found this on another site,

This is WAY off topic, but interesting nonetheless.....

Divers Set to Salvage German WWII Ship

Feb 3, 12:00 pm ET

By Mary Milliken

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (Reuters) - The scuttled Nazi battleship "Admiral Graf Spee" has withstood the silt and currents at the mouth of the River Plate for more than 60 years while waiting for someone to salvage it.

Most of the Graf Spee survivors have died and only octogenarians in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo can recall watching one of the first naval clashes of World War II unfold on their sleepy shores.

But the legend of the pride of the Nazi fleet continues to inspire younger generations, and this week a team of divers will begin raising pieces of the pocket battleship -- a smaller, lighter version of a conventional warship -- out of the River Plate estuary in a project expected to take years.

"It was a masterpiece in its time," said Mensun Bound, a marine archeologist from Oxford University weaned on tales of the Battle of the River Plate.

"And it doesn't have a dark history. Its captain was a man of great dignity and honor. It was a battle in which both sides came out with their honor intact."

Under the command of Capt. Hans Langsdorff, the Graf Spee sank nine commercial vessels in the Atlantic in late 1939 but always gave the crews time to evacuate the ships.

The British navy dispatched three ships -- HMS Exeter, HMS Achilles and HMS Ajax -- to the Uruguayan coast and on Dec. 13, 1939, they sighted and attacked the Graf Spee.

Langsdorff took his badly damaged ship to port in Montevideo, where he was allowed to bury 36 dead sailors. His loyalty to Nazi leaders was questioned when he gave the old German naval salute at the funeral instead of the Nazi salute.

Neutral Uruguay, under intense diplomatic pressure from Britain, then ordered the Graf Spee out to sea after 72 hours.

"I went down to the port the morning they left," said Maria Eleonor Ramis, 83, one of the estimated 750,000 people who watched events on the shore that day. "It was very sad because the sailors were all so young, 18 and 19 years old."

'THE WHOLE WORLD WAS WATCHING'

Believing he would be met by a beefed-up British fleet, Langsdorff evacuated his men to ships headed to Argentina, then sank the Graf Spee with explosives to stop it from falling into enemy hands.

"It was an event that the whole world was watching," said Cristina Maldonado, a historian at Montevideo's Naval Museum.

Two days after scuttling his ship, Langsdorff took his own life in Buenos Aires.

Survivors who stayed in Uruguay and Argentina often spoke of recovering the Graf Spee, located 4 miles off the coast in waters no deeper than 36 feet.

In 1997, Bound and Uruguayan partner Hector Bado found the ship was in much better condition than expected as they extracted one of the guns.

On Thursday, they will attempt to raise the range finder, a component 34 feet wide and 20 feet tall that held the first radar antenna installed in a warship.

The team will study how to lighten the Graf Spee until they can raise the ship's hull, which is in two pieces, one 490 feet long, the other 98 feet long.

The divers declined to discuss the cost of the project, but they say they are working to bring on salvaging experts from Brazil, Argentina, the Netherlands and perhaps Germany. The ship will remain in Uruguay.

"It will be rebuilt on land and will be the best ship museum in the world," said Bado. "This is the last salvageable German battleship in the world and it has an amazing story."

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"Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil"

"If you bought it, a truck brought it"

You might try to put this in either History or Warships forums. I'm really torn on this. I know that several pieces of the Graph Spee has been raised, specifically at least one of her secondary guns. I am normally totally against raising sunken warships since they are really grave sites. I don't know if any of the Graph Spee's dead were left behind, though I rather doubt it. This would seem to mean if would be ok. I wonder what the legal aspect is? I know that warships in international waters are still the property of their original nation. Since the Graph Spee is in Uruguay waters I wonder if they own her.

It would definitely be something if they could pull it off, but I think they're biteing off more than they can chew. I've read about divers who have gone down on the wrecks of the Prince of Wales and Repulse, and found that the hulls were in pretty bad condition after 51 years. The Navy has been talking about having to do something about the Utah and Arizona in Pearl Harbor because of the deterioration of the hulls and the risk of a catastrophic hull breach that could release several hundreds of tons of fuel oil still inside of each into the waters a few miles from Waikiki.
The Japanese had several ships partially sunk in shallow water near land at the end of the war that were scrapped, and the Tirpitz was scrapped with several hundred dead crewmen still aboard. In this case, without there being remains aboard, I don't see anything legally or morally against them trying.

I do not see what is the difference between raising the "Graf Spee" and the salvaging of items, parts of, or even whole submarines...

Actually, I do have more of a problem with these subs being raised or raided (unless for scientific purposes (identification)) then the raising of this ship. If there are so many moral qualms about it, then the Mary Rose and Vasa should never have been raised....

I seriously doubt there would be any dead left on board, as all the dead were buried in Uruguay, and the ship was scuttled without a fight...

I think it should be raised as its not a war grave and will quite possibly stop an enviromental disaster, it will be interesting to see what condidtion its in I hope its not brought up so it can be looted by trophy hunters

Link to Graf Spee Diving site and other wrecks. I dont think there is much left to salvage.

http://www.bobhenneman.info/DiveHome.htm

Enjoy

Garry

Thanks for that site Garry. I LOVE reading about wreck diving. Kind of like reading Playboy, I can see those sights I'll never see in life.

I think the idea is absolutely wonderful, but I have a feeling the cost will be to prohibative. If I remember correctly, all dead were removed, and of course no one was killed during scuttling, so it is not a grave site. I don't think Germany will want to claim property on this, so if someone's got the bucks...the world awaits.