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Answers due on WWII mystery
Canberra—A remote-controlled submarine scouring the shipwrecked
remains of an Australian warship has revealed new clues to a World
War II battle that cost more than 700 lives. But the mystery
persists: What caused Australia’s worst maritime tragedy?
Did a well-aimed German torpedo sink the pride of the Australian
navy? Or was it a catastrophic explosion in the ship’s ammunition
storage area that ensured that none of its 645 crew would survive?
Part of the puzzle was solved last month when a sonar search led by
American shipwreck hunter David Mearns found the wrecks of battle
cruiser HMAS Sydney and, nearby, Germany’s converted freighter HSK
Kormoran.
Both vessels sank after the Nov. 19, 1941 battle, and previous
attempts to find them proved fruitless.
Until now, the official record of the battle has been based on the
accounts of German survivors who were captured as they drifted
toward Australia in lifeboats.
The Sydney spotted the Kormoran as it was prowling for Allied
merchant ships to sink, about 500 miles north of Perth. The
Australian vessel moved to intercept the suspicious ship and
demanded that it identify itself. The Kormoran hedged, raising flags
that claimed it was a Dutch trader and sending misleading radio
signals.
All the while, the Sydney was being drawn closer until it eventually
lost the advantage of having longer-range weapons.
German survivors said the Kormoran eventually dropped the artifice,
raised its German ensign and opened fire when the ships were within
a mile of each other.
Crews engaged in a furious exchange of naval artillery, torpedo and
machine-gun fire for about half an hour, though Australia’s official
history says both ships were probably irreparably damaged in the
first five minutes.
As they took to lifeboats and set off charges to scuttle their
vessel around midnight, the Germans later described seeing the glow
of fires aboard the Sydney as it drifted about 10 miles away.
For years, the Germans’ account of the battle was viewed with
suspicion and left important questions unanswered. Among them: If
the Australian ship was able to limp away — aflame, but afloat — why
was there no sign lifeboats were launched?
The first photos transmitted from the wreck show the Sydney’s
turrets still trained to its port side as they were when the
Kormoran was in their sights.
All the cradles where the lifeboats once hung were empty.
Naval historian David Stevens said this does not mean the crew
abandoned ship. The boats were tied to the upper decks and would
likely have come loose as the ship sank. “They’re the sort of stuff
that gets really damaged when your upper deck is getting shot to
pieces,” Stevens said.
As the Germans said, the top of a gun turret was blown overboard by
gunfire. One photo shows a hole blasted by a direct hit between its
twin guns.
The Sydney’s bridge section had clearly taken the brunt of the
Kormoran’s heavy gun barrage and an 80-foot section of the bow had
snapped off around where the Germans recalled a torpedo struck with
devastating effect.
“All you can say so far is that the Germans’ descriptions are very
accurate,” Stevens said after seeing the initial pictures and
searchers’ reports.
Searchers have suspected since seeing high-resolution sonar images
of the wreck last month that a torpedo weakened the hull and caused
the bow to snap off, ultimately sinking the ship.
Another theory offered to explain the total loss of life is that the
burning ship’s ammunition storage area erupted in a catastrophic
explosion.
The Sydney’s fate has captured Australian imaginations for
generations, and the hulk’s discovery, announced by Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd, led news bulletins and was splashed on front pages
nationwide.
The sinking has fueled conspiracy theories — including one, denied
by the Germans, that Australian survivors in the water were shot to
death. And it has occasionally thrown up tantalizing clues.
On Feb. 6, 1942, a decomposed body with a shrapnel head wound was
found washed ashore in a lifeboat on Christmas Island, 1,100 miles
north of the wreck.
The Australian navy found the unmarked grave in 2006 and have used
DNA and dental records to try to identify the body. Although
authorities are almost certain he was a Sydney sailor, they have so
far excluded more than 500 of the crew without finding a match.
The government, which has spent $3.9 million on the search, has
appointed a retired judge to hold an inquiry into the new evidence.
The loss of the Sydney stunned Australia and the government banned
all media from reporting the news for 12 days as it scrambled to
explain what happened.
Most of the 397-man German crew survived, plucked from the ocean by
Allied warships and tankers or reaching the Australian coast in
lifeboats.
The German captain, Theodora Detmers, maintained that, in accordance
with the rules of war, his ship dropped its disguise and hoisted a
German navy ensign before firing the first shot.
It was Detmers’ account of the battle, inscribed using a simple code
in a German-English dictionary while he was a prisoner of war, that
proved crucial to locating the wreck of the Sydney. He penciled tiny
dots beneath letters, spelling out a few words on each page.
“We wouldn’t have found the wrecks as quickly as we did without
these documents,” Mearns told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “They
were very, very accurate.”
But some elements of the mystery are sure to endure. “Did the
Germans machine gun people in the water? Did they raise their flag
before opening fire? We’re never going to answer those questions,”
said Jeremy Green, chief maritime archaeologist at the Western
Australian Museum.—AP
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