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.
“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.
The captain continually swung his binoculars from Exeter to the two light cruisers now crossing his wake, many kilometers astern. Max had nearly lost his hearing. Acrid cordite smoke burned his throat and brought tears to his eyes.
Again Exeter fired. Seawater thrown up by the near miss sprayed onto the main deck and drenched the sailors out in the open, sluicing across the teakwood boards. The ship rocked and Max almost lost his footing. As he grabbed the handrail, a shell struck with a violent explosion, ripping metal with a terrible screech. The force threw Langsdorff down. Max jumped to the captain’s side and knelt over him. “Herr Kapitän! Herr Kapitän!” Gun smoke billowed across the trembling bridge. Max seized the captain by the lapels of his uniform coat. “Herr Kapitän Langsdorff!”
Above the roar of the guns, Hollendorf bellowed helm orders as he temporarily guided the racing ship, shifting her a few degrees off their base course every thirty seconds and then back so Spee would never steam in a straight line. Langsdorff opened his eyes, shook himself, and let Max help him up. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” the captain said. “The others?”
“No casualties, Herr Kapitän.”
“Very well.”
The shell had struck the deck below them; the bridge only received the secondary shock wave. The ship rocked again as another shell found home. Flames shot up from the port bow. Damage reports streamed in, and Max tried to make sense of them. Spee was riddled with holes, but all her guns still fired.
Once again he focused his binoculars on Exeter. The British heavy cruiser was also on fire in several places and down by the bow. One of her forward turrets was out of action, its steel case split by a direct hit, the gun crew certainly killed. The two light cruisers had almost completed their arc. They readied to fire on Graf Spee from the opposite side, but Spee’s main guns ignored them. Another explosion and Exeter’s second forward turret split open, too. Smoke engulfed the ship’s front half, and only her single stern turret continued to fire. They battered her; the British ship wouldn’t be able to take much more.
But Exeter fought on. Above her flaming decks, the white battle ensigns waved defiantly. Below one of the ensigns flew the time-honored signal of the Royal Navy since Nelson’s day: Engage the enemy more closely.
Suddenly, one of Graf Spee’s shells split open the steel cocoon of Exeter’s rear turret. Smoke poured now from her stern as well; she was out of guns. Max watched in disbelief as the huge burning ship slowly turned her course to converge with Graf Spee. “She’s turning into us,” he shouted to the captain.
Langsdorff ignored the warning. The two light cruisers now closed the range and began to fire. With Exeter no longer shooting, Langsdorff could not spare the shells to finally sink her. “Train main batteries to starboard!” he ordered. “Commence against light cruisers!”
Max spoke into the gunnery phone. “Order from captain: main batteries, commence against light cruisers. Repeat, main batteries to commence against light cruisers.”
Momentarily the great cannons fell silent as they rotated to starboard on their ball-bearing rollers to meet the new threat. The two smaller cruisers, now eight kilometers out, charged bows on at Graf Spee, their prows pointed at the center of Spee’s right flank. Spee’s main turrets opened fire as soon as they bore. Geysers of seawater ringed all three vessels.
At a range of five kilometers, the British ships heeled over and began running parallel to Graf Spee, communicating with each other in hoists of brilliantly colored signal flags. This turn brought all their guns to bear. The cruisers opened a furious barrage. An English shell hit the fore part of the ship, carrying away a piece of the anchor chain. Another smashed one of the launches. A moment later the starboard side of the low steel bridge wall blew open, spraying the bridge with steel splinters. Max slammed to the deck beside Hollendorf and the deputy watch officer. Two signalmen fell, blood spraying everywhere, running into the scuppers and fouling the deckboards. Langsdorff went down, too.
“Torpedoes!” a telephone talker yelled hoarsely, repeating what the lookouts were telling him. “Torpedoes fired to the starboard!”
Max scrambled to his feet. The captain was sprawled out cold, covered in blood. To the ship’s starboard side, a pair of torpedoes plowed through the water, trailing white tracks from the compressed air that powered them. Max lunged for the speaking tube. “Helmsman! Emergency right rudder!” He picked up the engine room phone and shouted, “Achtung! Full astern starboard, emergency ahead port!”
The bow of Graf Spee turned ponderously into the torpedoes. Max braced himself against the jagged steel of the bridge, heart pounding, watching the white arrows speed toward his ship. Sailors tumbled from their perches all over Spee as she heeled. Steel plates creaked in the turn, equipment crashing to the deck. Smoke billowed from the ship’s lone stack and her bronze propellers thrashed the sea—the starboard prop full astern to drag them to the right, the port propeller pushing them to starboard at emergency ahead. Max struck his leg with his fist in a determined rhythm as he watched the bow turn. Faster. Faster. It seemed to be coming around in slow motion.
But they were in time.
Spee combed the tracks, the torpedoes speeding harmlessly down her sides. But now only her forward turret bore on the British ships. The light cruisers hounded her with all sixteen of their combined guns. On the other side, the burning Exeter continued to press on, bidding desperately to close the range—and what? Ram? Fire her torpedoes?
