BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 06:14 PM

From earlier posts;
The Germans would have been flying a false flag (until or till just before the moment they opened fire). They would have been doing everything possible to appear as an innocent noncombatant. How was the Sydney to be 100% certain as to the identity of the German ship under those circumstances? Was there any way for them to be 100% certain, short of boarding the Kormoran?

and
The Kormoran was doing its level best in obfuscating its signal replies to Sydney's demands for identification.

The documentary mentioned it only in passing and didn't expand on its significance but I seem to recall the documentary including words to the effect that the first of Kormoran's salvoes destroyed not only the forward gun turrret and the bridge, with its control centre, it also destroyed the Sydney's Walrus.

From memory, the Walrus was a seaplane carried on deck, normally lashed down until deployment by being hoisted overboard by derrick; again from memory, it was capable of carrying out aerial reconnaissance for its mother ship.

It struck me that the Walrus could have been deployed from beyond the Kormoran's range but it also struck me that the camouflage used by the Kormoran may have been adequate to disguise its identity and armaments from aerial observation as well as from a purely horizontal examination by other ships.

Perhaps those of you familiar with Q ships might be able to shed light on this aspect.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 06:13 PM

Well, it wouldn't be too easy to sink a ship filled with pingpong balls or similar floatation materials, would it? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 04:59 PM

Little Hawk-

Again what you are saying is certainly backed up by the Q-ship record during World War 1. It's not a matter of opinion.

And if the Kormoran's crew were ordered by the Sydney to abandon ship, they might have tried a similar strategy and achieved a deadly ambush. However, unlike the Q-ships the German raiders did not have additional flotation devices to slow their sinking. Some Q-ships were filled with ping-pong balls or their equivalent but some were sunk anyway.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 01:38 PM

What they did on Q-ships in such a case as you suggest, John Gray, was this: A fake "crew" (a small part of the real crew) would abandon the ship in an apparent panic, taking to the lifeboat(s). The battle crew would remain aboard, at their stations, but hidden.

The fake "crew" would rapidly move away from the ship.

This could fool a U-boat into approaching closely, whereupon the real crew opened fire on it and maybe sank it.

Detmers could have done something quite similar to get the Sydney to come close if they did what you suggested, could he not?

I have no reason to believe that there was any way of the Sydney easily resolving the situation, as you suggest. I think it is possible that the Germans had come into possession of recognition codes (from Allied merchantmen they had sunk previously) which enabled them to fool the Sydney as to their real identity.

Do we have any specific reason to believe that could not have happened?

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: GUEST,John Gray in Oz
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 01:05 PM

Yes LH, everything you say is correct except this situation wasn't difficult to resolve, and wouldn't take all day. If a few shells over Kormoran's bow didn't bring about a resolution send a signal that they have 15 minutes to abandon ship before you blow them out of the water. On receipt of that Captain Detmers would likely have complied and scuttled.

JG/FME

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 06:14 AM

"when the Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by a US submarine"

And the US were our ALLIES! Well at least the sub came back and picked up who they could find... Still, most of the Aussies may have been grateful that the ship did NOT make it to Japan, based on stories of how those who DID make it there were treated... and don't forget that some POWs were close to the nuclear bomb sites as well...

The Mystery of Sydney videos are most probably pirated versions of the recent TV documentary.



"if any of the German survivors of this battle are still alive"

They found one and he appears in the documentary, as I recall.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Megan L
Date: 21 Apr 08 - 04:28 AM

This comes under the catagory wierder than strange. I was looking for a Russian folk song this morning on U tube and found a beautiful version I happened to glance at the side bar and found these.

Mystery of HMAS Sydney Part 1
Mystery of HMAS Sydney Part 2
The Mystery of HMAS Sydney Part 3
The Mystery of HMAS Sydney Part 4

It says there is a part five but i cannot get that link to work

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 06:15 PM

While the Sydney has been the main target of interest, to use a perhaps unfortunate phrase, among Australian naval historians there have been two others involving Australia's first two submarines. The AE2 was famous in the Dardanelles campaign of WWI for having penetrated the Turkish defences into the Sea of Marmara and did some damage before it was sunk; it has recently been located.

