Search for HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran

The memorial to HMAS Sydney at Geraldton, Western Australia. The battle between Sydney and Kormoran took place off the Western Australian coast.

Following the mutually destructive battle between the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran in 1941, there have been numerous attempts to find the ships. Initial efforts focused on finding Sydney after she failed to return to port. However, while the searches located over 300 survivors from Kormoran, none of the 645 aboard the Australian warship were found.

Post-war searches attempted to find one or both of the combatants, but were unsuccessful because of a lack of detailed information about the battle's location. This was compounded by distrust of the German survivors and their accounts; the discrepancy in the number of survivors from each ship prompted theories that Kormoran's crew had acted illegally during the battle, and were attempting to cover up their actions. As a result, hypotheses about the wrecks' locations varied from deep water many kilometres off Dirk Hartog Island, to sites nearer to Carnarvon, Western Australia, and as far south as the western side of the Houtman Abrolhos Islands.

In March 2008, shipwreck hunter David Mearns commenced a search for the two wrecks. Kormoran was located on 12 March in close proximity to the sinking position given in German accounts. Using the survivor's information on Sydney's last known heading, Mearns and his search team located Sydney on 17 March.

History

Wartime

Main article: Battle between HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran#Search and rescue

Sydney in 1940

The search for the two ships began on 24 November 1941 after Sydney failed to respond to radio messages. Royal Australian Air Force aircraft patrolled off the West Australian coast and all high powered radio stations in Australia were instructed to continuously broadcast to Sydney. After the British tanker Trocas rescued survivors from Kormoran at approximately 24°33′S 111°48′E, 120 miles (190 km) west-north-west of Carnarvon on 24 November, six merchant ships in the area were instructed to search for survivors and four auxiliary Royal Australian Navy vessels were dispatched from Fremantle, Western Australia. While 315 survivors from Kormoran were rescued by 30 November, the only confirmed trace of Sydney found by the searchers was a single empty life raft recovered by HMAS Heros.

Post-war

In 1981 the Western Australian Museum and the Royal Australian Navy joined to examine a large magnetic anomaly off the Zuytdorp Cliffs that was consistent with the magnetic signature expected from the wreck of Sydney. In November 1991 at the 50th anniversary of the ship's loss, and subsequent to the location of Titanic and Bismarck by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the Museum, assisted by Associate Professor Kim Kirsner of the University of Western Australia, conducted a seminar designed to see if Sydney could be located. While the search box for its adversary Kormoran was reduced to a size similar to that used in the previous successful searches, the oceanographers, scientists and search and rescue specialists at the seminar could not reduce the box for Sydney below a 7000 square kilometre zone. While the position the German sailors and their commander had given for the battle was confirmed by the oceanographic evidence, doubt existed re the whereabouts of Sydney. in 1941 some felt it had tried to get to the nearest dry dock in Surabaya, while others felt it had tried to make the coast and was possibly headed towards the nearest port with facilities, Geraldton. Some German accounts stated Sydney had sunk while they rowed towards its burning hulk after they abandoned their own ship, others that it had disappeared on a SE course into the night. As a result of pressure from the newly-formed HMAS Sydney Foundation trust, led by Ed Punchard and including many senior politicians, in 1997, a joint standing committee held a parliamentary inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the sinking of Sydney. The inquiry was the largest in Australia’s history, receiving submissions from hundreds of parties. The committee then made a number of findings and recommendations, concluding:

• No documents had been maliciously destroyed
• The Kormoran's torpedoes were an important factor in the battle
• It was common practice at the time to close on unknown ships to prevent their crews scuttling them
• There was a total lack of evidence of Japanese involvement
• Attempts should be made to identify the unknown sailor on Christmas Island
• The newly-formed HMAS Sydney Foundation Trust should coordinate a search for the wrecks centring on the position identified by the WA Museum's seminar in 1991
• A new memorial in Fremantle, that the Royal Australian Navy set up a naval history research grant scheme in the name of Sydney and its crew, and services of commemoration in Fremantle, Sydney and at the wreck site.

