The USS SALEM starred as the German Pocket Battleship "Admiral Graf Spee"
in the 1956 English movie, "The Battle of the River Plate" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048990/
). The film was
released in the US in 1957 under the title, "Pursuit of the Graf Spee".
The film also starred, in supporting human roles, Peter Finch, John Gregson,
Anthony Quayle,
Anthony Newley, Christopher Lee, and Patrick Macnee among others. The SALEM's
"139"
can be plainly seen in many scenes of the movie and, for the sake of continuity,
they included the "139" on the bow of the scale model that was destroyed in the scuttling
scene.
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Click on above image
to view a short AVI clip of the SALEM underway ( from the movie. 1513 KB)
The film is of the final days of the "Graf Spee" in the beginning years of World War II. December 13, 1939. After being chased and damaged in a running sea battle with the British cruisers, HMS Ajax, HMNZS Achilles, and HMS Exeter in the South Atlantic off of Uruguay, the German sea raider, Graf Spee, under the command of Captain Hans Langsdorff, was forced to seek repairs. The Graf Spee made its way to the River Plate estuary (actual name, "Rio de la Plata", meaning 'Silver River' in English) and entered Montevideo harbor in neutral Uruguay where she sought repairs and sanctuary for her wounded sailors while the British ships waited in the estuary outside the harbor. Under international law, a beligerent could only stay in a neutral port for 72 hours. The British first tried to get the Uraguayan government to hold to the 72 hour law in order for them to get reinforcements to the area. Then under another international law that said that a beligerent could not leave a neutral port for 24 hours after an enemy ship had left, they sent a cargo ship out every 24 hours. But British reinforcements were 5 days away and there weren't that many British ships in Montevideo. Finally, on December 17, 1939, Langsdorff, erroneously thinking that the british fleet was larger than it really was (with help from some allied propaganda), he set sail with the Graf Spee leaving most of her crew ashore. In the estuary just 4 miles outside of Montevideo, Captain Langsdorff had the ship scuttled. 2 days later, Captain Langsdorff committed suicide in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In February, 2004, efforts began to recover the remains of
the Graf Spee from
its 64 year resting place in the River Plate estuary. If successful,
plans are to restore it as a tourist attraction in Montevideo. |
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The Graf Spee still burning days after her scuttling.
