Command Decisions: Langsdorff and the Battle of the River Plate by David Miller

Author:David Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 9781473822344
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Active Operations

Phase II: Indian Ocean

Narrative

Graf Spee underwent replenishment from Altmark on the morning of 28 October in a position some 100 miles north-east of Tristan da Cunha. That afternoon Langsdorff convened a Kriegsrat (council of war) at which he announced his intention of taking the ship into the Indian Ocean and a few hours later Graf Spee set off on the new phase of his mission. His course took the ship towards the Antarctic before turning east, passing some 400 miles south of Africa’s southernmost tip, Cape Agulhas, and then north-east into the Indian Ocean. In the event, this foray into what seemed to be a potentially fruitful hunting ground was to prove singularly unproductive for Graf Spee but of great importance to historians, as will be explained.

As Graf Spee left Altmark on 28 October a group of officers celebrated the promotion of two of their number with a glass of champagne in the admiral’s mess1 and there seemed every reason for Langsdorff and all his crew to be full of optimism. The captain himself exuded a quiet and apparently unshakeable confidence and, on 30 October, he announced the award of the Iron Cross to no fewer than one hundred members of the crew, although he was careful to stress that in his view every member deserved one. He also took the opportunity to tell his crew that, in January, Graf Spee would ‘versuchen in die Heimat durchzubrechen’ (attempt to break through to the homeland), although the use of the word ‘versuchen’ (to attempt) seemed to imply a less than one hundred per cent belief that it would be successful.

On 4 November Langsdorff visited the officers’ wardroom and in the course of conversation with a small group of officers he told them that he intended to act in the Indian Ocean as Graf Spee and then to return to the coast of South America where he would resume the guise of Admiral Scheer.

As they proceeded around the cape the weather deteriorated and by the time they crossed the Cape–Australia shipping lane – which was disappointingly empty of any potential victims – the seas were so steep that it would have been impossible to launch any of the ship’s boats anyway. So Langsdorff decided to continue farther north towards the southern end of the Madagascar Channel.

MV Africa Shell, 15 November2

At 1115 on 15 November Graf Spee was sailing along the coast of Moçambique (Portuguese East Africa) some 150 miles north of Laurenço Marques3 when lookouts spotted a small tanker, MV Africa Shell, sailing close to the shore. It was a brand-new vessel whose task was to restock dumps of aviation fuel between Mombasa and Durban for the British Imperial Airways flying boats plying the UK–South Africa route.4 Unlike previous victims, Africa Shell’s master, Captain Patrick Dove, recognised Graf Spee immediately as a ‘pocket battleship’, and he worked up to full speed in an attempt to drive his vessel onto the beach, or, at best, to get within the three-mile limit, where he would be safe from capture.

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