Battle Between HMAS Sydney and German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran

Battle Between HMAS Sydney And German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran

The battle between HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran(I) was a single ship action between the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney, with Captain Joseph Burnett commanding, and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran, under Fregattenkapitän (Commander) Theodor Detmers. The half-hour long engagement occurred after the two ships encountered each other off the coast of Western Australia on 19 November 1941, and resulted in the ships' mutual destruction.

When Sydney failed to return to port, air and sea searches for the cruiser were conducted between 24 and 29 November. Three boats and two rafts carrying German survivors were recovered by merchant ships, while another two German boats made landfall north of Carnarvon, Western Australia: 318 of the 399 personnel from Kormoran survived. However, apart from two pieces of debris, no sign was found of Sydney or the 645 aboard; it was the largest loss of life in the history of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), and the largest Allied warship lost with all hands during World War II. Australian authorities learned of Sydney's fate from the Germans, who were then placed in prisoner of war camps until the end of the war. The exact location of the two wrecks was unknown until March 2008.

How and why Sydney was defeated by the weaker Kormoran has been the subject of speculation and controversy, with numerous books on the subject, along with government inquiries published in 1999 and 2009. According to the German accounts, which were accepted as truthful by their interrogators and most subsequent commentators, the cruiser sailed too close to the disguised merchant raider, negating the advantages of armour and superior gun range, and was destroyed by heavy fire and a torpedo strike after Kormoran revealed herself. However, some believe that the truth of Sydney's loss has been the subject of an extensive cover-up, alleging that the Germans did not follow the laws of war, the Japanese were secretly involved, and any Australian survivors were killed in the water to hide this. No evidence has been found to support any of these theories.