Salvage crew raises key piece of sunken battleship
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Part of the Graf Spee's command tower is hoisted aboard a salvage vessel Wednesday.
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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) -- A salvage team used a floating crane Wednesday to raise a key piece of the sunken German battleship Graf Spee, lifting a 27-ton part of the command tower after weeks of failed attempts.
Retired Navy Capt. Alberto Braida, a logistics planner for the salvage operation, told The Associated Press the team recovered its first significant part of the ship, once a symbol of German naval might in the early days of World War II.
"We've got it!" he said of the large chunk of the communications tower that once held sophisticated range-finding equipment for the warship's 11-inch (280-millimeter) guns.
The vessel -- considered one of the most sophisticated of its time -- prowled the South Atlantic, sinking as many as nine allied merchant ships before warships from Britain and New Zealand crippled it in a December 1939 naval engagement.
Scuttled by its captain in the River Plate shortly after the battle, the Graf Spee has remained for decades in waters less than 25 feet (7.5 meters) deep only miles (kilometers) outside the port of Montevideo.
Braida said the team salvaged the the range-finding equipment known as the telemeter during a second attempt Wedensday.
Earlier in the day, the recovery team managed to raise the telemeter but the supporting cables snapped and the 27-ton piece crashed back into the water.
An optical instrument, the telemeter was a sophisticated instrument for its era that helped gunners improve their aim and hone in on targets up to 35 kilometers (20 miles) away.
Tricky river currents and fickle winds on the River Plate estuary had stymied the salvage team ever since it made a first attempt February 9 to pull the top of the command tower from the muddy waters.
The Graf Spee is slowly sinking in this photo taken by Friedrich Adolphe, a survivor of the sinking.
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The recovery effort is being financed by private investors in Europe and the United Sates. The team said it hopes to recover as much of the ship as possible in the next three years to place it on display.
Feared by many navies at the outset of the war, the Graf Spee -- a "pocket battleship" that carried less powerful guns and was smaller than a conventional ship of that class -- was tracked down by British forces off the South American coast.
The "Battle of the River Plate" began on December 13, 1939, near the mouth of the river as the German warship was pursued by a battle group consisting of two British warships, HMS Exeter and HMS Ajax, and the HMNZS Achilles of New Zealand.
The Graf Spee was crippled in the fight after receiving several direct hits, and Capt. Hans Langsdorff decided to take refuge in the Montevideo harbor.
Unable to make the necessary repairs, Langsdorff sank it on December 17, 1939. The crew was taken by ship to Buenos Aires and the captain committed suicide there days later.
Copyright 2004 The
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
