Dawn: Dark enough to strike without giving too much away, light enough to set the victim up in silhouette. It was to be a simple operation. All the Admiral Graf Spec had to do was warn the plodding French freighter not to send out radio alarms, take off her jittery crew, shell her or set some TNT below, and give her a one-way ticket to Davy Jones. Then get away.
Already there were prisoners in the
Spee's brig from nine such helpless victims. This life of raiding was good. Risks, yes, but mostly just an easy kill every three or four days. Two Limeys in one day off Africa a week ago; now a Frenchman off Uruguay.
In the tower, one of the Admiral Graf Spee's wireless hands ticked out the warning. A couple of 5.95 were cleared—to fire across the Frenchman's bow, or just in case the boys on the Formose were fools.
Suddenly from the lookout came a message : Enemy light cruiser sighted. Convoy. Off the starboard bow.
Alarm gongs clanged violently from lookout to keelson; bugles sounded to-your-stations. On the bridge the young officers put on their earphones and checked with the fire-control room and plotters. Observers focused their binoculars. The T-shaped range finders swung in the sleepy calisthenics of limbering and checking. In the control tower the plotters laid out their instruments—parallel, slide, caliper, is-was.
In the conning tower, Captain Hans Langsdorff talked quickly and confidently with the navigator. This job should be easy. Overwhelming superiority in armament and firepower. The cruiser—identified now as the Ajax, 6,985 tons—would not dare come in close enough to dent the Spee.
Gun crews slid into the two heavy turrets fore and aft and dogged the traps after them. The huge barrels nodded as if eager to belch. Lines of fire hose were dragged out on deck and left sputtering into the waterways. The decks emptied of men.
The Admiral Graf Spee, pocket battleship, 10,000 tons, last word in naval power for its size, was ready. But not for what happened next.
From the lookout came a new alarm: Two more enemy sighted. Light cruiser. Heavy cruiser. Starboard abeam.
Three cruisers to fight. She should be able to wallop them. The two light cruisers carried 6-inchers—too light to pierce the Spee'?, heavy armor, but plenty big enough to do damage far forward and aft, where the skin was thin, and in parts of the superstructure. And they could do six and one-half knots better than the Spee, maybe eight and one-half with all the truck-&-barnacles the German had picked up in the southern seas. The heavy cruiser was something to think about—8-inchers (they could crack most of the Spee's plate, including the control tower, from close range), and the vessel had an edge in speed.
But Spee had two turrets of n-inchers. That is power. A direct hit with 670 pounds of explosive-packed armor-piercer could blow a hole big as a suite at the Hotel Adlon in any of these ships. Then she had the eight 5-9-inchers as well. Roughly, the Spee had a 3-to-1 advantage in armament and fire-power over all three cruisers put together.
Tactics: watch the light cruisers but concentrate on the heavy; cripple her first, then the others would be meat.