World War Two mystery finally solved- 66 years later, HMAS Sydney found

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It was finding the Kormoran’s wreck that led the searchers to the Sydney. The Kormoran’s survivors had seen the Sydney depart the area. It had been a tough fight. The Kormoran was outgunned, but she had big guns. As a raider, she would pretend to be an innocent merchantman, and unmask those guns when attacking, and when attacked.

Kormoran was quite capable of sinking other ships, and she did. One of the big questions of the inquiry into the loss of the Sydney was why she’d come in range. Sydney’s guns outranged Kormoran, and if the raider had been identified, it would have been a very brief fight.

As it was, Sydney did sink Kormoran anyway, but the general view was that she must have received a critical hit from the raider.

Conspiracy theories were many, including the more dramatic version, that Sydney was sunk by a Japanese submarine, (this was November 1941, prior to Pearl Harbor) and her survivors machine gunned to prevent news of the Japanese presence. That’s never been proven.

Another theory, which isn’t very popular with families of the crew, is that the Department of Defence knew where Sydney was, and said nothing. That theory’s just never been very plausible, but it’s done its bit to make things tougher for the families.

After the war, people literally spent decades looking for the Sydney. It took modern sonar, deepwater submersibles, and 66 years to find her. It was the biggest single naval loss of the war, and historians have been trying to piece the story together for that long.

The ship is in very deep water, nearly 2500 metres, and it’s likely it will be declared a war grave.

This was such big news that the find was announced by the Prime Minister.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

"He said the Federal Government hoped the find would bring some closure for the families of the 645 sailors who went down with the ship.

He said the Australian Defence Force would be communicating with family members.

"They will be using their own communications systems to make sure that the surviving family members of the crew of HMAS Sydney are informed of this discovery as soon as is practically possible," the Prime Minister said.

Asked whether the wreck would be disturbed now that it had been discovered, Mr Rudd said: "It's very important to understand that this is a tomb and there are 645 Australian sailors entombed there.""

That won’t stop a lot of intensive investigation of the causes of the sinking.

Interestingly, the Sydney’s wreck is only 22 kilometres from Kormoran, and visibility was supposed to have been good at the time of the battle. The whole story, and all the historical information, will have to be re-examined, from scratch.

The hull, for instance, is in one piece, which would seem to rule out an explosion, but high explosives are tricky things to predict. The blast from a magazine can wipe out a ship.

There’s a lot to learn, and there’ll be no lack of effort.