Thanks for the links and updates on this ship. Unfortunately, she's quickly rotting in those warm waters and won't last in any usable state for very much longer. I presume they will just keep picking her bones clean.
Jay
Thanks for the links and updates on this ship. Unfortunately, she's quickly rotting in those warm waters and won't last in any usable state for very much longer. I presume they will just keep picking her bones clean.
Jay
What would the members on here have done if they had been in the same situation as Cpt. Langsdorff? Would you have destroyed your craft or would you have attempted to make a break to another port?
Hi Allan, given the situation he was in, I think Captain Langsdorff made a wise choice. He was in a pretty hopeless situation according to the Intel available to him and to save the lives of his crew he did the best option open to him.
Cheers, Ade.
Hi Alan,
IMO Langsdorff was lead to believe, by insecure telephone calls and bogus radio traffic broadcast by British Intelligence, that half the Royal Navy was waiting for him to make a bolt for it. This was not the case, and, if he had made the attempt, he may well have succeded or at least taken some of the Navy's best battle wagons with him. C'est la guerre!
Cheers, Ned.
'I do not think we can hope for any better thing now.
We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. SCOTT.
Last Entry - For God's sake look after our people.'
In memory of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. South Pole Expedition, 30th March 1912.
I agree Ned, hence my point about the Intel available to him. A clever ploy by our chaps to decieve him.
Cheers, Ade.
Thanks Ned,
the radio messages were an excellent decoy, and probably helped Langsdorff reach his decision to scuttle. Had the aircraft on the Graf Spee been working he probably would have run a recon mission to see what was actually out there waiting for him and maybes taken a chance. It must not have been an easy decision to destroy a multi-million reichmark ship though...
Hello-although much is made of the British subterfuge, the simple facts were his ship was damaged, the engines were unreliable, much of the ammunition used and his location was known and Allied warships were concentrating-Langsdorf wasn't getting away and as a honourable, humane man spared his crew (but not himself).
The captain was definitely an honorable man by saving his crew from what he "thought' was an unwinnable clash. The information on the link stating that Raeder gave him a choice, is the first I heard of that. Even if the captain had made a run for it and gotten away, it wouldn't have lasted a year with the lovely British Navy on the prowel. They would have hunted him down and delivered him a less honorable demise.
Jay
Hello-it must also be remembered that in late 1939 the considerable force of the French 'Marine Nationale' was also actively engaged against the surface raiders including the vastly more powerful battlecruisers 'Dunkerque' & 'Strasbourg' and a number of heavy and light cruisers.
It's really sad Uruguay won't let Graf Spee be salvaged
Last edited by Warmachine33; 06-02-2010 at 06:57 AM.
Similar Threads
Bookmarks