HMS Achilles as seen from HMS Ajax during the Battle of the River Plate. Note the charred paint on the gun barrels.
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Great story this week. I’ve always loved learning about The Winter War. Small note, and I may be the only one, but the use of topographical maps with red lines and red lines depicting battle lines made the maps a bit busy to follow.
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You ain’t seen nothing yet!
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Of relevance, my video on the matter.
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I happened to be flicking through the Wikipedia artice on the Battle of the River Plate and came across this quote which I had to share:
Lieutenant-Commander Richard Jennings Exeter’s gunnery officer remembers:
"As I was crossing the compass platform [to his Action Station in the Director Control Tower], the captain hailed me, not with the usual rigmarole of ‘Enemy in sight, bearing, etc’, but with ‘There’s the fucking Scheer ! Open fire at her!’
Exeter got a critical hit shortly after too, damaging Graf Spee’s fuel purification plant, leaving her with only 16 hours’ fuel and unable to return home to Germany.
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This was rleased exactly 50 years after the ship was scuttled.