I read once that Jack Gwillim, who played the captain of Achilles, was a retired naval officer, and when he went aboard the ship for filming she didn't meet his very strict standards of proper seamanship. He began giving orders to tidy up, coil lines properly, for the crew to smarten their uniforms, etc. When the officers complained to the ship's real captain, he supposedly said: "I was a midshipman under Gwillim. I was terrified of him then, and I still am, do what he says."
Great post, thanks for the info, what a brilliant story. A lot of the American and British actors at that time had seen real action but this guy was the real McCoy.
Nice story but completely untrue I fear! He did serve in the navy as a rating (matelot rising to Petty Officer) but I can find no record of his service except he was a champion boxer! River plate was his first major acting role (he also appears in Sink the Bismark 3 years later)! By the time of the film HMNZS Achilles was Indian Naval Ship Delhi - no British, commonwealth or empire personnel were onboard by that time…
@@andrewbizley5848nope, Gwillim was commander RN during WW2 . Unfortunately I can't post a screenshot but german Wikipedia reads he was commander at the beginning of the war. de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Gwillim?wprov=sfla1
It was actually largely in tact for years after its sinking considering how shallow the water it sunk in was. It only disappeared due to it slowly rolling over and sinking in the mud, that said it is still only a few meters under the water nowadays and many (failed) attempts have been made to raise the ship.
Jack Tripp I was on the ssnorton around Jan 46 I saw the g spy sticking out of the Montevideo harbour we left the Atlantic convoys & was sent around the world via the med Egypt Aden aus nz cape horn that's when I saw g spy a great sigh I must say.
HMNZS Achilles' Y turret guards the entrance to the Devonport naval base in Auckland, New Zealand. It has the unusual distinction of having been fired at Germans and Portugal.... After WW2 New Zealand sold her to the newly independent India where she became INS New Delhi... and she fired on the occupiers as India annexed Goa.
When I was school-age, I used to get really annoyed at the 'blatant' use of the heavy cruiser USS Salem in this movie, with her entirely dissimilar profile and felt that a model of Graf Spee would have been better. In much the same way, I was irked by the choice of Crown Colonies as Leander class light cruisers, when an actual Leander was available and actually used to portray HMS Exeter. And don't start me on how I felt seeing the then-trials cruiser HMS Cumberland turn up to reinforce Harwood's squadron with no guns! Nowadays, I am able to appreciate this film on the many levels which I ought to have done thirty years earlier. A great story, extremely well told by master film-makers and an excellent cast; a glorious colour documentary of four British warships of great note and glory, none of which remain in existence now; footage of the world's last heavy cruiser - the *awesome* Salem - under way, displaying her ferocious teeth (auto-loading eight-inch guns! My God). But, most amazing of all, this film is that rarest of things; a movie about naval war in the age of the big-gun warship. We should be thankful that this movie even exists, because it has few equals.
The Leander Class cruiser you to are referring to was the former HMNZS Achilles, which portrayed herself in the film. At the time of the film, the ship was in the Indian Navy (INS Delhi) and both X and Y turrets had been removed, as can be seen in the long-range shots of the ship.
The ship I can stomach and most movie attendees then would not know the difference? More blatant and obvious to many would be the American helmets shown on the "German" Deck Crew!! The web states the USA was against the use of German Helmets on the American ship (USS Salem) due to post war sensitivity. Now, today, the American Army has switched to the use of a WWII German Type helmet! How time heals some wounds!! The movie is well done except for some cornball moments I say.
The lookout at 1:31 is Donald Moffat, who is probably best known for playing the fictional US President in "Clear and Present Danger" nearly 40 years later.
@ They are badly damaged. Listing to starboard. They might sink with a large loss of life. Saying they could make England from the South Atlantic in that condition is either bravado or they have decided they can make it. The Falklands are substantially closer.
I meet a bloke named Harry Coey, who served on HMS Achillies (later HMNZS Achillies) and was present at The Battle of the River Plate. I said to him 'What was that like, when the 11" shells struck your ship?' He responded wryly by saying 'It wasn't too bad for me; I was in a nice quiet place above the cordite!'
My very dear friend loves this film, she was 13 in 1937 and she went out on a launch and went on board the 'Graf Spee'. The 'Graf Spee' was moored off Gosport, in the Solent, in Hampshire. She went down to the lower decks. She returned with photos of the crew and cap bands, which she has to this day. My friend is now 87.
The "Graf Spee" was played in this picture by the American cruiser "Salem" (no. '139') which was active for less than 10 years before retirement in 1959. After 30 years " in mothballs" the ship was restored to its current 'museum' status.