And Oz ABC tv will be broadcasting a story on the AE2 this week.

There's a lot of material on the airwaves this week, in the leadup to Anzac Day (25 April, commemorating the landing at Gallipoli), which has a much bigger profile in Oz than 11 November, known here as Armistice Day. There'll even be a Dawn Service for the first time at Villers-Bretonneux. Last night there was a sequence on an entire Salvation Army band (from Brunswick, just a few metres from where I taught but knew nothing of their history) that enlisted in the 2/22 Btn and were taken as POWs in Rabaul. They were part of the 1000 POWs lost when the Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by a US submarine, an event regarded as Australia's largest maritime loss.

CHeers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 03:13 PM

Little Hawk-

Your very point was made by the author of THE SECRET RAIDERS, pp. 228-229:

"As early as January of 1940 one of our own Q ships whose guns and torpedo armaments were about the same as the Kormoran's was intercepted off Sierra Leone by the Neptune, a sister ship to the Sydney, which was unaware of her true identity. The cruiser approached, and remained for some time steaming at slow speed, within a few hundred yards of the Q ship whose captain later reported to the Admiralty that, had he been a German, he 'could have disabled (the Neptune) with two torpedoes and swept her upper deck'. But such secrecy enveloped the work of the Q ships that the report was never circulated to the Naval Staff and the fate which the Neptune escaped actually overtook the Sydney more than eighteen months later."

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 12:25 PM

I think that the German raiders generally gathered info from various Allied merchantmen they had captured, etc, which assisted them in misidentifying themselves when challenged. They would pretend to be a Dutch ship or a Spanish ship or something like that, and they might have got hold of various codes to help them in that pretense.

So how do you decide if what they're telling you is real or not?

Do you deliberately sink a ship which you are not sure of the identity of when it may be a neutral merchantman or even a ship that's on your side in the war?

It would be a very tricky business, wouldn't it?

If you did mistakenly sink an allied or neutral merchantman which you thought was a disguised raider due to the fact that you didn't dare approach it, that would also be grounds for court martial, I think...but it would be safer, of course, for your own vessel than closely approaching a possible raider with concealed weapons.

Either way it's a very tricky situation.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Apr 08 - 12:11 PM

John Gray-

I couldn't agree more, imprudent, but that's easy to figure that out years later while we're comfortably sitting in our armchairs.

I wonder if any of the German survivors of this battle are still alive? They might be able to provide some additional information.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: GUEST,John Gray in Oz
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 11:50 PM

Little Hawk. I agree that identifying a disguised merchant raider is no easy task hence the need for extra vigilance and prudence. The Kormoran was doing its level best in obfuscating its signal replies to Sydney's demands for identification. Until a satisfactory reply was received by Sydney it should have stood off. Then, with no satisfactory reply, rip a couple of 6" shells over her bows. If this didn't bring a change heart then blow it out of the water. Remember - there was a war going on at the time.

JG/FME.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Megan L
Date: 19 Apr 08 - 04:54 AM

*grin like a cheshire cat* Rowan find the WAAC and you find the diary its either her fondest memory or put her of for life.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 11:35 PM

The one piece of info I couldn't find, was a Unit Diary I was hoping to use to settle a long-standing query from my thesis days, involving a fire at Wilson's Promontory that, due to a family friend, I had narrowed down to occurring in early 1943.

Although I was trying to date the fire for successional ecology reasons, for him the fire was associated with a highly amusing and memorable story which he reckoned would have been mentioned in official records.

Although it has nothing to do with HMAS Sydney, I thought the story of the Prom fire was the sort of thing Mudcatters might appreciate and here's as good a place as any to post it.

Background
A wildfire in 1951 swept from the north, over the peaks at Wilson's Promontory and down into Lilly Pilly Gully, wreaking havoc in the southernmost stand of Subtropical Rainforest anywhere. It was known to be the second severe wildfire to do so in the 20th century and, because of the elimination of eucalypts from where the burn patterns of both fires overlapped, it was calculated that the previous fire had occurred in the 15 years (the time for eucalypt seed stored in the soil, from the species there, to germinate and grow enough to mature and set seed themselves) prior to 1951.