“Emergency left rudder,” Max shouted to the helmsman. The rudder bit and Graf Spee swung slowly back to parallel with the light cruisers. “Ring for full ahead all engines,” he ordered the men at the engine telegraphs.
“Report, Brekendorf.” It was Langsdorff, back on his feet with blood spattered across his uniform.
“Exeter closing to port, sir. Two light cruisers engaged to starboard. Main batteries trained to starboard and firing.”
“All batteries to fire on the light cruisers.”
Max went to the gunnery phone, wiping blood from its receiver. “Order from captain: all batteries commence against light cruisers. Repeat, all batteries to commence against light cruisers.”
Immediately, all Graf Spee’s guns that would bear—main and secondary batteries, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns—opened fire on the two British ships. Spee bucked with the recoil, metallic reports ringing loud in Max’s ears.
The fusillade riddled the light cruisers. A hoist of bright signal flags broke over the two ships and they immediately turned away and bore off toward the horizon, engaging their smoke generators till they both disappeared into clouds of oily smoke.
; Max could hear the sailors cheering.
“All batteries train on Exeter,” Langsdorff ordered.
Again the main batteries fell silent as they turned on their rollers and trained onto H.M.S. Exeter. The crippled heavy cruiser was still five kilometers from Graf Spee, still too distant to fire her torpedoes. With a tremendous roar the big guns opened back up. Exeter cut a zigzag through the pockmarked sea, always steering for the most recent splashes—a standard tactic for throwing off enemy gunners. But Spee’s gunnery team found Exeter’s range, pounding her again and again. Suddenly she came hard a port and turned away. Dark smoke billowed from the fires up and down her length as the British ship struck out hard for the horizon.
“She’s turning away!” Max shouted.
Langsdorff did not react. The bridge crew watched in silence, grinning at one another. “Train main batteries on the light cruisers,” Langsdorff ordered.
But gunnery could not find them in the black clouds into which they had disappeared. Max reported this to the captain.
Langsdorff nodded. “Cease firing.”
The sudden quiet unnerved Max. The tinkling of brass shells as they rolled on the deck, the swish of the sea as it flowed past the hull, the whine of the ventilators as they drew air into the engines, the tramp of feet—all these sounds, unheard during the battle, filled the stillness. Pain throbbed in Max’s battered eardrums, spiking with each thump of his heart.
The concussions had stopped his watch. He put his head into the navigator’s cubby to check the clock. Thirty-three minutes. The entire engagement had lasted only thirty-three minutes. Max’s arms and legs quivered from the tension. Blood washed the bridge, obscuring some of the instruments. If the shell had been bigger, the ship slower, if he’d been standing on the other side—the fear now pressed in on him, catching in his throat. But he had survived.
Far in the distance, the light cruisers were still marked by their smoke clouds. They would now shadow Graf Spee from afar, outside the range of her big guns, afraid to come any closer and baying incessantly to the Admiralty for help. Royal Navy battleships from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town would already be recalling their crews from bars and whorehouses, building up steam to slip their moorings, sailing to intercept the wounded Spee.
Langsdorff turned to Max, who came to attention and saluted. The captain nodded in return. Max picked up a small scrap of the metal plating that had been sheared from the bridge. He turned the fragment over in his hands, then slipped it into the pocket of his tunic. Medics were on the bridge now, hauling the casualties away. They loaded one of the signalmen onto a stretcher, his left arm hanging by tendons from the shoulder, torn from the joint and flopping at his side. Two deckhands stood by, under the watch of a bosun’s mate, ready to sluice away the bits of flesh and rivulets of blood on the deck. Max turned away, vomit catching in his throat.
“Oberleutnant.”
“Ja, Herr Kapitän?”
“Reduce speed to eighteen knots. Train turret Bruno on light cruisers.”
“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”
Max passed the captain’s orders. In a minute, the vibration of the steel deck eased as Graf Spee’s speed fell off. Surgeon Commander Kertzendorff appeared, his coat smeared with blood from emergency operations. The doctor advanced on Langsdorff.
“Not now, Doktor.”
“Herr Kapitän, I insist.”
“A moment then, Doktor, a moment. Oberleutnant, are you able to carry on?”
“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”
“Very well. Come hard starboard and resume our base course on a compass heading of one five five south-southeast. Maintain speed. As you come hard starboard we will have a chance to give them a broadside. Instruct the gunnery officer to fire on the light cruisers whenever they come in range and he can make them out. I’m going below to let the doctor examine me, and then I must inspect the ship. Carry on.”
“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”
Langsdorff took a last slow look around the blood-soaked bridge and went below.
Max notified gunnery, then came hard starboard and swung the ship around by almost one hundred eighty degrees.
A few minutes later, one of the signalmen spoke. “Herr Oberleutnant, damage control requests you to reduce speed. They are taking too much water in the bow compartments.”
Max took the phone from the signalman. “Wachoffizier,” he said.
