They clearly prepared their trap extremely well and got in those early shots where they counted, but the Aussies got enough return fire in to sink the Kormoran as well. Boy, I bet disguised German commerce raiders like the Kormoran only wished they had the luxury of 11" guns! ;-) The only German ships I know of that did mount 11" in that war were the three pocket battleships (Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer, and Lutzow) and the two big battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. 11" guns are a small battleship calibre gun. Kormoran's 5.9"s would have been fairly typical of a disguised merchant raider masquerading as a noncombatant vessel.