The 1939 fires that started on 13 January (Black Friday) were the obvious candidates so I searched local and other newspapers from December 1938 to December 1939 and found that, although South Gippsland was burned, no fires had occurrred on Wilson's Promontory, then a National Park. I was musing over this conundrum in the presence of Reuben, a family friend of my parents' generation and related distantly by marriage. He commented that he had been at the Prom, "with the army" when the fire had occurred.

"You were never a commando?" I queried, knowing from various bits of history plus the recognisable archaeology (years before I studied the field professionally) that the first six (of the ten, ultimately) Australian Commando Companies had trained at the Prom; maps of the area from that time (of which I also had a copy) had been Classified and there was no access south of Darby River.

"No," he said, "I was with the 2nd Medium Artillery Battery. We took over defence of the Prom after the commandos left."
"So, when did it happen?" I asked.
"In 1943, in either January or February," he replied. These are the hottest months of the southeastern Oz summer. I asked him for details.

Reuben's story
"The army's main camp was at the saddle on the western slope of Mt Bishop, where the road crosses down to Tidal River. The Procedure, if smoke was seen in the north, was to take all the weapons (25 pounders), ammunition and removable stores down to the beach at Norman Bay [called "Tidal River beach" by most tourists, these days]. If flames were seen, everything on the beach was to be bulldozed into the water and recovered after the danger had passed.

"Smoke had been seen, so we were taking everything down to the beach. Because it was stinking hot and there were only blokes there, we had stripped off to nothing but boots and hats. The nearest women were at Foster, 40 miles away so we didn't have to worry about being seen. We were each carrying two 25lb artillery shells in our arms, walking in a line down the road from the camp to the beach, about a mile away.

"We had been doing this for a while when we were paid a visit by a staff officer, who'd driven in from the officers' camp at the Darby River Chalet. The officer was Colonel [later, "Brigadier General, Sir" and Governor of Victoria] Ivor McKay. Officers of this rank don't drive; they are driven by "Other Ranks". In this case, the driver was a WAAC [Women's Australian Army Corps].

"So, for the whole of the mile, this WAAC was exposed to the pride of Austrlia's manhood wearing nothing but boots and hats and with their arms full of artillery shells.

"If you want to find the exact date of this, the visit (and probably the fire as well) would have been recorded in the Unit Diary."

Follow-up
I went off to Southern Command at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne to chase down contacts for the location of the Unit Diary but it was right in the middle of the Vietnam conscription era and, as soon as they heard "Melbourne University" I was shown the door and told not to come back. The archives of the AWM, to which all such records are ultimately sent, were my last hope of narrowing the date of the fire to less than two months. And it was in their archives that I found Reuben had subsequently joined the RAN.

But I did note the date in my thesis as a "Pers. Comm." and it has subsequently entered the published record.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 12:37 PM

fooey, that what getting to bed far too late & waking at 9.45 means - I miss a very interesting story. Hooray for Audio on demand.

thanks for posting the link & the info on ancestor hunting.

the bloke from AWM says they are trying to get pics of everyone mentioned on the Roll of Honour, I'll speak to Bob Bolton again about getting Jack's picture copied.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 18 Apr 08 - 02:33 AM

The AWM & the National Archives have conduced enormous projects to digitise Defence force records from 1900 onwards & they are freely available & easy to search.

I'll vouch for that!

Because there were a few discrepancies between the AWM info on various deceased members of my father's family (including him) and published info in the family history I sent my queries to both the AWM and the National Archives in advance of my attendance at the 2007 National Folk Festival; they had retrieved all the documents and I was able to peruse them and, in my father's case, add documentation to his file.

Sandra, you may already have availed yourself of this helpfulness but, if you haven't, I suggest you do. I found out all sorts of info and was able to donate some material, inherited from my father, to the AWM collection. The one piece of info I couldn't find, was a Unit Diary I was hoping to use to settle a long-standing query from my thesis days, involving a fire at Wilson's Promontory that, due to a family friend, I had narrowed down to occurring in early 1943.

