The Battle of the River Plate: The First Naval Battle of the Second World War

Gordon Landsborough

gush 2016 · Frontline Books

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A riveting and revelatory history of the first naval battle of the Second World War, when British and German forces clashed off the coast of South America.
 
At dawn on December 13, 1939, smoke was seen on the horizon in the River Plate, an estuary near the shorelines of Argentina and Uruguay. Ordered to investigate, Britain’s HMS Exeter reported a chilling discovery by lamp signal: I think it is a pocket battleship.
 
It was. The Deutschland-class heavy cruiser AdmiralGraf Spee, marauder of the South Atlantic, was responsible for sinking several merchant ships without resistance. Now, it had sailed into a trap. British light cruisers HMS Ajax and Achilles joined the Exeter in engaging a German warship which—so Adolph Hitler had boasted—could out-maneuver any vessel powerful enough to damage her, and out-gun any ship able to keep up with her.
 
So began The Battle of the River Plate. Gordon Landsborough’s true account of this historic conflict details the fateful decisions made by Royal Navy Commodore Henry Harwood and Admiral Graf Spee’s Captain Hans Langsdorff that resulted in a British victory. It was a naval encounter in the finest Horatio Nelson tradition—and true to that tradition—the men with the finest armament of all, courage, emerged triumphant, bringing pride and inspiration into the hearts of a nation unwillingly at war once again.
 
Features an Appendix containing the official dispatch detailing the Battle of the River Plate.
 

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Gordon Holmes Landsborough, (1913–1983), English publisher, author and bookseller, was in the forefront of change in the paperback publishing in England during the 1950s to 1980s. He was noted for his prolific output as an author and his books include Long Run to Tobruk and Benghazi Breakout.