EXCERPTS TO READ

Page 67-70 of An Honorable German

"Max and Langsdorff turned again to face the three warships strung out along the horizon.

"Bridge,” screeched the telephone talker, "B-Service reports transmission in the clear.”

"Read it out.”

"Signal from Exeter: ‘Immediate to Admiralty. One pocket battleship zero three four degrees south, zero four nine degrees west. Course two seven five degrees.’”

And so the Royal Navy had found them at last. Max’s stomach muscles tightened.

"Signaling again in the clear: ‘From Exeter, general broadcast merchant ships. One pocket battleship, thirty-four degrees south, forty-nine degrees west, steering two three six. Am engaging forthwith. Stand off.’”

Big brother shooing the flock out of harm’s way. Langsdorff nodded. His face was calm.

"Have gunnery begin calling down the range,” he said to Max.

"Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

"And Oberleutnant.”

"Herr Kapitän?”

"Run up the battle flag.”

"Yes, sir!” Max said, grinning as he passed the captain’s order. Quickly the signalman broke out the red, white, and black naval ensign of the Kriegsmarine and hoisted it above the ship. Atlantic wind caught the banner and it streamed out over Graf Spee.

On the navigating bridge stood Langsdorff, Max, a deputy watch officer, and Hollendorf. As second navigator, Hollendorf tracked Graf Spee’s exact position as she began to twist and turn
in the coming battle. Also on the bridge stood the four signalmen who would pass Langsdorff’s fighting orders through the ship by phone and voice tube. Four additional messengers stood by to run orders manually if the phones were knocked out. Two sailors manned each of the engine telegraphs. Rolf, the bridge steward, was on hand to provide sandwiches and coffee.

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While the enlisted men waited silently at their posts, Max and the other officers trained their binoculars on the charging British cruisers. It seemed unreal to Max, like a practice shoot in the Baltic. In their two and a half months of commerce raiding, nobody had actually fired on them.

One of the bridge signalmen chanted the range as it came in over his earphones. "Twelve kilometers, eleven and three-quarters, eleven and a half . . .”

The British had the curious habit, left over from the days when all wooden warships looked alike, of flying gigantic battle ensigns. As Exeter drove toward the Spee, Max watched the huge red-and-white flags break over the cruiser—two up the radio aerials, two more up the signal masts. If they were hauled down before the end of the battle, it could have but one meaning: H.M.S. Exeter had surrendered. Unlikely, Max knew. A Royal Navy warship had not surrendered in a sea battle for a hundred and fifty years.

Above one of the ensigns flew a yellow signal flag—the classic signal of the Royal Navy: Enemy in sight.

At ten kilometers, Exeter changed course ninety degrees to her left and ran perpendicular to Graf Spee. Now all of Exeter’s guns bore on Spee, while only Spee’s forward guns bore on Exeter.

Alarmed, Langsdorff bypassed Max and stepped directly to the voicepipe. "Helmsman, hard port. Come to new course of one two zero!” Spee heeled sharply to port and began running parallel to Exeter. Exeter’s two comrades then altered course so they too steamed parallel to Graf Spee, but in the opposite direction. Max knew the light cruisers would steer a wide arc, cross Spee’s stern, and come up on the other side. They would try and compel Spee to divide the punishing fire of her eleven-inch guns.

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Silence again on the bridge. Max felt a tremor in his legs. Only the enclosed portion of the navigating bridge had any protection at all—an inch of steel plate to stop shell splinters. They could pull steel scuttles down over the large portholes, but then they wouldn’t be able to see anything. The open bridge wings had no protection of any kind against incoming fire, just salt air and a flawless view of the British guns taking dead aim.

"Range of Exeter?”

"Nine and a half kilometers now, Herr Kapitän.”

"Commence against Exeter,” Langsdorff ordered, his voice as soft and pleasant as if he were ordering coffee.

Max came to attention. "Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.” He seized the gunnery phone.

"Gunnery, aye.”

"Order from captain: target is Exeter. Repeat, target is Exeter. Commence main battery fire.”

The firing gong sounded through the ship. The main batteries fired. Max was nearly thrown off balance by the force of the recoil. Black gun smoke lingered briefly over the Spee, to be snatched away by the wind. Close to Exeter, geysers of white water shot into the air. "Note to log,” Langsdorff said to Hollendorf, "Graf Spee commenced firing against Exeter at zero six eighteen.”

"Over!” Max shouted.

Orange halos blossomed from Exeter’s guns.

"He’s fired!” yelped the young telephone talker.

"Steady,” Langsdorff said, hands clasped behind his back like a squire looking over his acres.

A half kilometer from Graf Spee the incoming shells struck the ocean and sent up towers of water.

High above the bridge in their directing tower, the gunnery control team peered through their optical instruments, calculating Exeter’s range, course, and speed, sending this data to a mechanical tabulator deep in the armored bowels of the ship. This tabulator computed the trajectory of the shells and automatically trained Graf Spee’s main batteries. The recoil of the naval cannon comprising the main battery also had to be computed since a full broadside by both turrets heeled the ship over by five degrees or more.

In Spee’s armored turrets, the deafened sailors, bundled up in their anti-flash overalls, frantically worked the huge naval cannons, ramming the six-hundred-seventy-pound shells hydraulically into the barrels, followed by a silk-wrapped powder charge. When the gun captain slammed home the breechblock, the ready light blinked on in the gun directing tower. The gunnery officer pressed the orange firing button and an electric current ignited the cordite, blowing the shell from the barrel. The gun crew flung open the breech, blasted the inside of the cannon with compressed air to clear any burning residue, thrust in a long-handled mop and swabbed out the barrel. In with a new shell and cordite charge and they were ready to fire.

The wind picked up and ruffled the sea. Exeter and Graf Spee plowed through the waves, spitting shells back and forth, disfiguring the water with angry spouts as the shots fell off the mark. Max kept his binoculars fixed on the British ship. His body shook each time Spee’s forward battery fired. Black smoke drifted up from its barrels and eddied through the bridge. Finally, a hole opened in Exeter’s midships.

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"We hit her!” Max shouted.

But Exeter’s broadside flamed out again, its report audible across the water. This time Graf Spee shook. Max saw nothing. Must be aft of the bridge. The main batteries were unharmed. They had to fire faster.

Max lost all sense of time as the Krupp-built cannons fired again and again, every twenty seconds, their muzzle blasts shaking the ship. Smoke draped Spee, spray from near misses washing over her sides. Langsdorff shouted helm and engine orders over the roar of the guns. Both ships steamed at emergency full ahead, smoke pouring from their stacks. The engine room would be unbearably hot and loud, dark and claustrophobic. Below the waterline, hatches battened down, they knew little of what was going on above. The ship’s loudspeaker provided updates for many of the crew belowdecks, but these announcements could not be heard in the engine room over the terrific roar of the diesels. During battle, Dieter and his mates were the safest men aboard, but if Spee sank, they would never get out.