Although I was trying to date the fire for successional ecology reasons, for him the fire was associated with a highly amusing and memorable story which he reckoned would have been mentioned in official records. He recommended consulting the Unit Diary but, although I found out he'd been in the same unit I'd joined a generation later, I also found out the Unit's Diary for 1942-44 was the only one missing from the AWM's records.

And, while on the topic of discovering long-lost war data, Radio National broadcast yesterday that hundreds of rare First World War photographs had been discovered

"The negatives detail one soldier's journey to war on the Western Front between 1916 and 1918. They were discovered in a simple biscuit tin, in a garage in the Central Victorian city of Bendigo. More than 560 prints of incredible clarity have now been developed, recording some of the most important battles fought by Australians in the Great War."

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 09:33 PM

care of war graves

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 09:04 PM

I was up till 2.30 last night following links thru the last one I put up. I even re-arranged the boxes on top of my wardrobe to get to the family history boxes underneath everything.

I found my a lot of info about my grandmother's brother who died in Belgium in 1917. His body was never recovered so he is "just" an entry on the memorial wall at Menin(?) I found the location of his name on the Honour Roll at the Australian War Memorial, & 70 pages of records including letters from his mother & a list of his paltry effects (pipe, book & a few other items) returned to her. I have a very cracked & faded photographic brooch showing his face that she is probably wearing in a studio photo taken 20 years later in the year of her death.

The AWM & the National Archives have conduced enormous projects to digitise Defence force records from 1900 onwards & they are freely available & easy to search. Maybe I'll look up his brother's records one day, also other family members who went off to war. But I'll make sure I have a supply of tissues nearby next time as it's very emotionally wearing.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Charley Noble
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 08:40 PM

This really has been a well conducted and interesting thread. I was happy to contribute and to read what others had to say. A.L. Lloyd is said to have composed this hymn:

The Seamen's Hymn

Come all ye bold seamen, wherever you're bound,
And always let Nelson's proud memory go 'round;
And pray that the wars and the tumult may cease,
For the greatest of gifts is a sweet lasting peace;
May the Lord put an end to these cruel, old wars,
And bring peace and contentment to all our brave tars.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Eric the Viking
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 05:23 PM

Strange how one feels touched by things like this isn't it? I remember my father's best friend was lost on the HMS HOOD. My dad often talked about him and named my eldest brother after him. The Royal Oak still touches a great number of Ocradians today, even children,and the ever present slither of oil is nearly always visible especially on fine days. I always look in the direction of the bouy and see it floating near the cliffs or illuminated at night.Visible from Hoxa and on the journey from the Hope and all the way round to Scapa and beyond, there it floats above the Royal Oak.The curator of the Lyness museum on Hoy is a wealth of information about the sinking and the other lost ships in this area.

I agree with Megan. This has been and continues to be a most interesting thread. I think it's about 3 minutes, if you survive the shock of the cold water of the Pentland Firth, before it becomes almost too late for recovery unless pulled out of the water and re-warmed. (Just copied the teaching DVD for the local first aid teacher for her)There is a desription by two survivors from the Oak about that night on "Coast" from BBC TV.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 02:10 PM

True enough, but the identification of a disguised merchant raider was no easy task. He didn't have a worldwide instant live computer hookup that lists every ship at sea. He could only go by the ship's outer appearance. The Germans would have been flying a false flag (until or till just before the moment they opened fire). They would have been doing everything possible to appear as an innocent noncombatant. How was the Sydney to be 100% certain as to the identity of the German ship under those circumstances? Was there any way for them to be 100% certain, short of boarding the Kormoran? I doubt it. So they could have stood off all day and still not have ever figured out who that ship belonged to. The only way to finally confirm it was to approach and send a boarding party, I would think. That requires a close approach.

I don't doubt he would have been court martialled (as officers tend to be when things go badly awry), but that does not necessarily indicate that he was negligent....more like he was unlucky, and the crew of the Kormoran made their first shots count.

No one can be certain of the result in such a situation. German ships (U-boats) were also lost making close approaches to disguised Allied "merchant" Q-ships.