I like how the interactions between the crews on both ships and on both sides is shown honestly, the prisoners for example on the graf spee were treated well, and as they say earlier in the film the German officers were like them gentlmen. Shows that whilst they were at war these people didnt make it too personal and had the comradery of the sea.
@@markegg262Not the Kriegsmarine, which is the organization being talked about. I do know about the death camps. One of my uncles liberated at least one of them.
One of the few decent British warmovies of the 60s. Correction, it's from 1956! Decent battle sequences, suspense, empathy with the enemy and even some sex and humor! "There's nothing I would do for you!" -"That is exactly what you will do for me, senor: nothing!" "Come on, I want NBC, CBC, ABC..." -"Si si si!"
GOOD GOD!!! good British 1960's war films? 633 Squadron? (featuring the most beautiful (and effective)war plane's ever to fly) Battle of Britain? (If we dont win now, we need our asses kicked!) Sink the Bismarck! (Kenneth More's Silent phone call) The Hill ("You're Black" - "I'm a BRITISH Subject from the west Indies") Zulu ( "Its not very green is it? , not like Bala") Where Eagles Dare ("Broadsword calling Danny boy")
"few" decent? Dunkirk, 633 Squadron, Dambusters, Battle of Britain, Bridge of the River Kwai, Cockelshel Heroes, The Eagle has Landed, Lawrence of Arabia... and so on and so on.
According to my copy of Jane's Fighting Ships of WW2, Achilles and Ajax were sister ships of the Leander Class of cruisers. The fourth of the class was HMS Orion. However, oddly Ajax was 8 feet shorter than her 3 sisters, although she was 2/3s of a foot wider. Go figure. Anyway, she fought as well as any other 6-incher!
Langsdorff was a Christian that was plunged into the war like millions of regular army soldiers. Langsdorff had a Christmas Party for the Prisoner's. He sunk nine merchant ships without one life lost. That was the reason Military weapons on a cruise liner or on merchant ships. When Churchill who was the Head of the Admiralty in WWI he started putting defensive weapons on merchant ships. The U Boats let the crews get on their Lifeboats before they sunk them. That changed when they started Arming merchant ships. Langsdorff 2 days after he scuttled the Admiral Graf Spee was found draped in the German Imperial Flag with a self inflicted shot to the head. That was a tragedy. He did that to save his family from persecution for his actions.
If Langsdorff wanted to save his family from persecution, then using the old Imperial ensign was hardly the way to do it. In point of fact, witnesses at the time stated that he used Graf Spee's battle ensign.
This film was released in the USA as Pursuit of the Graf Spee and it was a B&W print. The colour print Battle of the River Plate was re-released in 1960 and was shown in Canada on a double bill with Sink The Bismark.
@@stevek8829 They shot the film in colour. The U.S. rented a B&W print because it was cheaper then the colour print. British war movies did fair to mediocre in the U.S. at the time. They also renamed it as very, very few (if any) Americans new of the Plate river. Yes, the print in this video is washed out and I suspect all prints are as no one has cleaned it up or restored it. Hopefully they will release the film on DVD for region 1 in a restored version. I saw this film in colour in the early sixties on a double bill. Years later I saw the U.S. re-titled version and was expecting a different movie; but realized it was just a re-title of the original film.
@@garfieldsmith332 The British Movies only did fair because the distributers did not push British Stuff. The US did not like seeing that the British /C/wealth were actually in the war before them and winning.
At the time, the RN used Commodore 1st class & Commodore 2nd class. Commodore 2nd class wore the broad strip only & Commodore 1st class wore the broad stripe & thin stripe. Commodore Harwood is wearing the correct rank insignia as he was a Commodore 1st class.
Bettyfan92614 Shoulder insignia for 1st Class commodore was crown, anchor and two small six-pointed stars. A rear admiral has crown, one large six-pointed star and crossed baton & sword
A dear pal of mine was commissioned from Britannia Royal Naval College in the 1970s, where they still had physical training sessions with the cutlass (in case of boarding parties); I hope such aggression still pertains in the British Fleet - Ready, Aye Ready!
The only thing that caught my eye was when they saw sunrise. That was impossible as they were sailing down the coast of South America with the sun apparently rising over land. That would have the sun rising in the west!!!
I seem to recall that the cruisers HMS Achilles and HMNZS Ajax portrayed themselves in the movie. The heavy cruiser HMS Exeter was portrayed by another ship, her having been later sunk by Japanese aircraft.
@@steveotene8137 NZ ships were practically the same as RN ships back then, it was more or less the same navy! It only really began to change in the 60s! Let's hope we can renew those ties some day! But yes she certainly was a Kiwi ship and I'm pretty sure when she returned to NZ in 1940 she was welcomed to a massive parade.
