Graf Spee salvage set to begin this week

By Raul Garces
The Associated Press

	AP, 1939 The German battleship Graf Spee burns near Montevideo, Uruguay, on Dec. 17, 1939, the day it was scuttled to avoid its capture.
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A symbol of German naval might early in the war, the ship — officially named Admiral Graf Spee — prowled the South Atlantic chasing and sinking as many as nine allied merchant ships before it was damaged by British warships in a Dec, 13, 1939, naval engagement, the "Battle of the River Plate." The Graf Spee was damaged in the fight after receiving several direct hits and Capt. Hans Langsdorff decided to take refuge in Montevideo harbor.

In a decision to avoid the Graf Spee's capture, Langsdorff took the limping craft out of the harbor and sank it on Dec. 17, 1939.

The crew was taken by ship to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the captain killed himself days later.

The Graf Spee has remained for decades in waters less than 25 feet deep only miles outside the port of Montevideo.

Hector Bado, a spokesman for the salvage team, said the recovery team first would try to remove a 27-ton communications tower equipped with an early radar and what was then sophisticated sighting equipment for its 11-inch guns.

"The radar was one of the first to be used in that era," said Bado, whose group has private financing and Uruguayan government backing for the operation, which could take years.

Feared by many navies at the outset of the war, the Graf Spee — a "pocket battleship" which carried less powerful guns and was smaller than a conventional ship of that class — was found by British forces off South America.

The German navy resorted to building three pocket battleships to stay within the naval restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I. The three — the Admiral Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer and Lutzow — were designed to outrun battleships and outgun heavy cruisers.

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