Was it possible for the Graf Spee to break out of Montevideo?

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Achilles at the River Plate | NZETC

 

The KM had two more of them, Deutschland/Lutzow and Graf Scheer, both of which were fairly inactive for most of the war. Germany had more than enough "pocket battleships".

The days of commerce raiding at sea were effectively over; efficient radio communications, aircraft, and radar had made commerce raiding a losing game. The German commerce raiders of WW II were able to achieve nothing more than pin-prick results against Allied merchant ships.

Yes, but she can't move as fast as the British ships waiting for her. All they have to do is shadow GS and keep contact until heavier British units arrive, a matter of two or three days. Your idea of "breaking the line" is meaningless; the British cruisers don't need to stop the GS, so there is no "line" to break. They simply need to maintain contact, they don't have to outgun her or anything else, just keep GS under surveillance. Since they are all faster than she is, they can determine the range and stay out of effective gunnery and torpedo range.

Replenishment ships do the GS no good whatsoever, unless she can shake her pursuers and disappear into the Atlantic. It would be impossible to replenish the GS with any British vessels nearby.

It's unlikely that the British cruisers will try to sink the GS, they will wait to heavy surface units appear, or more likely, a British aircraft carrier. The GS won't have much chance to do significant damage to the RN.

Well, if you have any sense, you'll be thinking that is what is likely to happen if you send out commerce raiders against a much more powerful navy; that they will eventually all be harried to destruction by superior forces.

That's the breaks in a war. The Deutschland were no originally built to be commerce raiders, so using them that way risks them being destroyed before paying for themselves.

 

I think you are making things too easy for the RN here,
a) Mantaining contact is likely to mean keeping well into 11' gun range, so a lucky hit is possible, what was the maximum visibility in the area at the time?
b) AFAIK none of the ships present had a working radar set so what happens after sunset? In just 6 hours "unobserved steaming" the GS would make 120 miles and if the British guess wrong this value can double. Think of the Indian Ocean raid, the two fleets steamed within 150 miles of each other but did not spot despite both having carriers and the British even radar equipped planes.
c) Was there an advantage for the GS due to engine technology? I'm not sure but I suspect her diesels could mantain near top speed for a lot longer than the British cruiser's steam turbines, if only because of the horrible fuel consumprtion of steam boilers at top regimes.

This doesn't mean a breakout is likely to succeed but a possibility exists.

IMO what doomed the Graf Spee was the same thing that doomed the German military overall, the operational plan did not take into account the human factor, especially combat stress and fatigue. We usually do not think of "morale" in connection to naval battles as it's often overshadowed by technology (an luck), in this case it was not.

 

I suspect that the British cruisers would attack. If they do so the CLs and Spee are all likely to run out of main battery ammo in the first half hour. If the British have torpedoes left at that point Spee may be in immediate trouble. If not as long as one of them is not dissabled they can maintain relativly close contact. Remember they don't have to do it for long. Two more British forces are within a couple of days and closing from opposite directions. The only dirrection Spee can go that puts her further from them is SSW. That's not a direction she wants to go.

My understanding is that GS enines were in need of considerable work and that her top speed had been considerably reduced not from battle damage but age and her long cruise.

 

I don't think so.

Visibility was reportedly good in the area during the battle. The maximum range of GS's 11" guns was something like 30,000 yards, but, in daylight, the British cruisers could maintain contact from outside that range. At night, the range at which the british cruisers could see GS would be probably half or perhaps even a third of GS's main gun range. But at night, especially with her main battery FC damaged (range finder destroyed, and FC computer damaged) the GS isn't lkley to get a "lucky" hit on any of the British cruisers. and it's going to take a lot more than one or two hits to disable all the British cruisers.

If it did come to a gunfight, the Cumberland was a much more powerful cruiser than the Exeter (Eight 8" guns to six for Exeter) and completely undamaged with a full ammo load. The British light cruisers still had around 20-30 minutes worth of ammo left and thus could force GS to split her fire, which means that only three 11" guns could be brought to bear on each British cruiser. Under the circumstances, the British are far more likely to hit GS than she is to hit them.

In addition, at least one of the light cruisers has an operational plane and the Cumberland has three, so the British have air search/surveillance capability.

