considerable hole - while termed 'battleships', the class was only an oversized heavy cruiser, with correspondingly poor torpedo protection. Although the fighting power of the ship was not directly affected, she took on a list and slowed considerably as hundreds of tons of water flooded into her. The Swordfish returned to the carrier, being recovered while the ship carried on preparation for its second strike. Harwood viewed the attack with satisfaction; whatever happened now, that torpedo hit would likely doom the Graf Spee to eventual destruction, as even if she still proved too much for his cruisers to handle, they would be able to trail her while heavy forces were brought to bear. For the moment, however, he was perfectly happy to stand and cheer on the FAA as they made her an easier target for his ships. The Graf Spee had fired an occasional salvo at him before the attack, but at the range he was shadowing her there was really no chance of a hit - all the giant splashes of water did was raise ironic cheers from the crew.

The Venerable
's crew had been busy breaking all records for the time taken to arm a dozen Cormorant dive bombers with 1,000lb SAP bombs. In order to save time (and as the risk of any air attack on them was negligible to non-existent), they had armed and fuelled the planes in the hanger to leave the deck free to recover the Swordfish. As soon as this had been done, and the planes struck below, the Cormorants were brought up and arranged for a strike. This would happen only 60 minutes after the torpedo attack on the Graf Spee.

Meanwhile the Graf Spee had brought the damage mainly under control; the airborne torpedo didn't carry enough explosive to do serious underwater damage except by a lucky hit, and although the ships speed was now down to 20kt, and there was still a 4 degree list, she was still capable of fighting. It all depended on how many planes that damn carrier had, and how effective they were.

The crew watched with morbid fascination as the Cormorants neared. At first, they expected this to be a level bombing attack, and Langsdorf was quietly optimistic that a dozen planes wouldn't be enough for a successful one. This belief was rudely broken as the first three planes dropped into a ridiculously steep plunge aimed straight at them. The AA fire of German ships was no better against dive bombers than that of the Royal Navy, and the light AA of the ship was quite limited - indeed, with eight 37mm and 4 20mm guns, she carried less close AA than one of the Venerable's escorting destroyers.

The Cormorants stooped in four
groups of three at 1400. The AA fire did damage a couple of them, more by luck than judgement, but that had no effect on their attack.

The first group of three managed a complete miss and two
near missed that showered the ship with water and splinters. Before the crew had time to do more than breathe a sigh of relief, the second wave was heading down. This time, they were more successful. One bomb landed in the water close enough to cause shock damage to some of her machinery. The second bomb was a miss, but the third sliced straight through the 2" deck armour and exploded enthusiastically on its first (and last) encounter with a German diesel in the forward engine room, causing the entire propulsion system to shut down due to the shock. With the ship slowing rapidly, the last six planes had an easier target. Even so, there was only one more hit, although a number of the others were close enough to cause more splinter damage. The final bomb, however, landed straight on top of the aft triple turret. While this boasted 4" of armour plate, the effect of the 1,000lb bomb was to completely wreck it, jamming it on its turret ring and killing the crew by blast and shock

All the planes made it
back to the carrier, although two were too damaged for another strike, and one had to ditch next to one of the escorts. Fortunately both of the crew survived.

The cruisers followed the ship like hopeful vultures, as the Venerable informed Harwood that they w
ould be able to launch another six Swordfish in 30-40 minutes. The Graf Spee's engineers had managed to get some of her propulsion working, however she was obviously going nowhere at 11 knots. Harwood decided to wait and let the planes get in one more strike. He had the afternoon left, and even if this strike was unsuccessful he could afford a second divebomber attack before committing his cruisers. The more the Graf Spee was damaged, the less damage he would take in sinking her. The second Swordfish strike took off some 40 minutes later, and was in range of the Graf Spee not many minutes later at about 1515. As there were only six of them , and the ship was moving slowly, they went for a simultaneous attack on either quarter. The flight attacking on the port side missed although one torpedo came very close, but the attack from starboard hit her twice. One torpedo hit forward, causing damage and letting in yet more water; the other hit amidships, and the shock effect stopped the remaining diesels even as the water started to flood into the engine compartment

Harwood saw the explosions and the obvious sudden slowing of his target, an
d grabbed the opportunity. The three cruisers bore in on the Graf Spee at full power, the Exeter opening fire first, the Ajax and Achilles closing into effective range of their 6" guns. They had a window of opportunity as the Graf Spee was temporarily paralysed by the bomb damage, and by the time the men on its bridge had realised of their attack, the cruisers had already closed the range and were straddling the ship.

