In December 1940 three British ships attacked the German battle cruiser 'Graf Spee', forcing it into Montivideo harbour.'Exeter' and 'Ajax' were two of the ships, but what was the third?
German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee Graf Spee"s 28 cm guns. The German ship opened fire with her main battery at "Exeter" and her secondary guns at the flagship at 06:17. At 06:20, "Exeter" returned fire, followed by "Ajax" at 06:21 and at 06:24. In the span of thirty minutes, "Admiral Graf Spee" had hit "Exeter" three times, disabling her two forward turrets, destroying her bridge and her aircraft catapult, and starting major fires. "Ajax" and "Achilles" moved closer to "Admiral Graf Spee" to relieve the pressure on "Exeter". Langsdorff thought the two light cruisers were making a torpedo attack, and turned away under a smokescreen.
German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee Admiral Graf Spee was a ""Panzerschiff"" (armored ship), nicknamed a "pocket battleship" by the British, which served with the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany during World War II. The two sister-ships of her class, and , were reclassified as heavy cruisers in 1940. The vessel was named after Admiral Maximilian von Spee, commander of the East Asia Squadron that fought the battles of Coronel and the Falkland Islands, where he was killed in action, in World War I. She was laid down at the "Reichsmarinewerft" shipyard in Wilhelmshaven in October 1932 and completed by January 1936.