Against THREE cruisers, the GS has to steam pretty much in a straight line away from them, so her course is predictable. She can't double back or turn radically or she will be seen by one of the cruisers, even at night. That means the GS isn't going to get six hours or even three hours steaming out of sight of the crusiers on an unpredictable course. Given that, with air search capability, the British are extremely likely to sight her again in the unlikely event they lose contact in the hours of darkness.

Actually, I think the advantage mechanically, was with the British. The GS's engines needed an overhaul and she wasn't able to make top speed, so the British had a speed advantage of at least 5 knots. Moreover, the plant that purified GS's diesel oil before being burned, had been destroyed, so there was a definite possibiity that her engines might be stopped due to fouled oil. There is no reason to think the diesel engines conferred any advantage in this situation over the British steam turbines

Definitey, the possibility exists; there are no gurantees in war. But the odds are very markedly against it.

 

Her top speed before battle damage was 24 knots. In reacing that speed, she had to pass a critical vibration speed that probably helped knock out her forward turret.

 

I also believe the British will not just shadow, the memory of Goeben and Admiral Troubridge is too strong, give the Graf Spee some luck like a conveniently placed rain squall and she's gone and catching up with her again is iffy at best. If the Germans disable Cumberland without running out of 11" ammo the nearly out of ammo light cruisers would be very badly outgunned if they chose to follow, not very good odds for Langsdorf but not hopeless either.
IMO the Cumberland is not a significantly more powerful opponent than Exeter, despite the 1935-37 refit that gave her a very thin 4 1/2" thick armoured belt and brought her to 10,800 tonns her overall protection is worse than the smaller ship's that was built with one, her 2" turret armour (identical to Exeter) is practically useless against 11" and probably not enough even against Graf Spee 5.9" secondaries. IMO the best 8" cruisers the RN had were the Exeter, York and the totally reworked London.

The floatplanes far from guarantee the British will be able to regain contact if lost, Ajax had two Fairey Fox at the beginnig of the battle that has around 400 miles range and 3 hours endurance, Cumberland may possibly have the slower Supermarine Walrus thet has better range (600m) and endurance, but it's still not much to mount a search, the time spent launching and recovering planes is going to nearly nullify the 5 to 6 knots speed advantage of the British squadron (I give Graf Spee around 24 knots but Cumberland could not do much above 30 after the refit had increased her displacement by around 10%).

 

Different situation.

The Goeben was not heavily damaged and Troubridge's ships had much less chance to stop her than Harwood's did of either stopping or shadowing the GRaf Spee. Don't forget how GS had become badly damaged.

It will take a lot more than a rain squall to enable the GS to break contact with three faster cruisers, especially when they can launch aircraft to fly around the squall.

It would take a miracle for the GS to disable all three British cruisers without running out of ammunition for her 11" guns. Just disabling Cumberland alone is going to be next to impossible with her damaged FC and lack of ammo, but that doesn't do her any good, because the Achilles and Ajax still have torpedoes which can take out the GS if she no longer has main battery ammo. Also, in the process of fighting Cumberland, GS is very likely to take additional damage which further degrades her chances

Maybe, but the Cumberland does have more firepower than the Exeter, and most significantly, is completely undamaged and carries a full load out of ammo. She also carries aircraft which can be launched to spot the fall of shot, which gives the British another advantage. In any gunfight with the damaged GS with it's low ammo status, she is likely to inflict significant further damage before being disabled by GS. That lowers the odds for GS close to the vanaishing point, especially with two other British cruisers still in the fight.

The float planes on the British cruisers won't have to use their entire range range to re-establish contact with the GS. That's because she isn't going to be steaming in a random direction; she has only one way to go with any hope of success and that's directly away form the British. That means they can predict her course if they lose sight of her. And she will have only a few hours, at best, to put distance between her and the cruisers, so the search planes will have only to search 100 miles or so in a single direction.

And no, recovering float planes won't take more than a few minutes each, and each cruiser can do it independently, while the other two cruisers maintain contact. One of the British CL's launched and recovered it's float plane during the initial pursuit while the other kept the GS in sight, which proves the concept.

It's obvious the GS is history if she tries to run, and history if she tries to fight. Either way, the odds are overwhelmingly against her getting back to a friendly port, which would be the only justification for either course. Langsdorff made the right decision, the ONLY logical decision, in choosing to preserve the lives of his crew.

 

It's even worse than that. The gunhouse has only 25mm, which is barely adequate against 28cm splinters.

Eek! Strongly disagree. York and Exeter were what you'd expect from a heavy cruiser squeezed into a dwarfish displacement.

