Was it possible for the Graf Spee to break out of Montevideo?

Another quote from:
http://www.bobhenneman.info/bhbrp.htm

As for sub/surface ship cooperation the only time it really worked that I'm aware of the subs had a lot of time to get in position. I'm thinking in particular of the US use of subs as scouts and rescue ships for pilots. The Japanese attempted to use them at Midway and the failure of that component was one of the nails in the coffin.

 

There is only one of me.
I am always skeptical of claims for coordination between surface and submarine units. It seems to work only in the most general sense. It's hard to imagine the attempt justifying itself in GS's case. How much patrol time does the submarine lose in getting to its station? And then, exactly what is it supposed to do? Chase down the high-speed targets? If sinking major warships were so easy, it would not have happened so infrequently.

 

If memory serves me,.....Germany Invaded...Germany aggressed,...
Germany was pre-emptive [Channel attacks/Battle of Britain]

Germany is obviously not concerned about reprocusions...seeing that it is torpedo-ing flagged shipping on world oceans.

Hitler may have changed his geo strategic views later on....hoping to sue for a peace settlement....and possibly have a 1 front war with Russia.

at this early period of the war [Graf Spee].....Germany is making robust
moves as per the U boat attacks....which will occur even in broad daylight
off U.S. east coast...with U Boats deck gunning their victims.

The KM sub report/timeline submited above.......tells me that Donitz is favorable to helping Graf Spee.

again....this is a hypothetical thread,
other posters have comented that Graf Spee could have escaped the RN
via gunnery,....distance seperation due to rain squalls,
My recent add on...that a U boat or U Boats could have assisted,..if not turned the situational tide in Graf Spee's favor.

I believe these forwards are reasonable,
citing Graf Spee's certain doom and the death of 1000 men is biased closure.

If Graf Spee can jury rig ...what is it,....a fuel cleaning system for its engine plant,
ya...if they can bodge that and get to a local where some time permits proper repair,[possible ammo resupply]
that Ship lives another day to fight and make history.

 

My above introduction of the KM sub/situation readyness report was to support the premise that a U boat or U boats could assist...or actually turn the entrapment situation of Graf Spee [again....this is a hypothetical thread]

I agree that RN ships can move away from sub targeting advantage,
distance themselves so as to negate the subs ability to even match them in shadowing....as they themselves attempt to shadow Graf Spee [should she have successfully broken out].
The introduction to me is reasonable...and like battles in history,
turn of events can occur from surprises.
Imagine what the RN is going to do if HMS Cumberland gets hits with no report of subs in vicinity,...and say....her aft magazines let go,
the RN group...[with allready crippled ships] is not going to reasonably leave HMS Cumberland to burn and sink....as they all race to chase/shadow Graf Spee.
In my seperate thread on Acoustic torpedo,......HMCS Magog has her entire stern blown off [some 60ft].....HMCS Toronto who had drawn near to send a medical officer in a motor boat,.....herself just escaped a torpedo fired at her [ by Kneip U -1223/unless there was another U boat present]
HMCS Toronto had to break off her tow of disabled HMCS Magog to attack the U Boat.


St. Croix was the first escort to be sunk, taking three hits in the stern on the 20th. HMS Polyanthus (K47) was sunk as she came up to screen HMS Itchen's rescue operations. Itchen (K227), forced to retire that evening, returned the next morning and picked up 81 survivors from St. Croix and one from Polyanthus. The following day, 22 September, Itchen herself was torpedoed. Three men were rescued, two from Itchen, one from St. Croix.
[wiki excerpt]

as per above info.....3 warships are sunk by U boats.

I agree that KM are at a disadvantage as per time cycle [in realtime...not hypothetical] as too support of Graf Spee.

this is why introduced the notion of pre staging and operation synergy between service combatants of KM and supply.

