Post-war Searches
Despite the approximate position of Kormoran being known (most German accounts giving the battle coordinates as 26°S 111°E / 26°S 111°E / -26; 111), the required search area for both ships was unfeasibly large. This was due to the lack of a detailed location, a problem which was compounded by supporters of alternate engagement theories, who believed that the Germans were lying and that the ships would be found further south and closer to shore.
The survey ship HMAS Moresby conducted multiple unsuccessful searches for Sydney and Kormoran between 1974 and 1991, when the ship was based in Fremantle. Another search was conducted by HMAS Protector in July 1997. However, all RAN surveys were restricted to the continental shelf, as the navy did not possess the technology to effectively search the seabed off the shelf. The searches were not exhaustive, and were primarily a response to civilian claims that the wreck site was at a certain location, with the survey ship sent to prove or disprove the claim. Other searches were conducted by aircraft of the Royal Australian Air Force carrying magnetometers; again, these were only in response to claims of possible locations.
In 1990, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) were approached to join a Western Australian Maritime Museum-led search for Sydney and Kormoran, which was agreed to on the condition that the search area be narrowed considerably. This was attempted at a 1991 forum: although the location of the battle was generally agreed upon, because the exact fate and time of sinking for Sydney was unknown, the possible location could not be more accurately determined. Though WHOI staff were initially positive the search area could not be narrowed down, shipwreck hunter Robert Ballard commented that searching for the ships could not be described as a needle in a haystack, "because the haystack has not yet been found", and the WHOI withdrew their support.
Following the 1999 government report into the Australian cruiser's loss, which recommended that a seminar be organised to again attempt to identify the most likely search area for the warships, the HMAS Sydney Location Seminar was organised by the RAN's Sea Power Centre and held at the Western Australian Maritime Museum. However, participants in the seminar could not agree on whether the battle location given by the Germans (referred to as the "northern position") or a point off the Abrolhos Islands (the area for the battle advocated by supporters of the "southern position") was more likely to contain the two ships. In 2002, a coalition of oil and gas companies involved in the North West Shelf Venture performed a gratis search of eight suspected targets in the proposed southern area. No evidence was found of shipwrecks at any of the eight sites, although supporters of this search area claimed that the equipment used was defective and rejected the findings. Subsequent examination of the most popular southern site by DOF Subsea Australia vessel SV Geosounder in March 2007 found no evidence of a shipwreck: the two searches firmly discrediting the alternative engagement area.
Read more about this topic: Battle Between HMAS Sydney And German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran
Famous quotes containing the words post-war and/or searches:
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly’s bloom.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)