 

It really depends from whether the British think of Graf Spee as a battleship or a cruiser. Doctrine was to shadow battleships Suffolk/Bismark, Belfast/Sharnhorst but engage cruisers with cruisers.
BTW Goeben, while undamaged, was a couple of knots short of her design speed during the famous chase, coal fired ships definetly could not keep top speed for protracted periods, the vibrations damage and strokers exhaustion practically guaranteed that, oil firing solved the strokers problem but I suspect the vibrations were still there, if ships engage in a stern chase at top speed I suspect they may all run out of anmmo before hitting a thing.

Exeter was one of the hardest fighting cruisers the RN had, she was involved in 3 battles against equivalent or superior forces and performed creditably in all of them.
Practically none of the County class ever fought a drawn out engagement against an equivalent force, Atlantis was no match for a heavy cruiser however poor. I suspect there is a reason none were committed to the Med after Berwick's non stellar performace at Capo Teulada while York was untill her loss, The Italians had a strong 8" squadron that outranged the British six inch ships so why no British 8" ? the County were great steamers, reasonably confortable ships for the time, and ideal for shipping protection but really didn't belong in a battleline.
IMO the treaty cruisers were horrible designs, the best ones that were actually below the 10.000 tonns limit (and there are very few of those if you look hard enough) are the ones with six guns (Exeter and Furutaka).

 

I do like the Furutakas, and I think they make a useful contrast to Exeter, whose service record leaves me unimpressed. I have no big complaints about her performance against Graf Spee, though a few more 8in hits would have been nice. I'm uncertain how her two engagements with the Japanese can be seen as creditable. She scored no hits in either. In the first one, she received a single hit that knocked out half her machinery; in the second one, she received a single hit that knocked out the other half. Then she sat there playing target. I would agree there's a reason behind the way the Counties were deployed, but we don't know what it is or if it has anything to do with deficiencies. I rate Norfolk's battle record above Exeter's--two engagements against battleships, striking critical blows in both cases.

 

The comments above, which you responded to with this post were not Richard Worth's but mine, just to set the record straight. I know Richard doesn't like to have someone elses words attributed to him.

British doctrine, like doctrine in other navies, is not some unbreakable rule, but merely a guideline as to how operations should be conducted. If Harwood felt it better to shadow the GS, that's what he would do. If he was in doubt as to the best course Royal Navy tradition was to act aggressively, and most likely, in that case, he would attack. Either way, the odds are clearly with the British cruisers; the GS is very likely to run out of main battery ammunition before disabling any of her pursuers, and then it is all over for her. As for vibration problems, Richard mentioned that GS had a vibration problem somewhere below it's top speed of 24 knots. Presumably, that would present a problem for GS's damaged main battery FC, unless Langsdorff chose to run at top speed.

Your opinions about Treaty cruisers notwithstanding, the Cumberland had 25% more 8" guns than Exeter which gives her a better chance of inflicting damage on GS. Considering that Exeter had damaged GS to a considerable extent in the initial battle, this does not bode well for the GS. Langsdorff will still have to decide whether to split his fire. If he does, he has little hope of seriously damaging any of the British cruisers; if he doesn't, and concentrates on the Cumberland, the Ajax and Achilles will be free to launch torpedo attacks on the GS. The side which better husbands it's munitions will likely win. Achilles and Ajax are low on ammo except for torpedoes, but Cumberland has a full load of both, and GS has too many targets which it must disable.

 

If they begin with something like "Four score and seven," or perhaps "Maybe I'm the one who's a schizophrenic psycho, yeah," then I will gladly accept credit and all attendent royalties.

 

Sorry for the quotes mixup,

RN tradition has always been aggressive (No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy. - Admiral Horatio Nelson).

So I think we can agree that Langsdorf's chances if battle was resumed were a lot worse than in the initial fight but not completely hopeless, he probably lost his best chance by putting into Montevideo, just getting back to his position after the first battle would require disabling Cumberland with no additonal damage (not likely).
As to scuttling being the right decisions looking at somewhat similarly hopeless situations in the age of steam the surviving Russians ships at Port Arthur scuttled while the Spannish fleet at Havana came out to be destroyed and both decisions generated a lot less controversy than Langsdorf's.

BTW I would describe Norfolk's opponents more as floating wrecks than warships.

 

I have occasionaly suggested that Scharnhorst was a hunk of junk.