@@skylongskylong1982 as far as I know she spent 1946-1948 in the Mediterranean fleet she lays up in Chatham 1948, proposed sales to Chile and India fail the reach agreement and she is placed on 1949 disposal list and scrapped that year.
Anything is possible but I read in a book it was the Imperial Flag and on a video that said the same. But I know one thing about History that many times it isn't correct. Thanks for that info.
I happened to re-check my Jane's Fighting Ships of WW2, and found my earlier remarks here contained some errors. To wit, the Leander Class of cruisers also included Neptune, Apollo which became H.M.A.S. Perth and H.M.A.S. Sidney which sailed into oblivion in Nov. 1941. The Sidney fought the German raider, Kormorant. As crew of the sinking Kormorant took to their boats, they saw the Sidney afire sailing to the southeast. No one ever saw the Sidney or any of her crew ever again.
H.M.A.S. Sidney ?? No such ship has ever been in the Australian Navy, nor have we sailed ships into oblivion. But we do have a missile frigate H.M.A.S. Sydney, and there was a WW-ii light cruiser H.M.A.S. which sunk after being engaged by a German raider disguised as a Dutch merchant ship.
HMAS Sydney and the Kormorant wrecks have now been found and designated as war graves by the Australian government. View the video " Search for the Sydney" for further info.
Sydney (Phaeton), Perth(Amphion) and Hobart(Apollo) where a second batch of a modified design. They have there boiler rooms separated by the forward engine room and therefore have two funnels rather the one of Leander
@@jacktattis Not until a Indonesian company decides to slavage the war grave for the high valued metal (pre nuclear age iron is now a high valued commodity, all war graves within Indonesian reach have been looted and as soon as they think there's an opportunity they'll loot a few more).
Would have been abetter film had the makers built a model of the Graf Spee that looked like her, instead of splicing in stock footage of an American Baltimore-class light cruiser whose only real resemblance was her three-gun main battery turrets! Sink the Bismark suffered from thesameproblem!
That was not stock footage. The production crew actually filmed aboard the USS _Salem_. They even asked the American sailors to wear German uniforms, although their officers refused. The _Salem_ is now a museum ship in Massachusetts.
Sorry, Charles, not trying to nit-pick, but the Salem was a Des-Moines-class cruiser. similar to the Baltimore, the main spotting difference between them was a single funnel vs. two funnels on the Baltimore.
She wasn't Baltimore class. She was an entirely new class with rapid-fire 8" guns. There were three ships called the DesMoines class. Salem is the only one left. She was flagship of the 6th fleet for a time. Longer than most battleships for high speed, and twice the tonnage that the naval treaties allowed for cruisers in the 1930's. The only distinction the treaties made between "light" and "heavy" cruisers was size of main armament. Light cruisers had 6" guns or metric equivalents. All were supposed to be 10,000 tons or less, but everyone cheated. USN 8" guns were loaded with powder bags, same as bigger battleship guns. The rapid-fire guns loaded cartridges like 5" or 6" guns.
Don't know what you mean. Sink the Bismarck had very acurate models of at least all the bigger warships. Given that it is from 1953 and the possibilities from then, it is at the very top of all naval warfilms in regard of ship acuracy. The only other of the old films that meets up there is "Tora Tora Tora". And then comes nothing till "Pearl harbor".
I love the fact that despite fighting from modern warships, shooting at extended ranges, the officers still fight the ship from an open Bridge that wouldn't be all that unfamiliar to Nelson or Drake.
They found in WWI that the captains preferred to command their ship's from the compass platform on top of the bridge so they could actually see what was going on.
Navy terminology. On a land base if anyone walking on a path takes a short cut across the grass and they are spotted someone will shout "man overboard". The offender must stand still and be 'rescued' by two sailors.
The Salem was used as there were no other 2 turret cruisers. Cumberland was being scrapped and made an appearance from distance the real Achilles is here, as was HMS Jamaica (Exeter) which hunted down Scharnhorst
I found it a bit odd that Ajax was shown onscreen as a two funneled cruiser while she was in fact a Leander class as was Achilles. Given one of the ships used in filming was the former Achilles you'd have thought they'd have got that detail right.
@@ankles632 I've just finished a book called moon over mayla in which those Royal Marines who weren't captured by the Japanese after the sinking of HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales joined forces with the retreating Argylles and Sutherland Highlanders to form a composite unit 'the Plymouth Argylles ' and managed to slow the Japanese advance through mayla and Singapore. It's stands as a testament to the bravery of those men in very desperate times.
