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Salvage of the Graf Spee
Salvage efforts
Nazi Eagle has landed
Headline from page 3 of the Daily Express Thursday 16th February 2006
A report by Mark Reynolds.
Salvaged from the Graf Spee on the ocean floor after 67 year's a £15 million emblem of Hitlers fleet.
The last time this emblem of evil appeared, the British was fighting a battle for its very existance.
The 6ft high eagle and swastika adorned the stern of Hitlers pocket battleship the admiral Graf Spee.
Now 67 years after the warship disappeared beneath the waves, the Nazi symbol of darkness has been recovered.
The Graf Spee was scuttled off Montevideo, Uraguay in 1939 after the legendary Battle of the River Platte.
It was the first major naval action of the second world war, and involved two British Cruisers and one from New Zealand taking on the much more powerful Germain raider.
Yesterday the British marine archaeologist Mensun Bound, who led the salvage team said " When it came up I saw the swastika, I knew I was looking at the absolute heart of darkness".
"All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.it felt like the breath of Hitler himself.When artefacts come out of the water, there is normally lots of cheering and backslapping.But when this nazi symbol surfaced, there was just silence."
The Eagle, with a 9ft wingspan and weighing nearly half a ton, Adorned the stern of the Graf Spee, is set to be auctioned, and offers of £15 million have already been made because of its significence.
The wreck lay untouched until a joint project by private investors and the Urayguayan government was launched to salvage it two years ago.
The Eagle was discovered during a routine inspection, burried in soft mud. To remove it from the hull,a team of three divers had to tackle 145 bolts in treacherous conditions.
Mr Bound said " The powerful currents came from nowhere and could be up to five knots in strength.then you had water that was so silty and dark it was like swimming in chocolate. We had to do everything by touch because we could'nt see a thing".
The eagle was raised from the water by a crane on a barge and emerged in remarkable condition because it had been preserved beneath the seabed.
Pieter Van Der Merwer, chief librarian at the National Maritime Museum in London said: " This is an object of great historical significence and it is certainly chilling".
Graf Spee, one of Hitlers most pretigeous ships, roamed the South Atlantic sinking Allied shipping, Winston Churchill ordered her destruction.
The Battle of the River Platte took place on December 13th 1939. After sustaining damage, the Graf Spee headed for the neutral port of Montevideo for repairs. But the ships captain Hans Langsdorff, was forced to leave early and, wrongly beleiving that he faced a greatly reinforced British force, scuttled the Graf Spee outside the port on December 17th.
Hitler wass furious and soon afterwards Langsdorff shot himself.
Headline from page 3 of the Daily Express Thursday 16th February 2006
A report by Mark Reynolds.
Salvaged from the Graf Spee on the ocean floor after 67 year's a £15 million emblem of Hitlers fleet.
The last time this emblem of evil appeared, the British was fighting a battle for its very existance.
The 6ft high eagle and swastika adorned the stern of Hitlers pocket battleship the admiral Graf Spee.
Now 67 years after the warship disappeared beneath the waves, the Nazi symbol of darkness has been recovered.
The Graf Spee was scuttled off Montevideo, Uraguay in 1939 after the legendary Battle of the River Platte.
It was the first major naval action of the second world war, and involved two British Cruisers and one from New Zealand taking on the much more powerful Germain raider.
Yesterday the British marine archaeologist Mensun Bound, who led the salvage team said " When it came up I saw the swastika, I knew I was looking at the absolute heart of darkness".
"All the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.it felt like the breath of Hitler himself.When artefacts come out of the water, there is normally lots of cheering and backslapping.But when this nazi symbol surfaced, there was just silence."
The Eagle, with a 9ft wingspan and weighing nearly half a ton, Adorned the stern of the Graf Spee, is set to be auctioned, and offers of £15 million have already been made because of its significence.
The wreck lay untouched until a joint project by private investors and the Urayguayan government was launched to salvage it two years ago.
The Eagle was discovered during a routine inspection, burried in soft mud. To remove it from the hull,a team of three divers had to tackle 145 bolts in treacherous conditions.
Mr Bound said " The powerful currents came from nowhere and could be up to five knots in strength.then you had water that was so silty and dark it was like swimming in chocolate. We had to do everything by touch because we could'nt see a thing".
The eagle was raised from the water by a crane on a barge and emerged in remarkable condition because it had been preserved beneath the seabed.
Pieter Van Der Merwer, chief librarian at the National Maritime Museum in London said: " This is an object of great historical significence and it is certainly chilling".
Graf Spee, one of Hitlers most pretigeous ships, roamed the South Atlantic sinking Allied shipping, Winston Churchill ordered her destruction.
The Battle of the River Platte took place on December 13th 1939. After sustaining damage, the Graf Spee headed for the neutral port of Montevideo for repairs. But the ships captain Hans Langsdorff, was forced to leave early and, wrongly beleiving that he faced a greatly reinforced British force, scuttled the Graf Spee outside the port on December 17th.
Hitler wass furious and soon afterwards Langsdorff shot himself.
