You mean this Martin?
http://europeanhistory.about.com/
Salvage team in three-year plan to raise the Graf Spee
Fearsome German battleship scuttled in 1939 to become tourist attraction in Uruguay
Jan Rocha in Montevideo
Friday January 23, 2004
The Guardian
A salvage operation will be launched next week to raise from the estuary of the river Plate the wreck of the German battleship Graf Spee, which spread terror across the south Atlantic at the start of the second world war.
One of the most potent symbols of Nazi sea power, it hunted down and sank allied merchant vessels before being disabled by British warships in the first great naval battle of the war, then scuttled by its captain.
The salvage operation, a private venture with German funding and Uruguayan government backing, is expected to last more than three years. The ship is only eight metres below the surface, but it has broken into two and been engulfed by mud.
Once raised and restored, the Graf Spee is expected to become a major tourist attraction in Montevideo, where reminders of the battle which made it famous still abound: museums, memorials, street names, graves.
Of the 50 wounded German sailors who were also left behind in a local hospital, only 84-year-old Friedrich Adolph is still alive, with his scars and his memories.
The battle of the river Plate, on December 13 1939, was the first important naval engagement of the second world war. It took place near the mouth of the vast river which divides Uruguay and Argentina, and local people still recall hearing the booming of the guns out at sea.
An eyewitness wrote: "The whole of the northern bank of the river Plate was in an uproar of excitement. The road from Punta del Este to Montevideo was crowded with automobiles tearing from one vantage point to another, guided by the flashes of the guns. Every rocky hill, every rooftop and every church tower was crowded with people straining their eyes out over the broad expanse of the river."
The action had begun when the Graf Spee was sighted by Force G, the British navy's South American cruiser squadron. Although the German raider could outgun and outrun all three of the more lightly armed allied ships, they opened fire. HMS Exeter was crippled by the Germans' 11-inch guns but, together with HMS Ajax and New Zealand's HMS Achilles, inflicted 20 direct hits on the pocket battleship. Then, in a controversial decision still argued over by naval historians, Captain Hans Langsdorff decided to repair his damaged ship not in pro-German Argentina, but in pro-British Uruguay.
Under the rules of war, a warship could spend no more than 72 hours in a neutral port. Both sides began a game of bluff. "Lights burned in the presidential palace, in the building of the port authority, and in the foreign ministry. The British and French legations and the German embassy were humming with activity," wrote Britain's minister plenipotentiary to Uruguay, Eugen Millington-Drake, who played a key role in the events of the next few days.
Smokescreen
From the roof of the Salvio Palace, still the highest building in Montevideo, British intelligence agents trained their binoculars on the enemy warship. The British laid a smokescreen of false intelligence to convince the Germans a fleet of warships was on its way to attack the Graf Spee as soon as it put to sea again.
With his spotter planes out of action, Langsdorff had no means of checking on these reports. Instead, he concealed the real extent of the battle damage, which had not only left a gaping hole in the Graf Spee's side but wrecked the ship's galley and bakery, leaving the crew of more than 1,100 men without bread or hot food. As the 72 hours came to an end on the evening of December 17, tens of thousands of Uruguayans poured down to the waterfront to watch the patched-up Graf Spee raise anchor and sail, as everyone believed, to join battle again.
What even the British spies had not detected was that under cover of darkness, more than 1,000 sailors had been secretly transferred to a German-owned freighter, the Tacoma. The wounded, including Friedrich Adolph, then 20, were sent ashore to hospital.
A skeleton crew smashed up the Graf Spee's ultra-modern gunsight technology with hammers to stop the British finding it. Four miles out, the captain and his men took to small boats, and the night sky over the river Plate was lit up by explosions and flames as the pride of the Germany navy burned and sank. The Graf Spee's sailors were taken across the river to Buenos Aires, where crowds greeted them with fresh fruit. That night, wrapping himself in the flag of imperial Germany rather than the swastika, Captain Langsdorff put a bullet through his head. Did he feel responsible for for bringing dishonour on his ship? Whatever the reason, for those who have spent years studying the events, he was above all an honourable man, who saved many lives.
At the naval museum in Montevideo, retired Captain Ricardo Barre said: "The battle of the river Plate was fought by 'gentlemen of the sea'. Langsdorff sank merchant ships, but always picked up the crews. Several of the British captains he rescued went to the funerals of the 36 German sailors who were killed. He preferred to save his young sailors' lives rather than sacrifice them for the fatherland in a battle he could not win."
Mr Adolph, who stayed behind in Uruguay, remembers Langsdorff as a father figure, and as saying: "I've got too many young lads aboard". In Spanish still heavily accented, he added: "He didn't want us to be killed. But we respected his decision to take his own life. It's the tradition, a captain dies with his ship."
Mr Adolph married Lotte Klaas, one of the four daughters of a German immigrant couple who went to visit the wounded sailors. Their sixth floor flat is not so far from the huge Anglican church that looks out over the river. Inside is a memorial plaque to the 77 British and New Zealand sailors who died in the battle of the river Plate.
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And quite fresh news saying the same thing really
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...rafspee04.html
