Ping.
Bump
Not to be confused with the WWII battleship Scharnhorst which sank near Norway and the Arctic Circle.
“The wreck was not disturbed during the operation and the Falkland Maritime Heritage Trust is seeking to have the site formally protected in law.”
I hope that efforts to legally protect this site honoring German war dead are successful - even as memorials in the public square honoring American war dead are being destroyed by mobs encouraged by weak politicians.
She was sunk by two Brirush battle cruisers under Admiral Sturdee. Probably the only time they were employed as originally conceived
Thanks C19fan.
SMS Scharnhorst was the flagship of German Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee's East Asia Squadron. It was sunk on 8 December 1914 with more than 800 men on board, including Vice-Adm von Spee himself.
The British ships, even though alerted, were in harbor but didn't have up a full head of steam and were sitting ducks, as some were coaling. There was also the possibility of sinking any ship in the harbor's mouth and bottling up the fleet. Spee's ships all had torpedo tubes and, IMO, could have done some serious damage.
Sure, they would have been blown apart, but some of the survivors might have made it to shore. The argument still goes on with enough arguments pro and con to make the "What Ifs" ambiguous.
Two light cruisers of that China squadron created some "Holy Cow" history:
The Emden raised pure Hell in the Indian Ocean before being tracked down off the Cocos islands and run aground to prevent sinking. The stranded 53-man landing crew grabbed a schooner and sailed it to Yemen, fought through British-paid Arabs and six months and almost 7,000 miles later made it back to Germany with only four lost.
Another Emden officer escaped the British POW camp, made it through the ENTIRE length of Borneo, was recaptured and then, in Singapore, instigated a revolt of the Indian troops there.
The Konigsberg ran for Africa, holed up in the Rufigi delta, was damaged beyond repair. The crew took her 10-gun armament, converted them to field pieces and joined von Lettow-Vorbeck's guerrilla campaign.
In 1976 the Brits made a VERY loosely based movie on that one, but if you delve into the history of some of these "minor" WW I naval battles, you see the potential for a series of great war/adventure films.
Those guys were made of sterner stuff than what we see in Germany today.
In the Falklands, what a great place.
“The complete destruction of the German squadron killed about 2,200 German sailors and officers, including two of Spee’s sons.”
“All 860 officers and men on board Scharnhorst, including Spee, went down with the ship.”
