Вот любопытную заметку, имеющую некоторое отношение к собственной персоне :-)), неожиданно откопал в Сети.
Статья из британской "Guardian" от 13 сентября с.г.
Commander Richard Jennings, who has died aged 98, directed the guns of the cruiser HMS Exeter until they were silenced by the superior firepower of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee at the battle of the River Plate in December 1939. Adolf Hitler's navy used its small, but modern and deadly, surface fleet against British shipping, vulnerable worldwide, in a series of hit and run raids that soon overstretched the much larger Royal Navy at the beginning of the second world war.
No fewer than eight groups of major warships had to be deployed around the Atlantic to counter a handful of powerful raiders, any one or more of which might have struck anywhere at any time. They included three pocket battleships so fast and well-armed that only three British warships were capable of both outrunning and outgunning them.
Commodore Henry Harwood's South American division formed Force G of four cruisers to cover the south-west Atlantic. One heavy cruiser, Cumberland, was replenishing in the Falklands, leaving Harwood with three: HMS Ajax (flagship), HMNZS Achilles, also a light cruiser with six-inch guns, and the Exeter (heavy, with six eight-inch guns in three turrets). Harwood picked up the signal "RRR" from a British freighter in the central Atlantic, meaning that she was under attack by a surface raider, on December 2.
He moved north to cover the mouth of the River Plate between Uruguay and Argentina, guessing that the Germans were southward bound for the shipping lanes there. Ajax sighted smoke to the north-west at dawn on December 13. Exeter, the strongest ship, went to investigate and reported a pocket battleship, the Graf Spee, which was commanded by Captain Hans Langsdorff.
Harwood knew he was outclassed by the enemy's six 11-inch and eight 5.9-inch guns, but had the advantage in speed. He sent the Exeter in from the south while the light pair dashed in from the east, all at full speed and intent on torpedo attacks.
The Graf Spee concentrated her heavy guns on the Exeter as the most powerful opponent. Jennings managed to straddle the battleship with his third salvo, but the Germans knocked out the two forward turrets in quick sucession while taking moderate damage themselves.
Despite burst eardrums from shellblast, Jennings continued to supervise firing from the after turret. Since the bridge had been destroyed, he had to shout his orders through an open hatch. The shattered Exeter limped away, still under fire, until flooding in the magazine beneath the two guns silenced them. The ship managed to escape to the Falklands as the Cumberland raced north to replace her.
The less damaged light cruisers extricated themselves, while the Graf Spee sailed for Montevideo in Uruguay for repairs. She reappeared in the Plate estuary on December 17. Expecting a massive British fleet over the horizon, she scuttled herself just outside the three-mile territorial limit. In fact, Harwood's three serviceable cruisers were still unsupported. The Germans fled in a merchant ship to Argentina, where Langsdorff shot himself.
Hitler was furious and the British public was jubilant over the first good news from the navy in the war. For his outstanding role in the epic naval action, Jennings was awarded the DSC.
Jennings was the son of an army doctor, born at Gillingham in Kent. He became a cadet at the usual age of 13 and was a midshipman on a battleship off the Turkish coast as the Ottoman empire was overthrown in 1921. After choosing to specialise in gunnery, Jennings served in various ships at home, in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean before his appointment as gunnery officer aboard Exeter in 1936.
Jennings, his hearing permanently impaired, was ordered back to Britain. He thus escaped the fate of the Exeter, sunk on March 1 1942, after a long battle with Japanese warships.
The newly promoted Commander Jennings was posted to the staff of the battle squadron of Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham's Mediterranean fleet, based at Alexandria. He saw action against the Italian fleet before serving ashore in various north African naval bases, for which he won a bar to his DSC in July 1941.
Back in Britain by September 1942, Jennings was given what he always regarded as his most serious contribution to the war effort: command of a group of minesweepers in the English Channel. For this hard, dangerous and unglamorous work, he was awarded his highest decoration, the DSO. As an acting captain he was staff officer in charge of minesweeping for operation Neptune, the naval side of the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.
Jennings served on in the navy at sea and ashore until he left the service, still a commander, in 1954. He then took up farming in Kent. Almost pathologically modest, he never discussed his wartime exploits and only agreed to work as an adviser to the classic 1956 film, Battle of the River Plate, provided his own crucial role in the action was left out of the script.
In 1947, he married Joan Cave, who survives him with their son and daughter.
• Richard Borthwick Jennings, sailor, born February 11 1903; died August 16 2001.
Но формально говор и буквоедствуя мочили "Шпее" под руководством 4 артилерийских директоров с 3 кораблей, да плюс к этому он еще и самозамочился.
На счету лично "Эксетера" все же не то 2 не то 3 попадания из более чем 50 (считая осколочные от близких разрывов).
Но сути дела никак не меняет.
Но формально говор и буквоедствуя мочили "Шпее" под руководством 4 артилерийских директоров с 3 кораблей, да плюс к этому он еще и самозамочился.
>На счету лично "Эксетера" все же не то 2 не то 3 попадания из более чем 50 (считая осколочные от близких разрывов).
Е:
"Шпее" получил 18 попаданий с легких крейсеров и 2 с "Эксетера". Но решающим оказалось фактически именно второе 8" попадание, которое сделало пробоину в левом борту. Эту дырку заливало, и это привело к уменьшению хода броненосца до 22 уз. Следовательно, у "Шпее" уже не было шансов оторваться от преследования в последующем бою при любой попытке уйти из Монтевидео. В Монтевидео он в итоге и остался...