HMAS Sydney 1934-1941
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HMAS Sydney 1934-1941 Sources J. Collins, HMAS Sydney, The Naval Historical Society of Australia, 1971. T. Frame, HMAS Sydney, Loss and Controversy, 1998, (paperback ed.). R. Summerrell, The Sinking of HMAS Sydney. A Guide to Commonwealth Government Records, 1999. Parliamentary Inquiry, Report on the Loss of HMAS Sydney, 1999. W. Olson, Bitter Victory. The Death of HMAS Sydney, 2000. ______________________ HMAS Sydney - The Pride of the Fleet Launched in September 1934 from the Wallsend-on-Tyne shipyard, Sydney was a light cruiser of the modified Leander (or Perth) class. The Leander class cruisers were built to a basic late 1920s design.1 Modifications saw the installation of two separate machinery units rather than one, so reducing the possibility of a complete power failure, with each unit having its own funnel. Her armament was eight 6-inch guns (in four turrets), four 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, four 3-pounder saluting guns, three 4-barrel 0.5-inch machine guns and eight 21-inch torpedo tubes. Some of the modifications could be seen as compromising the ship’s battle worthiness. Weight was saved (so enhancing its speed) by only protecting the area between the funnels with armour. A pre-war captain, J. Waller, told the Naval Board that the primary gun control systems were ‘extremely vulnerable to gunfire and bombs, even of small calibre’.2 The fear was that a well-directed or lucky hit could knock out the main armament’s central control. The fire-control system was not however altered. Sydney served with distinction in the Mediterranean in 1940 under Captain John Collins. In the Battle of Cape Spada she sunk the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni. Returning to Sydney in February 1941 the ship’s crew were formally welcomed at Sydney Cove by the Governor General and top naval personnel, after which they marched through packed streets to the Town Hall. The crowd was estimated at 250,000.3 In May 1941 Captain Joseph Burnett assumed command and the ship was employed on convoy escort work in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans. On 11 November Sydney left Fremantle with the troopship Zealandia, taking nearly 1000 ill-fated reinforcements to Singapore. She transferred charge of Zealandia in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra on 17 November, and then returned to Fremantle. In the afternoon of 19 November she diverted course to interrogate a suspect ship, the disguised raider Kormoran. The Kormoran was well-armed with six 5.9-inch guns, five 2cm anti-aircraft guns, two 3.7cm anti-aircraft guns, and six torpedo tubes, two of which were submerged. 1 Frame, p.15. 2 Frame, p.18. 3 Frame, p.26. HMAS Sydney’s Last Engagement The events of 19 November 1941 have been dealt with in many books and articles. The key factor in the controversy is that the absence of Australian survivors meant the engagement could only be told from the German perspective. This and the fact that the cruiser should, in theory, have won the engagement, has led to theories to explain the loss, such as a Japanese submarine was in the vicinity and torpedoed the Sydney and the survivors were then machine-gunned in the water by the Japanese and/or the Germans, and that the Germans opened fire without hoisting their true colours. The official war historian George Gill largely accepted the German account - Burnett challenged the suspect ship by flag and light messages but let his ship come within 1500 yards of the Dutch-flagged Kormoran. Upon being asked for her secret identification letters, the German captain Theodor Detmers gave the orders to strike the Dutch flags, uncover the guns and open fire. The first shots ranged short or went over but then hits were scored on Sydney’s bridge and gunnery director tower.4 Shortly afterwards the Sydney was torpedoed under the front (A and B) turrets. Gill felt that that Burnett’s reason for placing Sydney so close to the raider ‘must remain conjecture’.5 In 1971, the Sydney’s ex-captain John Collins, in his monograph on the ship he had captained in the Mediterranean, quotes Gill’s official history as to Sydney’s last encounter. He commented that, ‘It seems nothing more will ever be known of the action’.6 Frame sees the most likely explanation for the Sydney to be so close to Kormoran was to launch a boarding party and that the German ship was advised of this at the time, prompting her to drop her disguise. This act of boarding probably indicates that Burnett thought he had intercepted a German supply ship that he wanted to stop being scuttled.7 The most detailed and considered account of the battle is found in Olson’s