"Battle of the River Plate The Battle of the River Plate was the first naval battle in the Second World War and the first one of the Battle of the Atlantic in South American waters. The German panzerschiff ""Admiral Graf Spee"" had cruised into the South Atlantic a fortnight before the war began, and had been commerce raiding after receiving appropriate authorisation on 26 September 1939. One of the hunting groups sent by the British Admiralty to search for ""Graf Spee"", comprising three Royal Navy cruisers, , and (the last from the New Zealand Division), found and engaged their quarry"
"battleships"" were the (renamed ""Lützow""), , and . Modern commentators favour classifying these as ""heavy cruisers"" and the ""Kriegsmarine"" itself reclassified these ships as such (""Schwere Kreuzer"") in 1940. In German language usage these three ships were designed and built as ""armoured ships"" (Panzerschiffe) – ""pocket battleship"" is an English label. The ""Graf Spee"" was scuttled by her own crew in the Battle of the River Plate, in the Rio de la Plata estuary in December 1939. ""Admiral Scheer"" was bombed on 9 April 1945 in port at Kiel and badly damaged, essentially beyond repair, and rolled over at her"
"United States support for the government of Jordan threatened by subversion. The cruiser departed the Mediterranean on 26 June 1958 and arrived at Norfolk on 4 July. ""Salem"" was used to portray the German pocket Battleship ""Admiral Graf Spee"" in the 1956 film ""The Battle of the River Plate"", although the original German ship had a single triple gun turret placed forward of the superstructure where the ""Salem"" has two triple gun turrets forward of its superstructure. The original hull number of the ""Salem"", 139, is also clearly visible in many exterior shots of ""Salem"". These differences between the two"
"Hans Langsdorff Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff (20 March 1894 – 20 December 1939) was a German naval officer, most famous for his command of the ""Panzerschiff"" (pocket battleship) ""Admiral Graf Spee"" during the Battle of the River Plate. Langsdorff was born on 20 March 1894 in Bergen on the island of Rügen. He was the eldest son in a family with legal and religious traditions rather than a naval tradition. In 1898, the family moved to Düsseldorf, where they were neighbours of the family of Graf (Count) Maximilian von Spee, who was to become a German naval hero (while losing his"
"incomplete capital ships. During 1924 and 1925, the treaty resulted in the scuttling of the Royal Australian Navy battlecruiser and the incomplete Imperial Japanese Navy battleship ""Tosa"", while four old Japanese battleships, the Royal Navy battleship , and the incomplete United States Navy battleship all were disposed of as targets. Following the Battle of the River Plate the damaged German pocket battleship sought refuge in the port of Montevideo. On 17 December 1939, with the British and Commonwealth cruisers , , and waiting in international waters outside the mouth of the Río de la Plata, Captain Hans Langsdorff sailed ""Graf"
"troop transports, guarding them from elements of the German Navy. While en route to aid a blockade, she was torpedoed and sunk on 19 March 1917 by a German U-boat, leaving 296 men dead. The location of the wreck remained a mystery until an underwater survey team inadvertently discovered the battleship in December 2007. In February 2009, the wreck was confirmed to be ""Danton"". The ship is in remarkably good shape for her age. ""Danton"" rests upright on the ocean floor, and most of the original equipment is reported to be intact. Although the s were a significant improvement from"
"because ""Graf Spee"" was already at sea when the war began, she went into action (and was scuttled) with it attached, thus permitting its recovery. To protect the feelings of those with painful memories of Nazi Germany, the swastika at the base of the figurehead was covered as it was pulled from the water. The figurehead was stored in a Uruguayan naval warehouse following German complaints about exhibiting ""Nazi paraphernalia"". In 1956, the film ""The Battle of the River Plate"" (US title: ""Pursuit of the Graf Spee"") was made of the battle and ""Admiral Graf Spee""s end, with Peter Finch"
"used as commerce raiders in the early years of the war. Two of the ""panzerschiffe"", ""Deutschland"" and ""Graf Spee"", were already at sea at the outbreak of war; the former found little success and the latter was ultimately trapped and forced to scuttle after the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939. From October 1940 to March 1941, ""Admiral Scheer"" went on her own raiding operation and captured or sank seventeen ships, which made her the most successful of the German capital ship surface raiders in the entire war. ""Scharnhorst"" and ""Gneisenau"" conducted Operation Berlin, a major sortie into"
