[Milsurplus] South America Mil Radio in WWII?

[Joe Foley]

--- D C *Mac* Macdonald <k2gkk at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Uruguay was where German battleship Graf Spee fled
> to hide after suffering severe battle damage in
> 1939.
> Her captain scuttled her near Montevideo harbor
> after
> transferring almost all of her crew to prevent
> Allies
> from sinking her or Uruguay from interning her.
> 
> Uruguay was a democracy and demanded Graf Spee
> depart to maintain Uruguay's official neutrality.
++++++++
It did NOT suffer severe damage!  Even Paul Harvey
said so.  The only significant damage was to the
kitchen area.  They pulled into Montivideo because
Uruguay had NO military at all.  The big threat was
that Hans Langsdorf would take over the country with
his 1300 men and the ships big guns, the Americans got
caught with their pants down, they hadn't been
involved in SA at all because there was nothing they
needed there.  The Germans had been building Airports
there for years, the British had been building
railroads, the Japanese had been developing the mining
and shipping resources, expecially in Peru, the
Italians and French were there, too.

It was the biggest event of the century at that time,
the world listened on their shortwave radios, the
bookies of the world were going NUTS taking bets as to
what Capt. Hans would do, stay, run, fight, or
scuttle.  The Capt., he wasn't a Nazi, had pissed
Hitler off because he wasn't sinking the ships WITH
their crews, he had 62 British prisoners on his ship
when he fought the three British ships, they were all
released in good shape in Montevideo.  He was allowed
to bury his dead but was told he had to leave in four
days, which he did!

I doubt he scuttled his ship, I think other Germans in
disagreement with Hitler did it, they also transferred
the crew to Argentina for internment, they also sat on
the local Nazis for the duration, effectively keeping
SA out of the war.  No, I didn't get any of this from
Wikipedia.

Joe




 
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