Her captain, believing his situation hopeless, had scuttled her by detonating her torpedo warheads. Just outside the three-mile limit the ship suddenly stopped, then thunderously exploded and burned, sinking to the muddy bottom of the estuary. Four days later, the Graf Spee sailed ominously out of the harbor toward her antagonists as thousands of spectators gathered on Montevideo’s waterfront promenades to watch the renewed battle. It was a refuge from which there would be no escape. The Graf Spee fought them off with devastatingly accurate gunfire, then fled to the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay, at the mouth of the River Plate. Already at sea when war broke out, the Graf Spee sank nine merchant ships before she was intercepted off the coast of Brazil by a force of British and New Zealand cruisers. Lean and sleek as a wolf, the Graf Spee was an engineering showpiece of the Nazi regime, one of the first major warships to have an all-welded hull, and diesel engines for phenomenally long cruising range. Designed as a powerful merchant raider, she was the size of a heavy cruiser but far more heavily armed, with six 11-inch guns in two triple turrets. The legend begins on December 13, 1939, when the Graf Spee fought the first major sea battle of World War II. In the United States, where the M1911 is revered with near-religious fervor, the Ballester is often disparaged as a poor imitation, an “unlicensed copy.” Yet its design and workmanship are worthy of closer scrutiny. The Ballester bore a close enough resemblance to the Colt Model 1911 to invite comparison that was both a blessing and a curse. Through the years, numerous lots were imported into the United States and sold on the surplus market at low prices that belied the pistol’s exceptional quality. Introduced at the outset of World War II, the Ballester-Molina pistol had a proud career with the Argentine armed forces and police for nearly five decades. Unfortunately his penchant for storytelling sometimes blended fact and fable, and his credibility was not unassailable. Significant among his Argentine associates were members of the Ballester family. The founder of Interarms, Cummings’ credentials included being the first to buy surplus arms from Argentina. I first heard the legend many years ago from the late Samuel Cummings, arguably the best-known international arms merchant since Sir Basil Zaharoff. 45 ACP pistol, and cloak-and-dagger exploits that remain classified 75 years later. At its center are a famous Nazi warship, a long-ignored Argentine semi-automatic. The legend has its origins in a true tale of British espionage in World War II. Is it fact or fantasy? Either way, it’s a great yarn. Legend has it that the steel in Argentine Ballester-Molina pistols came from the armor plate of the German “pocket battleship” Admiral Graf Spee.
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