Liveblogging World War I: December 8, 1914: Battle of the Falkland Islands
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Battle of the Falkland Islands:
The Battle of the Falkland Islands was a British naval victory over the Imperial German Navy on 8 December 1914 during the First World War in the South Atlantic. The British, after a defeat at the Battle of Coronel on 1 November, sent a large force to track down and destroy the victorious German cruiser squadron.
Admiral Graf Maximilian von Spee--commanding the German squadron of two armoured cruisers, SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the light cruisers SMS Nürnberg (1906), Dresden and Leipzig, and three auxiliaries--attempted to raid the British supply base at Stanley in the Falkland Islands. A larger British squadron—consisting of the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers HMS Carnarvon, Cornwall and Kent, the armed merchant cruiser HMS Macedonia and the light cruisers HMS Bristol and Glasgow—had arrived in the port only the day before.
Visibility was at its maximum, the sea was placid with a gentle breeze from the northwest, a bright, sunny, clear day. The advance cruisers of the German squadron had been detected early on. By nine o'clock that morning the British battlecruisers and cruisers were in hot pursuit of the five German vessels, these having taken flight in line abreast to the southeast. All except Dresden and the auxiliary Seydlitz were hunted down and sunk.
