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German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee

Bundesarchiv DVM 10 Bild-23-63-06, Panzerschiff "Admiral Graf Spee".jpg
Admiral Graf Spee in 1936
History
Nazi Germany
Name: Admiral Graf Spee
Namesake: Maximilian von Spee
Builder: Reichsmarinewerft, Wilhelmshaven
Laid down: 1 October 1932
Launched: 30 June 1934
Commissioned: 6 January 1936
Fate: Scuttled, 17 December 1939
General characteristics
Class and type: Deutschland-class cruiser
Displacement:
  • 14,890 t (14,650 long tons; 16,410 short tons) (design)
  • 16,020 long tons (16,280 t) (full load)
Length: 186 m (610 ft 3 in)
Beam: 21.65 m (71 ft 0 in)
Draft: 7.34 m (24 ft 1 in)
Installed power: 52,050 bhp (38,810 kW)
Propulsion: 2 propellers; 8 × diesel engines
Speed: 28.5 knots (52.8 km/h; 32.8 mph)
Range: 16,300 nautical miles (30,200 km; 18,800 mi) at 18.69 knots (34.61 km/h; 21.51 mph)
Complement:
  • As built:
    • 33 officers
    • 586 enlisted
  • After 1935:
    • 30 officers
    • 921–1,040 enlisted
Sensors and
processing systems:
  • 1939:
    • FMG 39 G(gO)
Armament:
Armor:
  • Main turrets: 140 mm (5.5 in)
  • Belt: 80 mm (3.1 in)
  • Main deck: 17–45 mm (0.67–1.77 in)
Aircraft carried: 2 × Arado Ar 196 floatplanes
Aviation facilities: 1 × catapult

Admiral Graf Spee was a Deutschland-class "Panzerschiff" (armored ship), nicknamed a "pocket battleship" by the British, which served with the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany during World War II. The two sister-ships of her class, Deutschland and Admiral Scheer, were reclassified as heavy cruisers in 1940. The vessel was named after Admiral Maximilian von Spee, commander of the East Asia Squadron that fought the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands, where he was killed in action, 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 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph) left only the few battlecruisers in the Anglo-French navies fast enough 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 of 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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