"German pocket battleship ""Admiral Graf Spee"" after she was scuttled in the River Plate, across from Buenos Aires is true. Another specialist, Alejandro Gherovici, dismissed the legend saying the steel was likely supplied by the US under Lend-Lease. Arbones' article also details the use of those pistols by the British 8th Army and the SOE, and how he came to have his own British-marked Ballester–Molinas. Between 10,000 and 15,000 of all Ballester–Molinas were specially manufactured for Britain during World War II. A number of pistols was issued to agents of the SOE, in order to avoid the use of British"
"and French immediately began a blockade of Germany, which had little effect on German industry. The German navy began to attack British shipping with both surface ships and U-boats, sinking the S.S. Athenia within hours of the declaration of war. The German Panzerschiff ""Admiral Graf Spee"" was cornered in the Battle of the River Plate by the British and New Zealand navies and its captain scuttled her. The Battle of the Atlantic was the contest between merchant ships, usually in convoys, and the German submarine force. The battle ebbed and flowed, until the Allies gained a decisive advantage in 1943"
"but the crew managed to stop the flooding and seal the hull. To prevent her from sinking, she was run aground in the shallows, and was decommissioned on 26 April 1945. To prevent her capture by the advancing Allied armies, her crew destroyed the ship with explosives on 3 May, days before the end of World War II in Europe. The wreck was broken up for scrap ""in situ"" over the following five years. Her bow ornament is currently on display in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. German cruiser Emden Emden was a light cruiser built for the German ""Reichsmarine"""
"Just under a thousand Brazilian servicemen died during the conflict. The beginning of the Second World War, like the first, however, began with naval action off the South American coastline. The ""Admiral Graf Spee"", a modern , was named after the German admiral lost in the previous war. She had been sent to the region as a commerce raider with the task of sinking British merchant shipping, but avoiding combat with superior enemy forces. Numerous British hunting groups were assigned to find her, with three British ships finally tracking her down in December 1939. The Battle of the River Plate"
"sank bow-first 10 minutes later, in of water. German forces were able to rescue 996 of the survivors from the attack: the torpedo boat rescued 564 people; the torpedo boat ""Löwe"", 472; the minesweeper ""M387"", 98; the minesweeper ""M375"", 43; the minesweeper ""M341"", 37; the steamer ""Göttingen"", 28; the torpedo recovery boat (""Torpedofangboot"") ""TF19"", 7; the freighter ""Gotenland"", two; and the patrol boat (""Vorpostenboot"") ""V1703"", one baby. All four captains on ""Wilhelm Gustloff"" survived her sinking, but an official naval inquiry was started only against Wilhelm Zahn. His degree of responsibility was never resolved, however, because of Nazi Germany's collapse"
"1939, a flotilla of British warships — HMS ""Ajax"", and HMS ""Achilles"" — commanded by Commodore Henry Harwood — engaged and routed the powerful German pocket battleship ""Admiral Graf Spee"" at the Battle of the River Plate, near the Uruguayan port of Montevideo in South America. ""Ajax"" was chosen as the name of this war-born community. After the war, the University of Toronto leased much of the D.I.L. plant to house the flood of newly discharged soldiers who had enrolled as engineering students. War machines were moved out and the buildings were converted to classrooms and laboratories. By 1949, the"
"rationing. In December, 1939, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the River Plate, County class heavy cruiser HMS ""Cumberland"", which had been self-refitting in the Falkland Islands at the time of the battle, steamed to join ""Ajax"" and ""Achilles"" at the mouth of the River Plate, trapping the Graf Spee. Convinced by British propaganda and false intelligence that a major naval task force awaited his ship and short of ammunition, Captain Langsdorf of the ""Graf Spee"" chose instead to scuttle the ship rather than face the Royal Navy. Operation Tabarin, an expedition to the Antarctic, was mounted from"
"was badly damaged by gunfire from the battlecruiser . Immobilized between the two battle fleets, ""Wiesbaden"" became the center of a hard-fought action that saw the destruction of two British armored cruisers. Heavy fire from the British fleet prevented evacuation of the ship's crew. ""Wiesbaden"" remained afloat until the early hours of 1 June and sank sometime between 01:45 and 02:45. Only one crew member survived the sinking; the wreck was located by German Navy divers in 1983. ""Frankfurt"" was ordered under the contract name """"Ersatz"" "" and was laid down at the ""Kaiserliche Werft"" shipyard in Kiel in 1913"
"to be cut down. Dismantling had begun by April 7 of that year the rumors had stated. During the newscast on MSNBC of the protests in Germany of the G20 in 2017, a video shows a ferry named Mississippi Queen docked in Hamburg Germany. The ferry is much smaller than, and certainly not, the original Mississippi Queen. A steamboat called the ""Mississippi Queen"" was used in the 1982 episode ""Cap'n Spanky's Showboat"" in the animated television series ""The Little Rascals"". Mississippi Queen (steamboat) The Mississippi Queen was the second-largest paddle wheel driven river steamboat ever built, second only to the"
