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HISTORY
Admiral Graf Spee was a Deutschland-class heavy cruiser
(originally termed Panzerschiff or armoured ship, sometimes referred
to as "pocket battleship") which served with the Kriegsmarine of
Nazi Germany during World War II. The vessel was named after Admiral
Maximilian von Spee, commander of the East Asia Squadron that fought
the battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands in World War I. She was
laid down at the Reichsmarinewerft shipyard in Wilhelmshaven in
October 1932 and completed by January 1936. The ship was nominally
under the 10,000 long tons (10,000 t) limitation on warship size
imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, though with a full load
displacement of 16,020 long tons (16,280 t), she significantly
exceeded it. Armed with six 28 cm (11 in) guns in two triple gun
turrets, Admiral Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun
any cruiser fast enough to catch them. Their top speed of 28 kn (52
km/h; 32 mph) left only a handful of ships in the Anglo-French
navies able to catch them and powerful enough to sink them.
The ship conducted five non-intervention patrols during the Spanish
Civil War in 1936–1938, and participated in the Coronation Review
for King George VI in May 1937. Admiral Graf Spee was deployed to
the South Atlantic in the weeks before the outbreak of World War II,
to be positioned in merchant sea lanes once war was declared.
Between September and December 1939, the ship sank nine ships
totaling 50,089 gross register tons (GRT), before being confronted
by three British cruisers at the Battle of the River Plate on 13
December. Admiral Graf Spee inflicted heavy damage on the British
ships, but she too was damaged, and was forced to put into port at
Montevideo. Convinced by false reports of superior British naval
forces approaching his ship, Hans Langsdorff, the commander of the
ship, ordered the vessel to be scuttled. The ship was partially
broken up in situ, though part of the ship remains visible above the
surface of the water.
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