Bad things can happen...no matter how careful and efficient people are. It doesn't always mean that some commander must be damned for it.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: GUEST,John Gray in Oz
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 01:32 PM

If the Captain of the Sydney had of survived he would have faced a court martial. He should have stood-off until the Kormoran was properly identified, instead he kept closing the range to the point where he placed his ship in jeopardy. Over-confidence, arrogance (?) cost him his ship and crew. With his superior armament and fire-control ( of the guns ) a properly conducted engagement would have seen the sinking of the Kormoran as a fairly simple task.
And these captains are still around, at least during the Viet Nam schemozzle when I was in the navy.

JG/FME

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 10:05 AM

Megan, I've loved the responses & it's had me looking for further info that I would never have known if I'd just skimmed over the headlines in my usual fashion.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Megan L
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 03:38 AM

Sandra I want to thank you for starting this thread it is the most interesting thing that has been on the cat for quite a long time .

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 03:21 AM

Australian War Memorial list of names

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: GUEST,Allen in OZ
Date: 17 Apr 08 - 03:15 AM

Does anyone know where I can find the names of the 645 sailors lost on the Sydney ( I have been told that one lived near me in Melbourne St Concord). His surname was Woodhead.
Many thanks
Allen

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:42 PM

Rowan-

Thanks for the update and the link.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:45 AM

thanks for the link & explanation given in the program, Rowan. This is one time when I regret not having a TV.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 15 Apr 08 - 07:34 PM

According to the program (broadcast last night) the most likely reason for the lack of survivors, according to the searchers who were examining the video footage they'd taken of the wreck, seems to be that the crew were trying to nurse the Sydney to land, unaware that the bow was about to detach itself as a result of the damage from the Kormoran's torpedo. This would account for the lifeboats not being launched but found to be still attached to the hull. The naval historians argue that, when the bow fell away, the rest of the ship would have sunk so quickly that nobody would have been able to even get to the boats let alone launch them. The one bloke who managed to get into the raft found six months later may well have been the only one to get clear.

Matt raised the question about the Kormoran being to port of the Sydney during the battle, implying a lack of damage to the Sydney's starboard side. The reconstruction of Dettmer's 'log' (from the coded pencil dots in a German-English dictionary he'd been given as a POW) indicated that the last manouevre of the Sydney in its engagement was to turn to port so that its starboard torpedoes could be launched at the Kormoran. They missed but the fire from the Kormoran, now close enough so that even LMG damage could be inflicted, wrought the same damage on the starboard side of Sydney as on the port side.

The hunt for HMAS Sydney is reviewed on Oz ABC at the moment but the site has a high visitation rate just at the moment.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 04:51 AM

thanks for that link, Megan. And thanks to everyone who has contributed so far - Mudcatters have so much knowledge to share.

I think the miracle of the sinking of the Sydney was that a raft crossed the Indian Ocean carrying one crewman's body.
photos of excavation of grave, Christmas Island, Oct 2006

There's a lot of speculation about how & why the Sydney sunk, & how & why no-one survived - maybe the Government enquiry might find an official answer - or maybe not.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Megan L
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 03:52 AM

Mike this account of a ship in my local waters sunk in the second world war might help folk understand. If I want to leave my island home i travel by boat it has nice wide stairsand floor level emergency lighting to guide us if anything should happen but If we went down out in the Pentland Firth I still wouldnt be willing to bet on great numbers surviving unless they could get the lifeboats launched.

The Royal Oak was sunk in what was considered a safe anchorage it took her something like 15 minutes to go down. I worked in the sound archives of the local library for a year and transcribed old reel to reel recording from one of the survivors it was harrowing to listen to and could only be described as hell to live through. I remember little of it now thankfully for it was the stuff of nightmares but one part has always stuck in my memory he told of an older man a petty officer who rather than try and save himself stood down there in the darkness calming the young lads as much as he could encouraging them to keep moving who knows how many his brave action got to the deck with some chance of survival that day.