In 2001, as a result of the Parliamentary Inquiry, the Royal Australian Navy's Seapower Centre (SPC) conducted a seminar at the WA Museum, designed to examine the feasibility of a search of the 1991 position. Due to dissension amongst the researchers present, claims that the battle had taken place near the Abrolhos Islands (see MacDonald and Whittakker following) and a continuing lack of 'hard' evidence and wreckage relating to Sydney, the SPC found against conducting a search. Nonetheless, after the Foundation Trust folded the non-profit organisation HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd planned an attempt to locate the wrecks and after receiving advice from successful deep-water wreck hunter David Mearns that he could find the wrecks embarked on an active campaign to begin searching, receiving a government grant in August 2005. It had a memorandum of understanding with shipwreck hunter David Mearns, who believed that he could find the wrecks using the latest sonar technology and recently revealed details recorded by the commander of Kormoran, Theodor Detmers. On 14 August 2005, the then Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, announced that the Australian government would grant A$1.3 million to HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd. Another was provided by the West Australian State Government, and $250,000 by the New South Wales State Government. The organisation planned to secure an additional $8 million in private funding before attempting a thorough search. The search was planned to be conducted in deep water off Shark Bay. A rival group announced plans to search in shallower waters closer to the coast.

While the WA Museum's research, and other works (notably Barbara Winters, HMAS Sydney Fact, Fantasy and Fraud, Tom Frame's HMAS Sydney: Loss and Controversy and Wes Olson's, Bitter Victory) supported the German battle position, in late 2005, University of Western Australia Press published Seeking the Sydney: A Quest for the Truth by Glenys McDonald. The main innovation of the book was McDonald's extensive oral history interviews with residents of the coastal area nearest to the battle. Much of it had been tabled at the 2001 SPC seminar. According to McDonald, many residents of Port Gregory, about 80 kilometres (43 nmi) north of Geraldton, reported seeing signs and sounds of a naval battle, at about the time that Sydney and Kormoran engaged each other, suggesting that the sinkings may have occurred much further south than the accounts of either Detmers or the Australian government (a theory that subsequently proved to be incorrect when the wrecks were located).

Independent researcher Warren Whittaker, writing in The Weekend Australian in July 2006, reiterated his belief that HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd was looking in the wrong area. Whittaker believed that hindcasting, based on the known movements of flotsam and lifeboats from Kormoran, suggested wrongly that Detmers' account of the last known location of his ship is incorrect and that both ships would be located just west of Abrolhos Islands. This also reflected the evidence he presented at the 2001 Seminar based on his and Lindsay Knight's experimental wreck-locating KDLS System.

In March 2007, HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd reported that Whittaker's proposed site had been surveyed by a Perth-based company, Geo Subsea Pty Ltd, on a pro bono basis, and no trace of Kormoran or Sydney had been found. Geo Subsea used a hull-mounted multibeam echo sounder (MBES) system, capable of scanning the seabed for three km on either side of the search vessel MV Geosounder, at depths of up to 5,000 metres (16,000 ft). David Mearns was quoted as saying that the site "was ideal for searching with Geosounder's MBES because the average depth is only 850 metres (2,790 ft) and the seabed is relatively flat and featureless with a gentle slope of only 1.4 to 2 degrees. If a ship the size of Kormoran (157 metres long and 9,400 GRT), which was the biggest auxiliary cruiser used by the Kriegsmarine in WWII, had exploded and sunk on the site it would clearly show up in the MBES images for all to see."

In June 2007, British maritime researcher Timothy Akers, a former employee of David Mearns, claimed to have located the wreck of the Sydney along with other wrecks from a Japanese Battle Group in the vicinity, using high quality satellite imagery he purchased. However, this claim was disputed by the WA Museum and Ted Graham, the chairman of the Perth-based volunteer company HMAS Sydney Search, who dismissed the possibility the wreck could be located using satellite imagery.