 

Langdorf was clearly an old school officer who cared about seamen as well his duty. Note that he encountered a British ship on the way into port. He ordered them to stop and abandon ship as he would sink them. They stopped but didn't abandon ship and he refrained from sinking them (he really didn't have the time to encourage them). In some ways he was much more suited to being a warship commander in an earlier age.

 

U-126 did not save Atlantis so it's far from certain that U-44 and U-46 could save Graf Spee assuming they got there in the first place.
Still a squadron engaged in close blockade far from it's bases and close to a neutral shore is horribly vulnerable to subs, the main defence of warships against subs is steaming out of range before the sub can get a good firing solution and ships that have to stay within a few miles of a port can't do that.
IMO Prepositiong subs in case a raider needed support would have been a waste of resources, getting some there after the battle was within the KM's capability but to be any use would have rerquired the political negotiations to go very differently from how they did historically.

 

Is there a point to any of the above? What does it have to do with Graf Spee's chances in December, 1939? You'll have to be more specific in explaining what you are trying to establish here.

Sure, why wouldn't he be; he was, after all, part of the same navy. But it's obvious, he also clearly realized that there wasn't anything his subs could do to help the GS.

Biased closure??

Possibly, but biased in favor of reality. Of course, weird and improbable things happen in war, but Langsdorff and his superiors had to make their decisions based on the things that were likely to happen, not some wild possibilities that theoretically could happen, but had such a low probability that nobody believed they actually would happen. Prayers for rain squalls, U-boats that can't reach the area for at least a month, miraculous gunnery with the main FC system destroyed...it's all great to speculate on, but Langsdorff had to face reality and decide what to do based on the hard facts; these were not in favor of GS surviving and Langsdorff knew it.

If...maybe...perhaps.... You think Langsdorff and his officers didn't think about the possibilities? That's short changing them quite a bit. It doesn't sound like you have ever had to make a decision where the lives of a lot of men, maybe a 1,000 or more, were in the balance. I know it doesn't sound glorious to you, but that would count for a lot to most men, as it did to Langsdorff.

 

The only problem with your speculation about the British squadron being vulnerable to subs, is that the subs actually have to be in the same ocean as the British cruisers.

In any case, German subs wouldn't be able to operate in the River Plate estuary where the British cruisers were. The estuary was 139 miles wide, but full of shifting sandbars, and only 30 to 60 feet deep. The British cruisers would be virtually immune to subs until the chase began and then the subs would have only a fleeting chance, if they were exceedingly lucky, to fire at the cruisers. A hit under those circumstances is about as lkely as that fortuitous rain squall.

 

That's why I said the negotiations would need to go differrently, it would take over a month for the subs to get there, my point was only that the Donitz's memo was based on a real capability.

You have a point here, I didn't have a map of the local sea bed so I was assuming the subs would have the depth to dive if spotted and so could attack the patrolling ships before the Graf Spee attempted to breakout. If they have to wait until the actual breakout we will probably get a repetition (actually anticipation) of the U-126/Atlantis/Devonshire episode tough if comunications between the subs and Graf Spee can be established we may have the GS leading her pursuer into an ambush, still only one shot, and at a 25+ knots target, but a good one.

EDIT: Thinking of Donitz made me remember I had a copy of Reader's memoirs so I looked it up. The story he reports is that the Graf Spee was not fully seawothy, Hitler was pushing for a breakout while Reader decided to let Langsdorf, as the commander on the spot, decide and one deciding factor was the possibility the ship would not sink in the shalloww waters of the estuary and so would be captured. Had I read that before I would have known about the operating conditions for subs. Hitler was unhappy about the decision as he would have preferred a fight to the death (why am I not surprised?).

 

Actually, whether any notional German subs would have a "good" shot, or indeed, any shot at all, at the British cruisers depends on two things.

