Battle of River Plate, View, Map and text annotations.
This is the critical point
of the action off the River Plate. Harwood has split his force and closed
into effective range. You see the Ajax shooting a full salvo(A) and
the Achilles(B) barrel smoke from its previous round. The Exeter(C)
is off to the left and on fire as a result of a very serious near miss
by an 11" salvo. She has also taken on 390 tons of flooding. The
Graf Spee(d) is seen firing a half salvo and is being straddled by 8"
from Exeter. So far, the Achilles has achieved 8 hits from 336 rounds
shot. The Exeter has not hit at all with 97 rounds shot. It is very
difficult to know just how badly the Graf Spee has been hurt. She has
been shifting fire back and forth between the CLs and the CA. That has
certainly hurt her rate of fire and accuracy. It looked like the Graf
Spee launched torpedos about 6 minutes ago. Given a closing range of
15ky, soon it will require a decision about combing their tracks.