Despite this, the Graf Spee fought back as hard as she could, but the shock from the air attacks had damaged her rather delicate radar fire control, and as a result the fore turret and the 5.9" guns were having to be worked in local control. While they did manage a number of hits on the British ships - Exeter was hit by one 11" shells
and two 5.9" which did considerable damage, and the light cruisers received a number of 5.9" hits, the damage from a growing number of 8" and 6" shells turned the superstructure of the Graf Spee into ruin. With only the forward turret operational, and with the 5.9" guns only having limited arcs of fire, the agile light cruisers made the most of the vulnerable stern aspect of the ship, closing the range to where even their lighter 6" shells could cause serious damage. The growing list of the Graf Spee didn't help, slowing her rate of fire considerably. Finally the Exeter hit the forward turret; while it was heavily armoured, the concussion put it and the crew out of action for a time. With the ship now nothing more than a listing, wallowing target, only two 5.9" guns on the port side of the ship, Harwood indicated to the Achilles to close and finish her with torpedoes. The cruiser fired two 21" torpedoes into the Graf Spee's starboard side, and the larger warheads were the final blow to the ship. Within minutes the crew could be seen jumping off as the list rapidly reaches an unrecoverable angle, and less than 10 minutes later the ship capsized and sank.

There was later a certain amount of criticism of Harwood for attacking before using the final divebomber strike, but as he pointed out it was starting to get hazy, and while a night action was quite acceptable, it was far better to attack the Graf Spee while she was temporarily incapacitated by the torpedo hits, and he still had a f
inal strike available that day - in any case, it would not have been ready for 3-40 minutes. If his ships had taken heavy damage, he would have withdrawn and used the final Cormorant strike before closing again.

As it was the Admiralty, the British public and the First Lord were most pleased with t
he result. One of Germany's heavy pocket battleships had been sunk with minimal damage to the British ships, and many in the Admiralty were very satisfied that the concepts of the FAA and the light carrier had been so well vindicated. While there was still a strong battleship lobby in the Admiralty, even they acknowledged the usefulness of the carriers now. The battle was dubbed by the press the Battle of the River Plate, something that made the Admirals sigh as they were well over two hundred miles away from the Plate itself; however the name stuck.

The result of the battle was also to provide the final
argument for Operation Chastise, which was scheduled for the end of December (the plan ideally needed a 3/4 or better moon, and some of the carriers spread across the world needed to be brought back home.

Operation Chastise

One of the first demands made by Churchill in his new post as First Lord was to see the Navy's offensive plans against Germany. He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, unhappy with the very limited options. It was pointed out that in fact the very weakness of the German navy made it difficult to attack them, and in the case of the dispersed raiders and submarines the problem was in finding them at all. The rest of the German fleet was sitting happy and snug in harbour, only coming out for occasional operations and slipping back home straight after.

However there was one operation that could cause very considerable damage to the German fleet while avoiding the minefields and coastal defences set up to protect the warships. This was a plan which the FAA had developed and been training for for
some years, Operation Chastise. In fact, this plan had two versions, one for use against Germany (Operation Chastise), the other against Italy(Operation Judgement), since the basic premise was the same in both cases. A heavy attack at night, by carrier planes, on the enemy fleet while it thought itself safe in harbour.

The FAA had been training, practising and planning
such an attack for over three years, in fact as soon as the availability of the Swordfish made it practical. The original problem had been how to use aerial torpedoes in a shallow harbour - when dropped, a torpedo normally dived to around 50-60 feet before coming back to its attack depth. The issue had been solved (something the USN was later to regret) by special attachments to the torpedoes which stopped them diving too deep and bottoming out, and when the Cormorant divebomber became available it was added into the plan. At first it had been intended to use it as a level bomber, but when the plan was finalised in September, some details of the possible targets made the planners revert to their divebombing role. Divebombing at night was of course risky (it was all too possible to dive the plane straight into the water), but an automatic pull-out mechanism was fitted to the planes, and given the circumstances the risk was deemed acceptable. Technical estimates gave the pilot a better chance of surviving than during a daytime attack with the port's AA defences alert.