Word: lighting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tactics: watch the light cruisers but concentrate on the heavy; cripple her first, then the others would be meat...
...Ajax dampered her fires and set a smoke screen behind which Formose escaped. Meanwhile the other two-now identified as the light Achilles (7,030 tons) and the heavy Exeter (8,390 tons) -were flanking out to sea. Ajax apparently did the same, astern of Spee. This meant two disadvantages for the German -shoals and shore to starboard, glaring rising sun behind the enemy to port. Captain Langsdorff gave the order to work out to sea, into deeper water...
...without success. She gave Exeter an awful raking-practically demolished her superstructure, and blew one turret to bits. Finally she got at Exeter's vitals, crippled her speed, so that Exeter fell out. It was 10 o'clock. The battle was four hours old. Next for the light pair...
...fought, ten and one-half hours more. Within full sight of the headland called Punta del Este, where Uruguayans gathered in crowds as if to watch a pelota match, Ajax and Achilles craftily slipped around Spee inshore of her, leaving the enemy silhouetted in the east by the reflected light of the setting sun, themselves under shore's gloom. Just before dark there were two sharp clashes, and it was evidently in one of those that Spee suffered a final disaster: A hit at the forefoot, at bow and waterline, so that as she went through...
This dramatic curtain was Adolf Hitler's pleasure, communicated by wireless. There was no apparent reason for it. Assuming that the Spee was in no condition to engage even the light British cruisers, Hitler had nothing to lose by allowing her to be interned-unless he expects to lose the war, he could expect to recover the interned ship when war is over. World War I had been lost when the Germans scuttled their fleet at Scapa Flow. If Hitler ordered the Spee scuttled merely that his enemies would never lay hands on her, World War II was already...