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Graf Spee

  

 Graf Spee was the last of three Deutschland class Pocket Battleships.

The Graf Spee was designed to be a commerce raider - powerful enough to knock out patrolling cruisers and the speed to elude the more powerful full size battleships.

Germany launches its first aircraft carrier.

 The Kriegsmarine, Germany's navy, wasn't prepared when war broke out in 1939.  It would easily take them another eight years before Germany could compete on the seas with the Royal Navy.  Preoccupied with directing his land army, Hitler left naval strategy to the admirals.  The Kriegsmarine chose to ad lib a blockade of England with the few odds and ends they had available.  Grandiose projects such as aircraft carriers consumed too much time and resources dedicated to their production.  Ultimately a number of surface warships were completed only to be turned around and then dismantled for scrap.  Precious metal was now freed up to better contribute to the war effort by furnishing new tanks, aircraft and subs.   

U-boat Wolf Pack tactics devastate early convoys.

 A picket line of U-boats block the convoy as it makes its way to English ports. Once the Allied fleet is sighted, the command is given for all U-boats to converge on the target zone, flooding it with torpedoes.  The war is going well.  It is the 'Happy Time' for U-boat personnel.

British cruisers intercept Graf Spee off Uruguay.

The commander of a group of three British cruisers was playing a hunch when he directed his vessels toward Uruguay and a hoped for confrontation with Germany's elusive surface raider, the Graf Spee.  In fact, the Graf Spee's Captain had decided now was an opportune time for disrupting the heavy South Atlantic commerce that continually passes near Montevideo.

A barrage of eleven inch shells knock Exeter out of the battle.

The Graf Spee made its retreat towards Montevideo's harbor despite the fact there was but one of the three cruisers left behind that was in actual working order.  Graf Spee's Captain Langsdorff was needing a respite in safe harbor to tend to his ship's own extensive damage.  Uruguay, a neutral country, offered waring adversaries a limited stay of 72 hours, strictly enforced.   The Graf Spee needed two weeks for repairs if it was to have any chance of surviving a confrontation with the waiting British cruisers.

The Ark Royal believed to reinforce cruiser blockade.

 Word is the Royal Navy carrier Ark Royal and the battleship Renown have just arrived, adding decisively to the growing number of Royal Navy warships, each waiting, eager for the kill.

German commander scuttles battleship, commits suicide.

With all hope gone of successfully returning to Germany, Langsdorff orders his ship sunk in the shallow estuary that leads to the sea.  Too bad the reports of powerful reinforcements arriving was all a ruse.  The Royal Navy's Ark Royal and battleship Renown were still two thousand distant miles away.  In its short career the Graf Spee sank all of eleven merchant ships.  In return, a valuable battleship was sacrificed.  Two U-boats could have accomplished as much and in less time.  The surface raider strategy was a loser.  

U-boats get it done.  They're cheap and you can turn out a couple dozen a month.  That's important because the British merchant marine consists of over four thousand ships.  Taming this torrent of trade requires an estimated 300 U-boats.  That puts one hundred subs on station in the Atlantic doing its damage.  Another hundred U-boats are in transit between coming and going destinations.  The final hundred are in port for maintenance, training and repairs.  To win the war with Britain in 1940, Germany must send 700,000 tons of supplies to the bottom of the ocean each and every month, depriving Great Britain for a full year of what it needs to make its society work.

©  Tom Taylor

 

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A Symptom of Summer

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©  Tom Taylor

Scapa Flow

  

Mission:  Contain the German fleet.

Perfect position to cut German access to the Atlantic.

Over 700 made - heroes of the 'Happy Time'.

SPEED:               17.9 KNOTS - SURFACE

                              8.0 KNOTS - SUBMERGED

RANGE:               8,700 MILES @ 10 KNOTS, SURFACE

                                 90 MILES @ 4 KNOTS, SUBMERGED

CREW:                 44 - 52

Safe harbor to Britain's largest fleet.

 U-47 sailed through Kirk Sound above water to avoid a barrier 

of sunken hulks of ships, its conning tower cloaked in a

New Moon night.

The Grand Lady too old to keep up.