book. Despite Frame’s assertion that ‘we will never know how it really was’, and ‘that nothing more could be reasonably concluded’, Olson looked at the evidence of the engagement in a more complete and systematic way than Frame. He found that Burnett approached the Kormoran in more careful and circuitous manner than previously thought, while the suspect ship was being interrogated. Again evidence is found to suggest a boat was in the process of being lowered and that Burnett thought he had come across a German supply ship, which he was attempting to capture in line with then current orders.8 The ship’s plane was observed with its engines running but then shutting down as the Sydney approached. If Burnett thought he had caught a supply vessel then he may have wanted to keep the plane ready to search for its raider.9 The German guns, once firing started, were directed against the Sydney’s bridge and gunnery control towers and, at point blank range, against those attempting to man the torpedo tubes and 4-inch guns, the latter not fitted with shields.10 Then with a torpedo exploding under A and B turrets, Sydney’s fire superiority was lost and the ship was exposed to damaging shellfire. In the course of the engagement Sydney steered towards Kormoran, as if to ram, but passed behind it, exposing its starboard side to Kormoran’s guns. 4 Frame, p.148. 5 Frame, p.149. 6 Collins, p.43. 7 Frame, p.217. 8 Olson, p.357. 9 Olson, p.209. 10 Olson, p.355. The Parliamentary enquiry concluded that it was common practice for warships to close with unidentified ships in order to identify them and to prevent scuttling.11 Burnett’s mistake was that in following orders in trying to capture enemy shipping, he closed with an enemy raider which would not surrender without a fight. Burnett was presumably lulled by the raider’s disguise and by the fact that there was no sign of its guns. The crippled Sydney managed to steam away from the badly damaged Kormoran. Burning forward and amidships and down by the bows, the cruiser was last seen as a glow on the horizon shortly after midnight. No final explosion was heard. The Search for the Sydney Under radio silence, the Sydney did not report its sighting of the suspect vessel and did not or was not able to radio for help afterwards. It was expected to return to Fremantle on the afternoon of 20 November. On 23 November the ship was ordered to break radio silence and the first searches were conducted on the morning of 24 November. Air and sea searches were then made until 29 November. Five boatloads of Kormoran survivors were sighted, including a small amount of Kormoran-related debris but the only Sydney items found were a life-belt and a Carley float. News of the engagement was deliberately kept from the press and the Prime Minister made the first public announcement on 1 December, merely confirming the rumour that the Sydney had been sunk. This silence, which continued even after the war, along with other factors such as the number of German survivors and rumours of Sydney crew being held prisoner in Japan, led some to suspect that the Government was withholding information. The official records would indicate that the government’s official silence was due to its own inability to explain the Sydney’s loss.12 Assuming the air and sea searches covered the spot where the Sydney was finally abandoned or exploded, the delay of over four full days before air searches first began meant that any men in the sea in lifebelts are unlikely to have survived. The absence of debris might indicate that the Sydney managed to sail out of the main area later searched. The damage inflicted by Kormoran and the resultant fires may have meant that there were no serviceable life rafts or boats when the order to abandon ship was finally given. The recovered Carley float may have been blown overboard during the course of the engagement. If the fires reached ammunition magazines the resultant explosion might have left few survivors. No Survivors According to Detmers’ action report, the action lasted from 1730 hrs to 1825 hrs. Up until 1750 Detmers recorded the Sydney being constantly hit, after which sporadic hits were likely as the distance between the vessels grew wider. At 1750 the Sydney was on fire from the bridge to after funnel.13 The Sydney’s plane was situated above the location where most of the ship’s timber boats were stored and in the vicinity of the four-inch guns.14 Its destruction early in the engagement would have caused flaming petrol to spill onto the area occupied by these boats and gun crews. Some of the Carley floats were also stored in this location although others were stored at the rear of the ship.15 Added to these flammable 11 Parliamentary Inquiry, p.48.