On the morning of 13 December Graf Spee encountered a group of Allied warships (the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter and light cruisers HMS Ajax and HMNZS Achilles) near South American coast. From 26 September she was fighting Allied shipping, sinking nine British vessels. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, on 21 August 1939 the ship steamed out for the Atlantic.
During the Spanish Civil War the ship patrolled coastal waters of this country. She was laid down on 1 October 1932, launched on 30 June 1934 and commissioned on 6 January 1936. The third and last vessel of this class was Admiral Graf Spee.
In Germany they were classified as "Panzerschiffe", but in other countries the term "pocket battleships" was very popular. The Deutschland-class ships were the first heavy vessels of the German Navy after the First World War.
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