Battle Between HMAS Sydney and German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran - Aftermath

Aftermath

On 26 November, the Naval Board distributed lists of Sydney's ship's company to all district naval offices. Telegrams to next-of-kin, stating that their relatives were "missing as a result of enemy action" were lodged, although naval censors advised the media that no announcements relating to the cruiser be made. Despite this, rumours about the ship's loss were circulating, fuelled by the lack of information to substantiate the "missing" telegrams. Australian Prime Minister John Curtin officially announced the loss of the cruiser during the afternoon of 30 November. Censorship restrictions on the newspapers were lifted to publish the statement, but radio stations were instructed to wait 48 hours before broadcasting the news to avoid alerting any other German ships in the area. Several Melbourne stations disobeyed, and were temporarily suspended from broadcasting. Curtin made a second announcement three days later, providing what had been learned of the battle.

The destruction of Sydney with all hands was a major blow to morale: it was the largest loss of life in the history of the RAN, and the ship's company made up over 35% of RAN naval personnel killed during World War II. This was compounded by the loss of HMAS Parramatta, which was sunk by a German U-boat on 27 November; news of this was announced a day after Sydney's fate was made public. However, the battle was not widely reported in other Allied nations, as it was a small loss compared to contemporary naval incidents — the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and the battleship HMS Barham were sunk in separate incidents during the same two-week period — and was quickly obscured by Japan's attacks on Pearl Harbor and Singapore in early December. Sydney was the largest Allied ship to be lost with all hands during the war.

In Germany, news of the battle was assembled from communications intercepts during the search for survivors, which was combined with Allied news articles to assemble an account of the battle and published in early 1943 for internal consumption by German officials. The events were made public in December 1943, after the early accounts were confirmed by a member of Kormoran's crew sent home in a prisoner exchange.