@@chrisholland7367 I have read quite a bit about that period. An uncle on my mothers side, AB Lionel Neal was lost on HMAS Perth at the Battle of Sunda Straight. I wasnt aware of the story of the Royal Marines. I'll have to look online for that book. thx
@@ankles632 I have read extensively about the conflict in the far east often overlooked by the war in Europe or the Pacific campaign by the Americans, the struggle by commonwealth forces was titanic. Both my grandfather and his brother in laws fought in the European theatre two Navy one RAF .Something has always drawn me to the conflict in the far east because of it's sheer brutality the environment and the enemy. Those men suffered.
@@chrisholland7367 The Pacific has always been of more interest to me because it more directly involved Australia. On my fathers side an uncle Pvt K E Clarke was killed at the battle of Milne bay in 1942. He is buried at Bomana war cemetery. Milne Bay was the first real defeat the Japanese suffered but most have never heard of it. I lived in New Guinea for 3 years so I got to have a look at some of the more famous places. Walked the Kokoda track. That was in the early 80's. Wouldnt dream of trying it now. I was a lot younger and fitter back then and it was extremely difficult. How those guys did it with people shooting at them I don't know. I agree totally that it is a somewhat forgotten conflict. That's why the British 14th army called themselves " The forgotten army" despite being the largest army in the field during the entire war.
dude the fake turret was only used in the african coast to make it look somehow similar to Dunkerke class battleship. Film producers could have made a Spee model, it was not so hard or expensive, and some footage of the model would have given the film a lot more historical accuracy. Anyway a xxi century film of this ballte would be so great... they could even made a 3 films series: 1) The hunt for Spee 2) Sink the Bismark! 3) the last corsair... (the Scharnorst naval career/sinking)
There was no fake 2nd fore turret at the time of River Plate. Certainly better to use a model of the Graf Spee. Sink the Bismarck also used models for the battles and still much more realistic.
...and in the movie they have the German captain claiming that the aft turret is a dummy made of wood to disguise the ship, when in fact Graf Spee had an aft turret but only one forward.
I reckon you're right. I just finished reading a book about WW II Minesweeping and the author mentions that early on, names were still visible on the tallies. Thanks for the reply. :-)
Rather than delete the ship's name why didn't they put "Royal Navy" or some such on them? And, if they were so concerned with the enemy tracking ships' movements from these, they could have had British seamen wearing caps with phony bands. One thing they got right here was that RN officers were still going into combat in their dress uniforms.
Only the Royal Navy could automatically assume six inch cruisers would defeat an eleven inch battlecruiser...theoretically they should all have been sunk before even coming into range...
cogidubnus1953 Graf Spee was not a battlecruiser, she was a Panzerschiffe armoured cruiser, then reclassified as a heavy cruiser. Her armour was the similar to heavy cruisers built in 1930’s. She and her sisters were designed to have guns big enough to sink any other ship they could catch and have enough speed to run from anything that could sink them in return. Since Graf Spee only had two gun turrets, she could only engage two targets. This left one cruiser free to harass with no fear of being targeted
It needs to be remembered that the Cumberland was supposed to be part of the RN force as well but she was refitting in the Falklands when they found the Graf Spee. If Cumberland had been present, the Graf wouldn't have had a chance. Graf Spee was well protected for a cruiser, but it was in no way invulnerable.
The thing is that the Panzerschiffes were really bad designs as they couldn't outrun everything that they couldn't outfight. They were hopelessly outclassed by the RN battlecruisers; Hood, Repulse and Renown that had more firepower, more protection and more speed and had been in service for years when the Germans started designing their new raiders. It's actually fairly confusing when you try to work out what they were thinking; you don't need 28 cm guns to beat enemy cruisers or sink enemy merchant ships and the size and weight of 28 cm shells inevitably restricts the quantity of ammunition you can carry which may be critical when you're operating 1000's of miles away from the nearest resupply depot. IMO they would have been better off with more speed (33 to 34 knots) and less firepower.
@@marxmcrae Not if she disabled one or more before they got Graf Spee into range of their 6 inch guns...Graf Spee had six 11 inch guns and even her secondary armnament was 5.9 inch...
Harwood's plan was to attack immediately, dividing his force to split Graf Spee's fire and forcing her to choose either one target or the other. Exeter would operate independently, while Ajax and Achilles would operate in concert, essentially acting as a single ship with 16 guns. The plan largely worked: in the initial phase of the battle, Graf Spee mostly concentrated on Exeter; this allowed Ajax and Achilles to close the range. The aggressive way the British used their light cruisers (rushing in and out at full speed towards Graf Spee, all guns blazing) forced Graf Spee to continually switch her fire back and forth. The 16 guns of Ajax and Achilles (firing 8 rounds per gun, per minute) swamped Graf Spee, causing enough damage and inflicting enough casualties to force Graf Spee to run for a neutral port, with Achilles and Ajax in pursuit.
