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The Ajax dampered her fires and set a smoke screen behind which Formose escaped. Meanwhile the other two—now identified as the light Achilles (7,030 tons) and the heavy Exeter (8,390 tons) —were flanking out to sea. Ajax apparently did the same, astern of Spee. This meant two disadvantages for the German —shoals and shore to starboard, glaring rising sun behind the enemy to port. Captain Langsdorff gave the order to work out to sea, into deeper water.
By now Achilles and Exeter were deployed and sheering in. Spee. had to train both big turrets on Exeter, and just keep the others off with 5.93. The engagement settled down to a running dogfight. Tactic of the Britons, directed from the Exeter by Commodore Henry H. Harwood, Commander of the South American Division of the Royal Navy since 1936, was one the Italians have developed: Using curtains of smoke, the cruisers drove through from behind, showed themselves just long enough to get off a salvo, and then plunged back into the screen. This meant that Spee never knew where to look for trouble, and when it came, had to react quickly.
Only way that the Spee could have overcome the British tactic was to get her two planes in the air for reconnoitering. It must have been early in the battle that a lucky British hit stripped to her fuselage the plane perched on the catapult—blocking the catapult so the other plane was also useless, and thus virtually blinding Spee. Despatches by week's end had not made it clear whether the British used their five available planes.
Out to sea went the four, zigzagging, varying speed, roaring steel at each other. The cruisers kept dashing in from all angles like hounds baiting a boar. In Spec's guts, the 62 British seamen—the youngest was 15, the oldest 72, every sort from captain to cabin boy—hollered their happy heads off every time they felt the Spec take a hit.
According to one of the German sailors, the enemy used torpedoes. None of them hit, but they made Spee alter course and lose maneuvering advantages. For a while Captain Langsdorff himself took the wheel.
Marksmanship on both sides must have been keen. Percentage of hits to tries in battle averages 2%. At Jutland, where the firing was tops, the Germans got 1.5%, the British 2.6%. Here the average may well have been 2% in the first phases. Spee suffered two especially bad hits—which must have been 256-pound shells from Exeter, since they both pierced heavy armament. One of them, high on the port quarter detonating a split second after getting inside, ripped gaping holes in side and deck. The other probably decided the battle. It pocked Spee's control tower fair and square. Lights went out. Telephones went dead. The central fire control went out of whack. Some of Spee's best plotters, gunnery officers, observers lay dead or wounded. From then on, orders had to go from less skilled men in secondary control stations. Speaking tubes, portable lights, messages by hand had to be resorted to.
Spee was not without success. She gave Exeter an awful raking—practically demolished her superstructure, and blew one turret to bits. Finally she got at Exeter's vitals, crippled her speed, so that Exeter fell out. It was 10 o'clock. The battle was four hours old. Next for the light pair.