Kagero The German Pocket Battleship Admiral Graf Spee

The Deutschland class ships were the first heavy ships of the German navy after the First World War. In Germany they were classified as "Panzerschiffe", while in other countries the term "pocket battleships" was very popular. The third and last unit of this series was the Admiral Graf Spee. His keel was laid on October 1, 1932, launched on June 30, 1934, and commissioned on January 6, 1936. During the civil war in Spain, the ship patrolled the coastal waters of that country. Before the start of World War II, on August 21, 1939, the ship set off for the Atlantic. From September 26, he fought Allied shipping, sending nine British ships to the bottom. On the morning of December 13, Graf Spee met with a team of Allied ships (heavy cruiser HMS Exeter and light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles) off the coast of South America. The ensuing artillery clash went down in history as the Battle of La Plata Estuary. As a result, both Exeter and its German opponent were damaged. The commander of Graf Spee, Kapitän zur See Hans Langsdorff, decided to stop the fight and enter the nearby port of Montevideo in Uruguay. Under international law, the German corsair was not allowed to stay in a neutral port for more than 72 hours. Being convinced that serious British forces were concentrating nearby and that escape was impossible, Langsdorff decided to save the crew and sink his ship. On December 17, Admiral Graf Spee was taken to the roadstead and explosives were fired there. The German ship sank in shallow water, and its commander shot himself 3 days later at a hotel in Buenos Aires. The wreckage was penetrated by British divers during the war in order to recover more valuable elements and obtain information about German technology.
Format: A4
23 pages of model plans,
4 pages of color profiles
2 double-sided model sheets in B2 format.