The first is the ability of the GS to communicate with the subs as to it's exact time of departure, course, speed, and the likely disposition of the British cruisers. This could probably be worked out through the German naval command, but I remain skeptical that the GS would be able to communicate directly with the subs about any possible last minute changes which might affect the GS's position as she crosses the twenty fathom curve, which was generally held to define minimum safe operating depth for a sub.

The other requirement would be absolutely precise navigation on the part of both the GS and the subs. If either were out of position by as much as 1,000 yards, it could mean the subs would be denied any possibility of hitting the British cruisers. In the Pacific, the US experience with setting up submarine "ambushes" through ULTRA messages was that the navigation issue often ruined what would have otherwise been "perfect" attacks. This, I think, would be the major problem for the German subs attempting to ambush the British cruisers, as the speed issue would mean they would have one chance and one chance only.

Of course, it also has to be considered that there are only two subs and three cruisers; it's unlikely that the subs would be able to sink or cripple all three cruisers, so the survivor(s) would be able to fall back on a plan to simply shadow the GS until additional British forces arrive.

Overall, given the historical experience of all navies in trying to closely coordinate the activities of subs and surface units in WW II, I would say that any German subs on the scene in December, 1939, might have perhaps a 10% chance of inflicting decisive damage on the British cruisers.

 

Your 10% is generous to the Germans if you only look at the breakout, two 4 torpedo launches are not much, the damaged Ajax for sure would have been relieved by the time the subs arrive, IMO the best "pocket battleship killers" the allies have are Dunquerque and Strasbourg so that would be my choice but the composition of the blokading squadron at the time the subs arrive is anybody's guess but we can assume the subs will need to disable a least a couple of big ships to give Graf Spee a chance. Those odds probably do not justify an attempt, the germans need to damage the blockaders before the breakout.
The British subs patrolling the Messina straits (yes I do know the sea bed is different, I've been skin diving in the area for the last 40 years ) managed to badly damage Trieste, Bolzano (Twice!!!) and Attendolo and sank Bande Nere, and that is what I was thinking about. When ships are tied to a single location sooner or later a sub will get a good firing solution, we are looking at someting much closer to that than to the ULTRA intercepts where the subs would only get one chance against a squadron passing trough a given area. The Royal Oak episode is also significant, if a surfaced U-Boot can get into Scapa Flow at night it can probably approach a blockading squadron with overtired lookouts after days of patrolling.
Given enough time the Germans may actually attempt something even sneakier like loading a couple of the small torpedo boats they used on the auxilliary cruisers on a merchant hull and try to ship them to the estuary, the chance of bagging a major warship and saving Graf Spee is definetly worth the risk, AFAIK those boats were originally designed to be carried by the Type III U-Boats that were never built but would have been very useful in this situation with their much better range compared to the VII.
Close blockades in the age of steam are very rare for good reasons, a big warship's best defence against torpedo armed vessels is not letting it approach, if the ship is tied to one place ......

 

Ark Royal, Renown, and at least 3 other CAs were headed that way prior to the scuttling. Note that Ark Royal makes the area somewhat hazardous for the subs as well. Germany was also having a lot of problems with their torpedoes at that point in time.

 

I think 10% is overly generous too. The reason I gave them that was because I was thinking of the Darter/Dace action in the Palawan Passage in October, 1944. In that action, two US Gato-class subs sank two Japanese heavy cruisers (Atago, Maya) and badly damaged a third (Takao). In the ensuing attempt to sink the damaged cruiser, the Darter ran aground and was lost. The sea-bottom in the area is shallow and strewn with coral reefs, although probably nowhere near as difficult for subs as the River Plate estuary. The Japanese squadron was doing only 18 knots, if I recall correctly, and was not in ASW formation, but did include destroyers. Of course, the US subs were also far more capable than the German subs, carrying ten torpedo tubes, being capable of 21 knots, and equipped with an excellent surface search radar which allowed them to pick up the cruisers in time to get into a favorable firing position.