"2006, the commission, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, representing the Berlin state museums, announced the return of the painting. The Eberswalde Gold Treasures and German Merovingian Art Treasures were taken from Berlin to Soviet Russia. British troops and the Naval War Trophies Committee also looted artworks from Germany, including several pictures by marine artist Claus Bergen (""Wreath in the North Sea in Memory of the Battle of Jutland"", ""The Commander U-boat"", ""Admiral Hipper's Battle Cruiser at Jutland"" and ""The German Pocket Battleship Admiral Von Scheer Bombarding the Spanish Coast""), Carl Saltzmann (""German Fleet Manoeuvres on the High Seas"") and Ehrhard"
"As a result, ""Bayern"" and ""Baden"" were the last German battleships completed by the Kaiserliche Marine. ""Bayern"" and ""Baden"" were commissioned into the fleet in July 1916 and March 1917, respectively. This was too late for either ship to take part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916. ""Bayern"" was assigned to the naval force that drove the Imperial Russian Navy from the Gulf of Riga during Operation Albion in October 1917, though the ship was severely damaged by a mine and had to be withdrawn to Kiel for repairs. ""Baden"" replaced as the flagship"
"and ground was broken (1929) for the Estadio Centenario (completed 1930). During World War II, a famous incident involving the German pocket battleship ""Admiral Graf Spee"" took place in Punta del Este, from Montevideo. After the Battle of the River Plate with the Royal Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy on 13 December 1939, the ""Graf Spee"" retreated to Montevideo's port, which was considered neutral at the time. To avoid risking the crew in what he thought would be a losing battle, Captain Hans Langsdorff scuttled the ship on 17 December. Langsdorff committed suicide two days later. The eagle figurehead"
"Admiral Axel Deertz. While leaving Piraeus on 17 April 2017, ""Brandenburg"" collided with a pier, damaging her steering gear and a propeller. The Greek tug ""Christos XVII"" escorted the damaged frigate to the floating dock at Paloukia, Salamis Naval Base. On 22 May 2017 ""Brandenburg"" was able to resume her patrol activity after repairs. On 4 July 2017, Deertz handed command of the Group over to a British commodore, and the ""Brandenburg"" ceased to be the flagship. German frigate Brandenburg Brandenburg is a ""Brandenburg""-class frigate of the German Navy, and the lead ship of her class. ""Brandenburg"" and the three"
"concern with the political aspects of his plan, namely to gain enough glory at sea to win post-war budget battles, Raeder was furious with the outcome of the Battle of the River Plate. The captain of the , Hans Langsdorff, believing that his damaged ship was faced with a superior British force, chose to scuttle his ship to spare the lives of his men. Both Hitler and Raeder believed that Langsdorff should have fought the British and gone down fighting, even if it meant the deaths of most or all of the crew of ""Admiral Graf Spee"". Raeder, knowing that"
"with the Baltic Fleet. On 26 August 1914, during the first month of World War I, the German light cruiser ""Magdeburg"" ran aground near the island of Odensholm in the Gulf of Finland. Her escort, the V25-class torpedo boat SMS ""V-26"", failed to pull her off and rescued part of the crew before ""Pallada"" and the protected cruiser appeared and opened fire. The Germans blew up the front part of the ship, but failed to demolish the rest of the ship. They failed to destroy their naval codebooks, which were discovered by the Russians. A copy was later given to"
"member of Spee's family christened the ship, this time his daughter. In December 1939, ""Admiral Graf Spee"" was scuttled by her crew after the Battle of the River Plate off the coast of Uruguay. Between 1959 and 1964 the Federal German Bundesmarine operated the training frigate ""Graf Spee"". Maximilian von Spee Maximilian Johannes Maria Hubert Reichsgraf von Spee (22 June 1861 – 8 December 1914) was a naval officer of the German ""Kaiserliche Marine"" (Imperial Navy), who famously commanded the German East Asia Squadron during World War I. Spee entered the navy in 1878 and served in a variety of"
"She arrived at the Scheldt for demolition at Tamise on 29 June 1967. RFA Fort Duquesne (A229) RFA ""Fort Duquesne"" (A229) was an air stores ship of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The ship was launched on 28 September 1944 and named ""Queensborough Park"", and commissioned on 25 November 1944 and renamed ""Fort Duquesne"". The ship was transferred to the RFA on 16 September 1947. In 1955 she starred in the film "" The Battle of the River Plate"", playing the German freighter ""Tacoma"", which took the crew off the pocket battleship ""Admiral Graf Spee"" before she was scuttled off Montevideo."
