Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran

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On November 19, 1941, during World War II, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney encountered the German auxiliary cruiser HSK Kormoran in the Indian Ocean, off Western Australia. The two ships fired at and sank each other and the Sydney was lost with its entire crew. The majority of the Kormoran's crew were rescued and became prisoners of war. Neither wreck has been located and the battle remains the subject of much controversy.

HMAS Sydney was a modified Leander-class light cruiser launched in 1934. In 1940, during the Battle of the Mediterranean, Sydney was credited with sinking the Italian destroyer Espero and shared honours in the sinking of the destroyer Zeffiro and the prized Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni.

The Kormoran, a freighter which had been converted into an covert long range raiding ship, was under the command of Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Theodor Detmers. The German vessel was posing as a Dutch freighter, Straat Malakka. It weighed 8,736 tons and had a top speed of 18-19 knots. Kormoran had substantial concealed armament, including six 150mm (5.9 in) guns and torpedo tubes. It lacked only the armour protection and speed of a proper warship. Kormoran had been in service for just over a year and had sunk ten merchant ships in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific.


Contents

The battle

Somewhere off the coast of Western Australia, between Carnarvon and Geraldton the two ships encountered each other. According to accounts by crew members of the Kormoran, the 9,000 ton Sydney — under Captain Joseph Burnett — chased and overhauled the raider, while exchanging signals and attempting to verify its identity. Detmers maintained the charade as long as possible. Burnett demanded a password from Kormoran, by which time Sydney had approached within about 1,000 metres of Kormoran. Under these circumstances Detmers had no choice but to open fire and his crew quickly went into action.

According to the witnesses, the Australian warship was not fully prepared for battle, and its guns were not trained on Kormoran. Sydney was hit 50 times by the raider's 5.9-inch heavy guns — a simultaneous barrage of anti-aircraft gunfire also ensured that no-one was able to survive on the ship's bridge and open decks; it was also hit by at least one torpedo. Gunners on the Sydney responded and Kormoran took several 6-inch hits in the engine room and caught fire amidships. The two ships drifted apart and Sydney was last seen by the crew of Kormoran in flames on the horizon. As Sydney disappeared into the hazy twilight, several loud explosions were heard, apparently due to the explosion of her magazines. Neither HMAS Sydney nor any of its 645 officers and men were ever seen again.

However, Sydney had inflicted enough damage to ensure that Kormoran could not be saved. With the engine room destroyed, 20 dead and the fire rapidly approaching the mine storage deck, Detmers had little choice but to abandon ship. Explosive charges were placed and the surviving crew took to the boats, with Detmers the last to leave. A further 40 men, mostly wounded, lost their lives when their lifeboat capsized in the rough seas. Shortly after midnight the charges went off, followed 25 minutes later by the mines. The entire stern and midships section was engulfed in a gigantic sheet of flame that shot a thousand feet into the night sky as Kormoran went down by the stern.

Detmers and about 320 of his crew were rescued and spent the remainder of the war in an Australian prisoner of war camp, from which they were not released until 1947.

The Australian War Memorial houses the only trace of Sydney which was ever found: one of her liferafts, damaged by gunfire, discovered at sea several days after the sinking.

Controversy

In Australia, many people found it difficult to believe that a converted merchant ship could sink a state-of-the-art cruiser. Many also found it difficult to believe that a senior officer like Burnett took his ship within 1,000 metres of an unidentified and possibly dangerous vessel during wartime, without preparing for action, and with such disastrous results. It was also seen as strange that the bulk of the crew of Kormoran survived, while there were no survivors from Sydney. The dearth of hard physical evidence, and the fact that the only survivors were German, has allowed the battle between Sydney and Kormoran to become the subject of much controversy, speculation and conspiracy theory.

For example, in 1981, Who Sank the Sydney?, a book by Michael Montgomery, the son of Sydney's navigation officer, suggested that Kormoran was assisted by a Japanese submarine, and that survivors from Sydney may have been killed. It was also suggested that a motive for any such killing was that a state of war did not exist between Australia and Japan at the time. the involvement of Japanese, as Japan had not yet entered the war — the engagement occurred about two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor, after which Australia and Japan were at war.

Attempts to find the wrecks

The major obstacle in locating the two ships is the scarcity of details about the location of the battle. Theorised location vary from deep waters many kilometres off Dirk Hartog Island to the western side of the Abrolhos Islands, to sites nearer to Carnarvon.

At present a non-profit organisation, HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd, is planning an attempt to locate the two wrecks. It has a memorandum of understanding with shipwreck hunter David Mearns, who also led the expedition which located the wreck of HMS Hood in the North Atlantic in July 2001. Mearns believes he can fiind the wrecks using the latest sonar technology and recently-revealed details recorded by Detmers.[1]. On August 14, 2005, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, announced that the Australian government would provide A$1.3 million to HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd.[2]. A further $500,000 has been committed to the project by the West Australian government. [3] The organisation plans to secure A$8 million in private funding, in addition to $1.3 million donated by the Australian government and $500,000 from the Western Australian state government, before attempting a thorough search. The search will be conducted in deep water off Shark Bay.[4] A rival group has announced plans to search in shallower waters closer to the coast.

External links

References

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