Commander Salamander Substack

Indulge me a bit to bring back one of my first FbF from 2006 about one of my favorite ships....and it is German.

The Graf Spee.

She had a short but glorious history, an epic wartime cruise, and fought a classic battle against an enemy as honorable as she was, and to this day she calls people to her grave.

She still calls to some; well at least me. Look again at her stats.

Range: 8,900 nautical miles at 20 knots (16,500 km at 37 km/h), or 19,000 nautical miles at 10 knots (35,000 km at 18.5 km/h).

Plant: Eight 9-cylinder double-acting two-stroke MAN diesels two screws, 52,050 hp (40 MW).

Guns:

• Six 11 inch (280 mm) guns in two triple turrets,
• eight 5.9 inch (150 mm) guns
• six 150 mm guns
• eight 37 mm anti-aircraft guns
• ten 20 mm anti-aircraft guns
• eight 21 inch (530 mm) torpedo tubes in 2 quadruple mounts

All this in a ship 186 m long.

Yep, you know where I am going with this. Imagine, using modern (not PPT or "in development") technologies to build a modern Pocket Battleship.

Just think about it.

Even if you don't want to spend what it takes to put titanium firemains like we first did in the LPD-17 or re-create the foundries to build the 11" guns, I will give you 4 MK-71s instead, two forward two aft.

Give her four Leonardo OTO Melara 76/62 mm Super Rapid, two forward like you find in the French Horizon Class frigates, and a similar configuration aft.

Throw in a few dozen MK-41 VLS cells in a center section....and you know where I am going.

Now think about the LCS and DDG-1000 that we wasted so much time and treasure in…when we could have built this.

It would have been, with an order or magnitude less technology risk, what DDG-1000 was supposed to be.

My idea was great 19 years ago. It is even greater today.

Back to my Graf Spee. Two great sites for info are here and here.

There was some news in 2006 I’d love to get an update on, the Graf Spee Project, and folks taking bits of her up one piece at a time. The one I want is already gone. The stern eagle. Here she is now, here is what she she looked like when attached. Bronze rulz.

The latest I have heard is that for some reason, the Uruguay government is having the vapors over the swastika held by the eagle’s feet. It is historical, and Uruguay was not part of Nazi Germany. Get it out of the warehouse and put it on display.

It is the 21st century and that symbol does not have magic powers.

Here she is in the ideal, the actual (like the false bow wave camo), and her final cruise to meet her end.

To round out the story, you should review her Skipper, Kapitän zur See Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff. IMAO, an honorable, conflicted man - who in the end - loved his Sailors more than anything else. There are worse things that can be said about a man.

As is my habit, I’ll ask the question; "What would you do?"

There is a recent German language book on him that I wish were in English.