"the battlecruiser . Three of the four ships were to participate in a climactic fleet operation to attack the British Grand Fleet in the final days of the war, but revolts in the fleet forced the cancellation of the plan. ""Karlsruhe"", ""Emden"", and ""Nürnberg"" were interned at Scapa Flow after the end of the war, and were scuttled on 21 June 1919, though only ""Karlsruhe"" was successfully sunk. The other two ships were beached by British sailors and ceded to the Allies. ""Königsberg"" was transferred to the French Navy as a war prize and commissioned as ""Metz""; she served with"
"land. One of the pioneers of naval simulations, Fletcher Pratt, designed his ""Naval War Game"" in the late 1930s, and was able to validate his model almost immediately by applying it to the encounter between the German pocket battleship ""Admiral Graf Spee"" and three British cruisers in the Battle of the River Plate off Montevideo in 1939. Rated on thickness of armour and gun power, ""Graf Spee"" should have been more than a match for the lighter cruisers, but Pratt's formula correctly predicted the ensuing British victory. In contrast, many modern operations research models have proven unable to reproduce historical"
"the precise breakdown of which survivors belong to which ship is not available. German torpedo boat T26 The German torpedo boat ""T26"" was one of fifteen Type 39 torpedo boats built for the ""Kriegsmarine"" (German Navy) during World War II. Completed in early 1943, the boat was transferred to France in August. ""T26"" helped to lay a minefield in the English Channel the following month, and later escorted a blockade runner through the Bay of Biscay. She participated in the Battle of Sept-Îles in October and was sunk two months later by a British light cruiser during the Battle of"
"one ship from the battle survives and is still afloat, the light cruiser . Decommissioned in 2011, she is docked at the Royal Naval Reserve depot in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Battle of Jutland was annually celebrated as a great victory by the right wing in Weimar Germany. This victory was used to repress the memory of the German navy's initiation of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, as well as the memory of the defeat in World War I in general. (The celebrations of the Battle of Tannenberg played a similar role.) This is especially true for the city of"
"after recovering the survivors. ""T11"" remained in France until December when she began a lengthy refit in Germany. All of her sisters began their own refits between January and March 1941. After completing their refits, ""T2"", ""T5"", ""T8"" and ""T11"" supported German forces invading the Estonian islands (Operation Beowulf) in mid-September and then, reinforced by ""T7"", they escorted the battleship , as it sortied into the Sea of Åland on 23–29 September to forestall any attempt by the Soviet Red Banner Baltic Fleet to breakout from the Gulf of Finland. ""T1"", ""T8"", ""T9"" and ""T10"" were reduced to reserve at"
"Kruzenshtern (ship) Kruzenshtern or Krusenstern () is a four-masted barque () that was built in 1926 at Geestemünde in Bremerhaven, Germany as Padua (named after the Italian city). She was surrendered to the USSR in 1946 as war reparation and renamed after the early 19th century Baltic German explorer in Russian service, Adam Johann Krusenstern (1770–1846). She is now a Russian sail training ship. Of the four remaining Flying ""P-Liners"", the former ""Padua"" is the only one still in use, mainly for training purposes, with her home ports in Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) and Murmansk. After , another former German ship,"
"RFA Fort Duquesne (A229) RFA ""Fort Duquesne"" (A229) was an air stores ship of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. The ship was launched on 28 September 1944 and named ""Queensborough Park"", and commissioned on 25 November 1944 and renamed ""Fort Duquesne"". The ship was transferred to the RFA on 16 September 1947. In 1955 she starred in the film "" The Battle of the River Plate"", playing the German freighter ""Tacoma"", which took the crew off the pocket battleship ""Admiral Graf Spee"" before she was scuttled off Montevideo. ""Fort Duquesne"" was decommissioned in April 1967 and put in reserve at Chatham."
"MV Emanuel Bronner The MV ""Emanuel Bronner"" is a small ship owned and operated by Sea Shepherd Germany as a Baltic Sea conservation patrol vessel. It was unveiled on 1 June 2017 at the Vegesack museum harbor in Bremen, Germany. The vessel was donated by philanthropist Michael Bronner, and it was named after his grandfather, Emanuel Bronner. The vessel will help to protect the endangered harbor porpoise in the Baltic Sea by documenting illegal fishing nets and reporting them to the local authorities. Although the harbour porpoise species overall is considered to be of Least Concern by the IUCN, they"