“The Battle for Christmas Day” Part Three – ATL Sink the Admiral Graf Spee
“The Battle for Christmas Day” Part Three – ATL Sink the Admiral Graf Spee – 24th/25th Dec 1940
The strike was already 5 minutes over due and the pilot of the shadowing Loire 130 decided to break radio silence and call them
No answer. A second attempt by the radio operator after getting roundly abused by the pilot got a response from Bearn saying that they should have arrived already
With just over 30 minutes of sunlight left the pilot decided that the time for subtleness was gone.
Hauling back on the control column and increasing power to the aircrafts 12 Cylinder engine and began to climb and at 1000 m altitude he flipped on the navigation lights and began to circle
There was now 25 minutes until sundown
Mean while the Strike group which was about 5 kms North and later than planned due to a head wind a spotter on the strike leaders PL10 had spotted the lights to the south
Realising what this meant the strike leader immediately turned the formation south and in minutes they had rendezvoused with the amphibian and there just to the east of them was the prize
On board the Graf Spee a shout “Aircraft Bearing One Nine Zero” came the cry from one of the spotters
All officers and spotters moved to look in that direction and then a report from the port 5.9 Director which had aligned itself to that bearing
“Multiple Aircraft Twelve Plus range 10,000 meters bearing Two Zero Zero, Height.....Three Thousand Meters”
For Captain Langsdorff this was a nightmare come true
He had seen firsthand the damage even a small bomb can do to a cruiser after seeing the damage to the Graf Spee’s sister ship Deutschland when she had been bombed and badly damaged by Spanish Republican Aircraft in 1937 while part of the International Non-Intervention Committee patrol
Another update from the Port side director
“Raid has split into 3 groups 1 high 2 low – low groups splitting to port and starboard”
Langsdorff immediately ordered general quarters and for the engines to go to maximum revolutions which added perhaps another half knot to her top speed despite a protest from his chief engineer and gave orders for the ship to start zig zagging
He realised with a cold certainty what the raid was doing 1 group of dive bombers – and 2 group of Torpedo planes. It would force him to split his AAA.
The next couple of minutes he knew would decide the fate of his ship the entire crew.
Langsdorf was not to know it but the ‘high group’ was not comprised of Dive bombers at all. Bearn did not carry any.
Instead the high group was comprised of the 4 Fighters and 2 Reconnaissance planes – the former, in case the Cruiser launched her aircraft and the latter for additional command and control of the strike.
Despite this almost half of Graf Spees weapons were directed at them and as the 3 groups of aircraft closed and one of the Dewoitine 373 was damaged forcing the high group to take evasive action.
The two low groups however had dropped down to wave top level and had begun to close in at over 100 kts
For all of the pilots this was the first time that they had attacked an enemy ship and the first time that they had been shot at
Pre war practice was that the chances of hitting a manoeuvring warship at speed with a torpedo went up exponentially the closer the weapon was dropped to the target.
But with multiple 2cm and 3.7cm tracers streaming out of the Cruiser at them and flak shells exploding above them most of the crews dropped their fish at maximum range and got the hell out
Two pilots however did not
The Senior pilot leading the port side group of torpedo planes did not and even while his fellows had dropped their fish and turned away this pilot waited until the Graf Spee ‘filled’ his forward horizon before dropping his fish and then died a second later as a 3.7 cm shell impacted one of the main struts and filled the cockpit and its 3 occupants with fragments.
The aircraft on fire one wing almost torn off flipped over and then cart wheeled across the ocean before resting up side down 400 meters from the Cruiser
The remaining aircraft was the strike squadron’s commanding officer.
He wasn’t scared.
He had been.
In fact, he had found to his shame that he had become increasingly scared ever since he had been ordered to plan the strike on the German Heavy Cruiser.
The knowledge that success was now down to the skill and bravery of his Squadron had not helped one little bit and the fear of Death, Injury and the possibility of failure had quite unmanned him.
Despite this he was determined to do his duty.
But had no intention of doing so sober and he had made sure that he had not one but two brandy filled hip flasks with him as he took off from the Bearn and by the time they had reached the Graf Spee and begun their attack both flasks were empty and he was, as he would shamelessly admit with a twinkle in his eye during post war interviews, in very good spirits.
He spent the entire attack run ignoring the increasingly heavy AAA, shouting vile curses at the German ship (while his Observer and gunner increasingly shouted vile curses at him) before dropping the torpedo at the last moment before pulling the biplane around in a creaking turn almost crossing over the Graf Spee’s stern before wave hopping away having not received so much as a scratch to the paint work.
Behind him first 1 and then a second torpedo slammed into the German ship.
TBC