On 11 August 2007 a group of amateur wreck hunters claimed that they had located the wreck of Sydney off Cape Inscription on the northern end of Dirk Hartog Island by using a grappling hook and underwater video camera. A survey conducted by HMAS Leeuwin on 17 August found that the wreck off Dirk Hartog Island is only approximately 30 metres (98 ft) long and 5 metres (16 ft) high, and therefore not matching Sydney's length of over 170 metres (560 ft). In light of this, the possibility of the discovery being that of the Sydney was ruled out. The reasons why the search for HMAS Sydney had taken so long are examined in a WA Museum Report.

Discovery of the wrecks

American shipwreck hunter David Mearns first learned of the battle and mutual destruction of Sydney and Kormoran during a conference in 1996, and decided to start studying the battle with a view to finding the ships in 2001. Mearns had previously been involved in the discovery of the cargo ship Lucona (the key evidence in the arrest of Udo Proksch for murder and insurance fraud), the bulk carrier Derbyshire (the largest British ship to be lost at sea), and the battleship HMS Hood.

With the assistance of other historians and the Western Australian Museum, Mearns researched the battle by focusing on primary source documents, during which he discovered or rediscovered several archive files and Kormoran diaries believed lost. This research led Mearns to believe that the German accounts were truthful. After two failed attempts to attract the attention and support of the RAN for a search, Mearns was informed in January 2004 that based on his research, the navy was reconsidering its stance on the success of a search. At this point, Mearns and his company entered a partnership with HMAS Sydney Search Pty. Ltd., a not-for-profit company set up to support and help fund a search for Sydney. A Memorandum of Understanding was drawn up between the two companies in late 2004. In mid-September 2004, the German government announced its approval for Mearns to film Kormoran if she was found.

On 14 August 2005, the Australian government announced a A$1.3 million funding grant to the Finding Sydney Foundation (a charitable foundation set up in 2003 by the directors of HMAS Sydney Search to fund the search), which was quickly followed by a A$500,000 contribution from the Western Australian government, and a A$250,000 grant from the government of New South Wales. Several small donations were made by companies and the public, but plans to search for the ships during late 2007 or early 2008 were under threat until the Australian government approved another A$2.9 million in funds, which it did in October 2007.

Mearns plan was to determine a 'search box' for Kormoran by plotting the possible starting points of the two rafts from the raider through a reverse drift analysis. Previous drift analyses had focused on one of the lifeboats that had made landfall, as the officer in charge had maintained a log of the boat's progress; these analyses provided a wide spread of results because the log was incomplete, eddy currents which would have affected the course and speed were rarely accounted for, the boat would have additionally been affected by oar- and sail-power in addition to ocean currents, and most researchers were focused on deriving a specific point from the analysis instead of a general area. This search box (which was calculated to be 52 by 34 nautical miles (96 by 63 km; 60 by 39 mi) in size) would then be inspected over the course of several days with a deep-water, towed side-scan sonar. Mearns chose to focus on finding Kormoran first, as locating the German ship would significantly narrow down the search area for Sydney, and improve the chances of finding the Australian cruiser in this area. After locating one or both vessels, the search ship would return to port and replace the sonar with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to photograph and video the wrecks.

The survey vessel SV Geosounder was chartered from the subsea exploration company DOF Subsea Australia; in addition to being the best of several vessels considered, Geosounder was the only capable ship available for hire during the search. There was only enough funding to hire and operate Geosounder for 45 days. Geosounder was scheduled to depart early on 29 February, but a series of problems and last-minute modifications delayed this until after 1600, and the ship had to return to port that evening because of a fuel leak. Repairs were made, and the ship reached the south-east corner of Mearns' search box just before midnight on 4 March. The early days of the search were hampered by recurring problems with the side-scan sonar and the occurrence of Tropical Cyclone Ophelia. Despite this, Kormoran was located during the afternoon of 12 March 2008: the wreck site was 2,560 metres (8,400 ft) below sea level, and consisted of two large pieces 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) apart, with an oval-shaped debris field between them, centred at 26°05′46″S 111°04′33″E. The raider's discovery was publicly announced by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the morning of 17 March.