Sinking of the Royal Oak

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: GUEST,Mike
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 09:43 PM

It is hard to understand why there were no survivors. Can imagine though the terrible carnage, the injured and dead to deal with, breakdown in communications, guys trapped in sections and failing light. Heart goes out to them.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 01:01 PM

Kind of like fishing with a lure, isn't it? A nice juicy-looking rubber worm...with a hook in it.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Megan L
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 11:56 AM

The British and American forces also had similar craft used to lure U boats there is a bit about the Q ships here, the name came from the port of Queenstown in Ireland.

Q ship pictures
Q ship on wikipedia
Q ships navy history site

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Les from Hull
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 10:54 AM

LH - the international maritime law on blockade became increasingly confused. You could normally stop enemy ships or cargoes of military items in neutral ships from entering a country. You then have a dispute as to what has military value (clothing? food?). In the American Civil War the Union went to great efforts to prevent cotton exports from the Confederacy in order to ruin its economy. I think that they got away with this because to Confederacy wasn't strictly-speaking a 'country'.

To enforce the blockade you had to board the suspected vessel (if it was flying a neutral flag or possibly a 'false flag') and check it over. Then if it was an enemy vessel you could sink it, first taking off the crew and passengers. If it was a neutral, or there was some dispute you could take it to an 'examination port'. I can only think that HMAS Sydney was so close to Kormoran because the captain intended to board what was thought to be a friendly freighter.

When U-boats tried this in the First World War merchant vessels were armed, so began the period of unrestricted submarine warfare (shoot first, ask questions later). Q-ships tactics used smaller vessels that were not considered worth a torpedo, or larger vessels which were filled up with additional bouyancy items so they would take a long time sinking, encouraging the submarine to surface and use its gun rather than another torpedo. They would also be seen by the submarine to abandon ship by a 'panic party' lowering a boat including the 'captain's wife' (a young seaman in a dress) and possibly even a parrot in a cage. But the concealed gun crews stayed on board.

There was an unsuccessful attempt to do this again at the start of World War 2 with what were called 'Special Service Freighters' although only 3 or 4 were commissioned. One of these was the Ellerman Liner 'City of Durban', built in Hull in 1921, probably with the assistance of my grandad and great grandad!

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 07:44 PM

Finding Sydney site
The search first focused on finding the German raider Kormoran which was located on 12 March approximately 112 nautical miles off Steep Point, Western Australia lying in 2,560 metres of water.

The discovery of the main battle site, less than four nautical miles south of Kormoran's position, was then used to direct the team's effort in searching for Sydney.

The wreck of the Sydney was confirmed late last night, approximately 12 nautical miles off Kormoran , under 2,470 metres of water.
-------------------

The wreckage of the German Raider HSK Kormoran was found by the search team on board the SV Geosounder at 17:30 (AWDT) on March 12th, 2008 in the approximate position 26° 05' 49.4" S 111° 04' 27.5" E. With Kormoran's sinking position established, and the identity of its wreckage confirmed on the basis of high quality sonar imagery, the search for HMAS Sydney (II) has been localised to a most probable area and this search is currently ongoing.

Raft & body found on Christmas Island - near Indonesia

Site of Kormoran wreckage - a long way from Christmas Island!

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 07:02 PM

Yes, it's strange. You'd think some of them would have survived.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 06:56 PM

It seems like an awful waste of human talents and abilities.

That just about sums up my attitude to wars in general which, I acknowledge (before somone clobbers me), I can freely utter because my parents' generation and theirs before them went and got involved.

But, while your description of tactics deals with the events right up to the firing of armaments, the nitty gritty of the mystery is why the Sydney was seen to be afloat (but on fire) for long enough for survivors of the actual firefight to 'get away" but the whole crew was lost. The "how" of all this might be discernable from the archaeological evidence and is what engages me at this stage.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 06:31 PM

Well, it's always a nasty surprise when things go that badly wrong for a country's fighting men. If it had happened to the Germans or Americans or anyone else, they would also not have wanted to believe it possible that one of their warships could be ambushed like that. But such things can happen to anyone.

Merchant raiders always tried to pass themselves off as innocent neutral or Allied vessels. They would fly a false flag (until the moment of opening fire, normally, when they would hoist their battle flag), and all their guns were concealed behind various panels and structures that could be dropped in a second to expose the guns or torpedo launchers. This was normal. They were meant to take other ships totally by surprise.