U-47 missed 4 before 3 hit in the amidship gut.

Royal Oak rolled over quickly and sank 

taking with it 800 sailors trapped inside.

U-47 commander gets Berlin parade.

Captain Gunther Prien became a Nazi in 1933, the year Hitler

came to power.

Constant vigil for U-boats.

 Germany needed to sink 700,000 tons a month to win

the war in 1940.

©  Tom Taylor

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My Neighbor's Yard

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London Naval Conference 1930

  

King George V, left, opens London Naval Conference despite failing health. 

 The three primary naval superpowers following the First World War -

Britain, the United States and Japan - met with other nations in London

in order to reign in a very costly warship arms race.  This move for

a treaty to restrict the building of weapons wasn't just a gesture toward

world peace.  The Stock Market had crashed the previous year, sending

national economies into Depression.  Ambitions to rule the waves

stalled out when the money spigot began to sputter from lack of funds.

Battleship Arizona sails the East River in 1916 New York City.

Battleships were still seen as the gem of the ocean.

Their authority came from cannon that could fire 2,000 lb.

shells nearly fifteen miles from 15 inch guns.  They weighed

up to 30,000 tons and had a crew of over 1,200 men.

They were your big brother on the ocean.

Britain's largest warship, the battlecruiser Hood, prior to World War 2.

The battlecruiser may be longer than a battleship and its guns are

often just as big.  The problem with this design turned out to be the

sacrificing of armor to gain speed.  They couldn't take a punch and

German gunnery was deadly accurate.  At the Battle of Jutland during

the First World War three British battlecruisers exploded to smithereens

when squarely hit.  Then, shortly after the start of the Second World War,

an armor piercing shell from the German battleship Bismarck 

drove its way into the Hood's full ammo magazine. 

The explosion that followed killed all but three of the ship's crew.

Heavy cruiser USS Pensacola.

Heavy cruisers look like battleships but at 10,000 tons they are

only a third of a battleship's weight.  Their eight inch guns are

half the size of a battleship's.  Plenty of Admirals wished for

something bigger, more substantive, but treaty rules specified

anything larger than these dimensions and the cruiser will be counted

as a battleship.  That's a penalty they don't want to bare for ignoring

the treaty they just signed.  There had to be ways around 

these too tight numbers.

Light cruiser USS Atlanta.

The British loved their cruisers.  They were everywhere patrolling

Britain's life lines to its global empire.  They had six inch guns and 

were light weight at only six thousand tons.  Still, you didn't want

to push them around.  And they were cheap.  They were like 

Wyatt Earp's deputies making their rounds.  If one of them

gets hurt you wouldn't like what's coming your way.

Japanese destroyer Uranami.

Here's the Navy's workhorse - the destroyer.  Maybe 2,000 tons

and carrying a five inch gun.  It's ready to perform a mountain of tasks.

The destroyer is the fleet's scout.  It provides security for your precious

cargo plowing the ocean commerce lanes.  A destroyer is also made

to root out and dispatch an enemy submarine to the watery abyss.

You can't have a navy without them.

British biplanes fly over HMS Ark Royal.

 By 1930 Britain, the United States and Japan were all 

experimenting with aircraft carriers.  They didn't quite know

what to do with them.  They started as a tool for reconnaissance.

But that's really expensive overkill.  To make economic sense

the carrier needed to pack a punch.  Bombs on a plane was the 

ticket.  A battleship's shell travels fifteen miles.  A plane easily goes

a hundred and fifty miles to reach its target.  A few cheap planes

can send a battleship, years in the making, straight to the bottom.

 No one wanted to restrict carrier making.  It was too promising.

U-47 slips silently into the British naval base at Scapa Flow, 

undetected, and sinks the battleship HMS Royal Oak.

 These guys are Ninja assassins.  They stalk you silently beneath

the waves.  But they better strike first and they dare not miss.

Those that don't succeed had best dive quickly because destroyers,

armed with depth charges, are headed straight their way.

©  Tom Taylor

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good morning justin

  

F I N A L E

Sleepwalker

An Authentic

Red Eye

Brand of

Party Animal

Terrible 

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