“Ah, what a pleasure to know that Your Braveness lives.”
“Dieter! What are you doing?”
“Groener’s dead. I’ve been posted to damage control.”
“What’s the damage?”
“Well, we’ll stay afloat but we’ve got more holes than a Swiss cheese. We’re taking a lot of water up in the bow compartments. There’s a hole in the port bow about three by six meters, and it won’t be easy to fix. You have to slow us down so we can plug it.”
“I can’t. Captain’s orders are to maintain course and speed.”
“Max, there’s a damn hole the size of a picture window in the port bow.”
“Above or below the waterline?”
“Above, but just barely. Wind is picking up now and forcing water in.”
“Dieter, you’ll just have to rig more pumps. We can’t slow down.
“Dieter…” Max paused on hearing the firing gong and braced himself as the aft turret fired at the shadowing British ships.
“Dieter, are you still there?”
“I am, but I won’t be soon.”
“You have to find a way to carry on. We can’t reduce speed because those light cruisers keep darting out of their smoke to fire at us. We have to shake them.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Max hung up and went to the starboard wing of the bridge. He fixed his binoculars on the smokescreen being thrown up by the distant British ships. From time to time one of the cruisers would charge out of the smoke, let loose a broadside at Graf Spee, then retire into the smoke again. Spee’s rear turret fired back.
They’d have the devil’s own time shaking the cruisers, but they could do it, especially if they hit some heavy weather. In a storm, a larger ship could go faster than a smaller one. On their present course, Graf Spee headed east away from land into the deep ocean, the way home, to Germany. Max knew the raiding cruise was over. The most dangerous part of their journey had now begun. But if they made it through, and they would make it, he’d be home in two weeks, perhaps three. Home. Mareth. His father. His wedding.
Exhaustion filled him as the tension of the battle drained away. Still, he kept the bridge all morning, forcing himself to listen to the damage reports as they came in. More than twenty British shells had struck Graf Spee. Many had simply bounced off the ship’s four-inch armor belt, but one had exploded in the galley; another smashed part of the internal communications system; others had carved up the launches, shattered lenses in the rangefinder, and punched numerous small holes in the deck and hull. Thirty-six men had been killed, many more wounded.
Fortunately, neither the engine room nor the main gun turrets had sustained any damage, although they’d shot away half their main battery ammunition. Apart from the hole in the bow, the ship appeared to Max to have sustained no crippling damage.
But when Langsdorff returned to the bridge at midday, he stood silent for a long moment, gazing out at the sea in front of them. Then he took his binoculars and looked aft, seeing in the far distance the two small towers of smoke that marked the shadowing British cruisers. “Oberleutnant,” he said at last.
Max came to attention. “Herr Kapitän.”
“Come hard port and steer new course of three one zero.”
Without thinking, Max stepped to the voice tube. Then he stopped. That course would turn them right around and head them west, toward land, toward the mouth of the Rio Plata and Montevideo. “Herr Kapitän, there must be some mistake.”
“Oberleutnant, steer three one zero.”
“Sir, they will trap us in the Rio Plata. We’ll never
get home.” He stared at Langsdorff. The estuary of the Plata was difficult enough to navigate, and after passing through the river’s mouth, they would still have to steam fifty kilometers upriver to reach Montevideo. And when they chose to leave, they would have to conduct a fifty-kilometer running battle to get out into the South Atlantic again. The British would have them trapped like rats.
Langsdorff looked at Max. His voice when he spoke was slow and quiet. “The British cruisers would never have attacked us so aggressively on their own. They must be supported by larger British warships nearby. We cannot take the risk of encountering a Royal Navy battleship.”
“Herr Kapitän, better to find our graves here at sea than run and hide!”
“Oberleutnant, steer three one zero.”
Max hesitated, then came to attention again. “Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.” He leaned over the voicepipe. “Helm.”
“Helm, aye.”
“Come hard port to new course of three one zero.”
Graf Spee heeled hard to port as the rudder turned and came a port in a half circle, before steadying up on three one zero, northwest by west, the direction of land, the deep ocean left behind. Max knew they had been bluffed. Of course the British cruisers had come at them aggressively. That’s what the Royal Navy did: attacked their enemies whenever and wherever they found them no matter what the odds. The British Admiralty expected no less, would accept no less. In the 1700s the Royal Navy court-martialed and shot an admiral who had not fought aggressively enough. That was their tradition.
But the German navy had no such traditions. After the only major engagement they ever fought with the Royal Navy—the Battle of the Skagerrak, off the Jutland peninsula—the German fleet turned around and went home. And there they stayed, safe and sound, the best men transferring to the U-boat force, until surrendering to the Royal Navy at the end of the First War. Max realized this was the only tradition Langsdorff knew: to run for safe harbor after a battle. But in his soul Max knew that a Royal Navy captain would never do as they were doing: turning away from battle with the enemy in sight. And standing next to him, Max saw that a weary and dispirited Captain Langsdorff knew it as well.
An Honorable German Page 8