The Allies did the same thing with disguised Q-ships that were meant to ambush German U-boats which often used to approach solitary Allied merchant ships on the surface and demand their surrender. That was in the days before the Q-ships and before most of the merchant ships began equipping themselves with deck guns. If a U-boat could compell a merchant ship to surrender without a fight, then it was good for everyone all around. The people on the merchant ship got a chance to safely evacuate in their lifeboats and take some provisions and stuff with them before some of the U-boat crew boarded and then sank their ship. The U-boat boarding party got a chance to look over the contents of the ship, possibly find some valuable documents, and use a minimum of expensive ammunition to then sink it. Nobody got killed or shot at. Like I said, a pretty good deal all the way around, if you accept that the ship is gonna go down anyway.

The Allies Q-ships were merchant ships with plenty of well hidden armament on board, like the German merchant raiders. Their job was to lure a U-boat into point blank range by apparently surrendering...then blast the hell out of the U-boat when the opportunity was there and sink it.

Sometimes they succeeded. This only meant that the U-boats soon began to give up the idea of offering surrender to any apparently unarmed merchant ships and would instead simply torpedo them without warning. So the whole situation got meaner and more ruthless on all sides.

Is that anyone's fault? No, not really. It's just typical of what happens in war. Things start out pretty bad, and they rapidly get even worse. By the time it's finally over there will be a lot of broken lives and bitter memories left on both sides.

It seems like an awful waste of human talents and abilities.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 06:15 PM

Matt is really restating the reason(s) why the Sydney's demise has engaged Australians' attention ever since 1941. While wartime censorship meant little detail was known to the broader public until after the war, the stories from the crew of the Kormoran seemed to support a series of events that most in Oz didn't want to believe possible but. without concrete evidence, couldn't actually refute. The later discovery of the raft and body (discussed in Sandra's links) only deepened the mystery.

We now have access to some of the 'physical material' relevant to the matter and the tantalising nature of this 'evidence' (capable of objective analysis but limited in scope because of time and inaccessibility) has allowed old questions to be revisited and new, more specific ones to be raised and addressed.

The ABC in Oz is broadcasting a TV programme on this aspect of HMAS Sydney's demise on the evening of Tuesday 15 April at 8pm, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 09:50 AM

Navy to exhume remains of 'unknown sailor' - news story Oct 06

Analysts close in on cause of unknown sailor's death news story Dec 06

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 08:45 AM

Don't forget that one Aussie sailor did get on to a floatation device, but did not survive. This device was found.

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 08:35 AM

Matt-

I would agree with you that according to the battle reports, there should have been ample time for the sailors aboard the Sydney to abandon ship in some fashion. Weather was evidently not a major factor, given that the Germans survived for 4 days or more in their boats and rafts. There was a massive fire reported aboard the Sydney which may have done in much of the crew but there still should have been some survivors.

There was an extensive air and sea search conducted a week or so after the battle but that evidently didn't turn up much.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: GUEST,Matt
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 06:01 AM

I still can't figure out why the Sydney floated for over 4 hours following the battle with no one managing to get off. Obviously the command structure on Sydney was completely devastated after the first shot from the Kormoran. It appears that the sailors operating X Turret managed to fatally cripple the Kormoran in spite of all senior officers on Sydney being dead and there being no communication left functioning on Sydney after the initial assault by Kormoran.
Still it would have seemed that at least some of the Aussies would have survived the battle which only lasted about 5 minutes ( 5 minutes can seem an enternity in war). The Germans scuttled their ship when it became apparent that they could not contain the fires caused by Sydney's X Turret gunners. As Detmer who commanded the Kormoran instinctively knew, the fires would eventually reach the mines stored in the large ammunition cache and destroy the boat. The Germans abandoned ship and watched the Sydney limp away in tact. They could see the fires on the Sydney until it disappeared over the horizen after 10:00 pm. The battle was at 5:30 pm!
Why did no Aussie succesfully launch a life boat to safety? The five life boats that were found in the wreckage had some holes from the battle. Were they too damaged to float? Where are the rest of the 9 life boats. Why was not a single sailor able to get off in a boat in the 4 1/2 hours between the battle and the bow break that caused the Sydney to sink. Maybe the sailors didn't think the bow would break and therefore did not abandon ship. That seems unlikely since there was massive damage to the Sydney. If they did not think the boat would sink, then where are the rest of the life boats? Why didn't the other boats go down with the Sydney as well. Perhaps the rest of the life boats were launched but were so damaged from the battle that they sunk before the Aussies could guide them to safety. That seems unlikely to as the battle was all on Sydney's port side, the starboard life boats should have been in decent condition, at least one of them.
There are still a LOT of unanswered questions.

