Admiral Graf Spee was a Deutschland-class heavy cruiser (often termed a pocket battleship) which served with the Kriegsmarine of Nazi Germany during World War II. The ship was named after Admiral Maximilian von Spee, commander of the East Asia Squadron that fought the battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands in World War I. She was laid down at the Reichsmarinewerft shipyard in Wilhelmshaven in October 1932 and completed by January 1936. The ship was nominally under the 10,000 long tons (10,000 t) limitation on warship size imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, though with a full load displacement of 16,020 long tons (16,280 t), she significantly exceeded it. Armed with six 280 mm (11 in) guns in two triple gun turrets, Admiral Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them. Their top speed of 28 kn (52 km/h) left only a handful of ships in the Anglo-French navies able to catch them and powerful enough to sink them. Bibliography:

• Kapitan zur See Gerhard Bidlingmaier - KM Admiral Graf Spee / Pocket Battleship 1932-1939, Warship Profile 4
• Klaus-Peter Schmolke - Pocket Battleships of the Deutschland Class: Deutschland/Lutzow-Admiral Scheer-Admiral Graf Spee (Warships of the Kriegsmarine)
• Waldemar Danielewicz, Mirosław Skwiot - Admiral Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer, Monografie Morskie 8 AJ-Press (polish)
• Waldemar Danielewicz, Tadeusz Skwiot - Pancerniki Kieszonkowe Cz. 3: Deutschland/Lützow, Admiral Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer, Monografie Morskie 9 AJ-Press (polish)
• Eric Grove - German Capital Ships and Raiders in World War II: Volume I: From Graf Spee to Bismarck, 1939-1941
• Siegfried Breyer, Miroslaw Zbigniew Skwiot - German Capital Ships of the Second World War: The Ultimate Photograph Album
• Richard Woodman - Battle of the River Plate: A Grand Delusion
• David Miller - Command Decisions: Langsdorff and the Battle of the River Plate
• John Grehan - Capital Ships at War 1939-1945 (Despatches from the Front)
• Roger Chesneau - German Pocket Battleships, ShipCraft 1
• 1939 - The Second World War at Sea in Photographs
• German Pocket Battleships 1939-45 - Osprey New Vanguard 75
• Dudley Pope - The Battle of the River Plate: The Hunt for the German Pocket Battleship Graf Spee
• Angus Konstam and Tony Bryan - River Plate 1939: The sinking of the Graf Spee Osprey Campaign
• Stefan Draminski - The German Pocket Battleship Admiral Graf Spee, Kagero TopDrawings