If the Graf Spee situation is drawn out long enough to allow German subs to arrive, it must be presumed that the British will have massive forces available, including destoyers. In that case, GS is not only doomed, but most likely so are any forces the German navy can bring into play.

I agree that a close blockade of GS would probably not be attempted for the reasons you outline, once the British have had time to deploy their ships and organize their blockade. It would probably be carried out with destroyers in the estuary (because of ther shallow draft, speed, and expendability), aircraft patrols from the Ark Royal, and a distant covering force composed of a battleship/battle cruiser component and cruisers, all properly screened by destroyers. In any case, time certainly won't prove to be on the side of the GS.

 

I agree but if the Allies commit that strong a force the Graf Spee will never come out and the KM can claim a strategic victory, those ships, especially the carriers and destroyers, are badly needed elsewhere and if the blockade continues will need to be rotated for maintenance and resting crews, that's why I was assuming something no stronger than Dunquerque and Strasbourg.

And as to the Ark Royal making the area dangerous to subs it's perfectly true but it works both ways ....

 

Not true.

The Graf Spee cannot stay in Montevideo indefinitely. Uruguay leans to the allied cause in December, 1939, and would, in any case, come under intense pressure from the UK and US (it's two biggest trading partners) to intern the GS. Germany desperately wanted to avoid internment and viewed such a development as at least a propaganda defeat.

Once the GS is interned, it is out of the war and the British no longer need to maintain a blockade. Realistically, the whole matter would be resolved in less than a month.

 

No additional German forces could get to Montevideo before end of Jannuary, so if we assume the GS would be interned by then what happened historically is the only reasonable outcome, Graf Spee has very little chance of breaking out unassisted and no reinforcements can get there in time.

 

The mini schnellboote were far from ready in the discussed timeframe. Building the special torpedoes they needed was far from finished and the LS boats shipped on the raiders were used as minelayers, only the last raider (forgot the name) had a torpedo carrying LS boot.

greetings !

Aglooka

 

Didn't know that thanks.
Michel's boat LS-4 definetly used torpedoes, but Michel left Germany in March 42. Kormoran with LS-3 left at the end of 1940 but I can't find any documents on LS-3 firing or even having torpedoes. LS-2 on Komet was used as a minelayer and I don't think any of the other Hilfskreuzer carried boats.

BTW this is what I think is an LS alongside U-97 in Patrasso in mid 42, the shot clearly show the small size of these boats if that's what it really is.
View attachment 6047

 

Take this GRAF SPEE idea in another direction. Here's why. She was fast for her day and her 28cm guns were not to be ignored. Let's say she breaks out, regardless of limited fuel and ammunition, and she's intent on simply running the British and French forces to the ground. Any Uboot assist would be purely opportune, but allied air recon was very limited. She runs north into the North Atlantik, leading the Royal Navy on a merry chase and causing all manner of panic and confusion, disrupting merchant ship sailings, etc. This was the tactical purpose for which she was designed and built. The idea that she was too fast for any warship that could sink her and too heavily armed for any that could catch her sounds very neat, but has its flaws. Whatever the pros and cons, the Kriegsmarine tactics were a roll of the dice... some you win, some you loose. Sending her out to start with was rolling the dice against long odds of survival for any great length of time anyway. Look what happened with the BISMARCK episode... the British went bananas, and with cause. I'll venture she could have worked her way well into the North Atlantic before they caught her. What say ye?

Do we know what her fuel status was in Montevideo, and how that converts to potential range without more?

Lou

 

But by the time of the River Platte battle she couldn't outrun British cruisers.

She doesn't have the range to reach the North Atlantic with the damage she has taken. What's more she will likely not survive the British ships waiting for her. If she does with the additional damage she won't survive the reinforcements due in the next couple of days (they include at least one CV and one BC)

But that wasn't her design philosophy. Indeed there were quite a few ships that could catch and sink her when she was built. By WWII there were a lot more.

It's not so much the fuel that will limit her. It's things like fresh water.