Regards,
Matt

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 10:43 PM

I certainly am fond of the Patrick O'Brian series, having re-read it several times.
ditto
And one day I'll try and trawl through it for the names of the various tunes/songs mentioned; while most of them were (what we now describe as) classical, some were straight out of the traditional dance tune repertoire of the current folk scene.

"Drops of brandy" comes to mind.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Charley Noble
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 08:36 PM

Rowan-

Evidently the Germans still believed in the traditional etiquette of lowering their "Dutch" flag and raising their national ensign before blazing away, or so they claimed afterwards.

I don't think anyone bothers to do that now. We just send a missile to the GPS coordinates and hope for the best (or worst).

I certainly am fond of the Patrick O'Brian series, having re-read it several times.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: skipy
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 06:26 PM

May they all rest in peace now that they have been found.
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Rowan
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 05:59 PM

Nice back-link, Les.

Charley, thanks for the info on the Napoleonic wars but I hadn't intended to imply that Sydney's boats had been "targetted", although it was reasonable for readers to so infer from the way I had expressed the question; it's a long time since I got into the details and the notion that the ships were within 1000yds of each other wasn't in the front of my mind.

But your reference to the Napoleonic Wars' naval practices reminded me that, shortly after the most recent material about Sydney's location was broadcast, some wally in the media railed against the Kormoran's deception (disguising itself as a merchantman) and I recall commenting that, quite apart from a lack of knowledge of naval practice for several centuries, said wally obviously hadn't been reading any of Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" series which, although fiction, present many such incidents based on official records and have brought such knowledge to a much wider audience.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Les from Hull
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 01:21 PM

On the subject of 'lifeboats'. Warships have never really gone in for 'lifeboats'. They have usually had ship's boats, fulfilling a number of functions such as transferring personnel, and in earlier years re-provisioning. In the Napoleonic period they were a dangerous extra source of wooden splinters in battle, and in any period they could not have accommodated anywhere near the whole ships company.

The lifesaving function on Second World War British and Commonwealth warships was carried out by the Carley float, invented many years before by the American, Horace Carley. It was 2 Carley floats believed to be from HMAS Sydney 1) that carried the body to Christmas Island and 2) was picked up off the Australian coast and is now in Canberra at the National War Memorial. Carley floats were stored usually on the sides of turrets and ships superstructure, and hopefully they would float free if the ship sank. But in these positions they would be quite vulnerable to enemy fire.

Charley Noble mentions the part played by German auxiliary cruisers. The Atlantis (most successful in terms of tonnage sunk) played a very important part. In November 1940, north-west of Sumatra she encountered the A Holt and Co cargo liner Automedon, which surrendered after receiving a few shell hits. On board and captured by the Germans were the British War Cabinet's appraisal of the defences of Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, code books and an assessment of Japan's intentions. These were passed to the Japanese by the Germans. And at the wheel of Automedon at this time was none other than Mr Stan Hugill! See - back to folk music!

Subject: RE: BS: HMAS Sydney - sunk 1941, located 2008
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 10:07 AM

Charley, the raft was washed ashore on Christmas Island & the body buried. The grave location was lost over the years, & the recent re-location of the grave & subsequent examination of the remains brought the Sydney story back into the public consciousness.

Tests narrow down identity of unknown WWII sailor - news story June 2007
'Sydney' sailor's identity still a mystery - news story Aug 2007

sandra