 

And that's before she recieved any combat damage, correct?

 

Yeah. The worst battleship design of her generation. The hit from Norfolk was the first substantial damage she took at that battle.

 

Something of interest:
F.d.U./B.d.U.'S War Log
1 - 15 December 1939
PG30253

15.12.​

"Graf Spee" is damaged and has put into Montevideo after her action in the South Atlantic. Naval War Staff has asked B.d.U. what support U-boats could give the pocket battleship off the mouth of the La Plata. I have assured Naval War Staff that I will do all I can and I am determined to try everything possible, in spite of the great difficulties which an operation of this kind with U-boats involves.
2 U-boats (U 44 and U 46) can be got ready in time to reach the La Plata at the beginning of February. The operation depends mainly on the question of supply. It will be necessary to refuel on the way out, on the way back and in the operations area. Naval War Staff promises supplies in the Canaries and off the La Plata from "Altmark". This means that the operation can be attempted. It means going into the Tropics and there is no experience of U-boats in these areas. Preparations must be made accordingly.
Special attention will have to be paid to victualling supplies, clothing and medical matters in view of the changes of climate, high temperatures and strong sun. Torpedo pistols, electric torpedo batteries and ammunition are also likely to be effected. The necessary steps are being taken immediately.
(signed): Dönitz
Rear Admiral and B.d.U.

16.12.​

The U-boat operation in support of "Graf Spee" has been cancelled. Apparently political considerations make it necessary to decide the pocket battleship's fate sooner.


Had KM included U Boats to be positioned with operations...even that far south and in the Indian ocean,
there presence in such scenario's could effect a more favorable outcome for KM operations.
The KM supply ships in the south atlantic support the premise that the U boats could be supplied aswell.
so...its a form of synergy.
something I am seeing a lack of in my KM studies of the war in this early period.

One U Boat could have helped Graf Spee break out,
had it torpedo'd HMS Cumberland,
and....as other posters coment,....RN might only desire to shadow Graf Spee and wait for heavies to arrive,
a U Boat or more in the area could break up the RN's ability to effectively shadow Graf Spee.

shift:
Although several posters here disagree with my views on Graf Spee breaking out,
I am still of the opinion that the imagery left of Graf Spee burning and then a charred hulk emboldened the RN and hurt Germany's national pride.
Graf Spee sinking at sea in the night had the RN acheived that,...
would have deprived them of their image trophy.


Media/propoganda was important to Germany's war effort.

 

Yeah, but in the end, it was just propaganda.

Was it worth potentially 1,000 dead young men to keep a few negative pictures out of the newspapers?

I don't think so.

The idea of using U-boats in the South Atlantic was nothing more than a fantasy at this point in the war. The two U-boats mentioned (U-44 and U-46), were Type VIIB's with a range of only 6,500 miles at 12 knots. They couldn't even get to the area until the beginning of February and the GS was in trouble in Montevideo in the middle of December. They would have had to refuel on the way out, and again on the way back in an area that was being heavily patrolled by both the RN and USN (neutrality patrols); not a safe thing to do.

Prepositioning them just on the off chance they may have been needed would have been a real waste of resources at a time when Donitz was struggling to keep even a handful of U-boats at sea in the North Atlantic where the convoys were concentrated. They really didn't have much chance of torpedoing British warships which generally moved too fast for subs to get off anything more than an occasional lucky shot. The idea of creating "synergy" by having surface units operate with subs sounds good, but has to be balanced against the German Naval War Staff's tendency of disregarding Donitz's efforts to concentrate his subs where they were likely to encounter convoys, in favor of the perceived (but impractical) advantages of cooperation between submersibles and surface units.

 

Very interesting document, thanks Tiornu.
I agree that given the subs limited speed getting one to Montevideo in time to do any good is not realistic. The unknown behaviour of the torpedoes may make the whole effort pointless anyway but it's interesting to see the issue of torpedo reliability in "untested waters" was raised long before the failures in the Norwegian campaign!!!
IMO the subs and warships sinergy was a lot more real than you give it credit for, there were historically a number of replenishment operations of U-Boats by the pre-positioned supply ships or the auxilliary cruisers before the Type XIV "milk cow" supply subs were built and for a "special operation" this sort of maximum effort could be justified.
I'm curious about your mention of US neutrality patrols, attacking a warship going about her business on the high sea looks very much an act of war to me.