Plans are being made for the first major victim of the Royal Navy’s actions in the Battle of the Atlantic to be lifted from the sea bed over the next three years.

Pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by her crew off Montevideo in December 1939, rather than face a resumption of the Battle of the River Plate and almost certain destruction with consequent loss of life.

More than six decades on from the first major maritime action of World War II, business leaders in the Uruguayan port want to turn the wreck into a tourist attraction and museum.

As she was deliberately sunk by her own crew, the Graf Spee is not an official war grave.

But her possible salvage has upset some of the dwindling band of survivors, such as former rating Friedrich Adolphe, now aged 85 and living in Uruguay, who said: “Leave her alone. That’s the best thing.”

His view is shared by the Graf Spee Association’s chairman Kurt Wecker, who said: “Let’s keep her underwater as a historical monument.”

Graf Spee’s sinking was the solitary high point for Britain during the early stages of the war – the so-called ‘Phoney War’ – and it “warmed the cockles of our hearts”, as Churchill famously said later.

It was an unexpected victory, too; since the outbreak of the war, Graf Spee had enjoyed a free hand in hunting down merchant freighters as part of the German Navy’s grand strategy of attacking British commerce at sea.

The German warship was finally cornered by HM ships Ajax, Achilles and Exeter off South America, where German intelligence had directed Graf Spee’s captain Hans Langsdorff in the expectation of rich pickings.

Though outgunned by the German’s heavy weapons, task force leader Cdre Henry Harwood engaged Graf Spee – at great cost to all three British vessels, which were badly damaged by the pocket battleship’s 11in main turrets.

But the Kriegsmarine vessel was also damaged, and 36 of Langsdorff’s crew were killed, so the captain put into Montevideo to carry out repairs.

The Uruguayan government gave the Germans 72 hours to fix their battered warship, while British Naval intelligence led the Germans to believe that a veritable British armada was gathering off the River Plate estuary.

With their time limit up, Langsdorff sailed with a skeleton crew and, watched by thousands of local people, blew up the pocket battleship in the estuary, after the sailors had abandoned Graf Spee, lowered her battle flag and smashed anything of importance.

“A sea of fire stretched from stem to stern,” one crewman observed as the ship sank, her aft section ripped away.

Langsdorff committed suicide shortly after the scuttling, justifying his actions in a letter home: “I am happy to pay with my life for any possible reflection on the honour of the flag.”

He was chastised by Hitler and Admiral Erich Raeder, the head of the Kriegsmarine, for not fighting to the finish and going down with his ship.

Raeder ordered there would be no repeat of Graf Spee’s scuttling: “A German warship and her crew are to fight with all their strength until they are victorious or go down with their flag flying.”

But in the 21st century, Langsdorff is now regarded as a ‘gentleman of the sea’, explained Capt Ricardo Barre, from Montevideo Naval Museum.

“He preferred to save his young sailors’ lives rather than sacrifice them for the Fatherland in a battle he could not win,” he said.

Some 65 years after the ship was scuttled, the wreck lies in about 20 metres of water; and much of the remainder of her hull is believed to be whole.

Last month experts began the tricky task of raising the first section, the range finder – the first move in what is expected to be at least a three-year operation.

Graf Spee will be reassembled on land and those behind the salvage scheme hope she will become the “best ship museum in the world”.