Kormoran

Sydney

Carnarvon

Location of the two wrecks off Shark Bay

Using the newly-discovered wreck and the accounts of the Germans describing Sydney's heading, speed, and last sighting after the battle, a 20 by 18 nautical miles (37 by 33 km) search box for the cruiser was calculated. The dramatic change in size compared to the search box for Kormoran was because the German raider's location was recounted by survivors only as a broad latitude and longitude, while much more information was available concerning the Australian cruiser's position relative to the raider. Sydney was located on 17 March just after 1100, only hours after Kormoran’s discovery was publicly announced. News that the cruiser had been found was made public the next day in another official announcement by Prime Minister Rudd. Sydney’s wreck was located at 26°14′31″S 111°12′48″E at 2,468 metres (8,097 ft) below sea level: the bow of the cruiser had broken off as the ship sank, and was located at the opposite end of a debris field stretching less than 500 metres (1,600 ft) north-west from the hull. The two wrecks were 11.4 nautical miles (21.1 km) apart, with Sydney south-east of Kormoran. On discovery, both wrecks were placed under the protection of the Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976, which penalises anyone disturbing a protected shipwreck with a fine of up to A$10,000 or a maximum five years imprisonment.

Geosounder returned to Geraldton on 20 March, but major delays during the installation and testing of the ROV delayed departure until 29 March, with the survey ship sailing through the path of Cyclone Pancho. Sydney was the first to be inspected, with electrical problems with the ROV setting the start of filming back to 3 April. Six ROV dives were made over a five-day period, during which the main hull and debris field were inspected, filmed, and documented. The inspection of Sydney found that the bow had torn free, causing the ship to lose buoyancy and sink, with the main hull section hitting the seabed stern first. The damage found by the search team corresponded with the descriptions given by the crew of Kormoran after the battle. After the conclusion of ROV operations near Sydney, Geosounder travelled to the wreck of Kormoran. The ship had been split into two large pieces by the explosion of the mine deck, which also destroyed the raider's superstructure and scattered debris across a wide area. A possible battle site was located during the sonar search, but observation with the ROV revealed that what was thought to be debris from the ships was actually outcrops of pillow lava.

The search was declared complete just before midnight on 7 April, with Geosounder returning to Geraldton. In November 2009, the Finding Sydney Foundation donated more than 1,400 photographs and 50 hours of video of the wrecks to the Australian War Memorial.

References

• Cole, Terence (July 2009). The loss of HMAS Sydney II (3 volumes). Canberra: Department of Defence. ISBN 9780642297136. OCLC 432200965. http://www.defence.gov.au/sydneyii/finalreport/index.html. Retrieved 9 November 2009. 
• Mearns, David (2009). The Search for the Sydney. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 9780732288891. OCLC 301679923. 
• Gill, G Hermon (1957). Royal Australian Navy, 1939–1942. Australia in the War of 1939–1945, Series 2 – Navy. Canberra: Australian War Memorial. http://www.awm.gov.au/histories/chapter.asp?volume=24. 
• Lewis, Tom (December 2007). "What may the Sydney wreck reveal". Headmark. Journal of the Australian Naval Institute (Australian Naval Institute) (125): Pg 4–12. 
• The West Australian (website) "Sydney hunt digs up the Kormoran" (March 16, 2008). Access date: March 16, 2008.
• Sydney Morning Herald article (February 23, 2005) on expedition by David Mearns to find the wreck of Sydney

External links

• HMAS Sydney II Search Appeal – The HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd (Sydney Search) website.
• TV Documentary: The Hunt for HMAS Sydney
• Ship found after 66 years