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 rabid stoat AUS |
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Posts: 72 ( 4-Apr-2008 09:34:26) |
The news article:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23482870-5005961,00.html and the pictures: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/gallery/0,22010,5030764-5006020,00.html |
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jim3au |
Missing Lifeboats | ||
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Posts: 1409 ( 5-Apr-2008 13:58:34) |
The photographs are remarkable. The ship looks so freshly sunk.
The decking does not show evidence of the fires that were said to be raging from one end of the boat to the other. The ship appears to have hit the bottom surprisingly gently. Some "experts" are stating that at some stage hundreds of men would have left the ship and been alive and in the water whether swimming or in boats. The absence of the lifeboats has upset some of the relatives of the Sydney crew. Even with the terrific preservation of the ship, we probably will not be any the wiser about the final hours of the crew but there are further investigations of the debris field to be done and I hope that they have a good look at Kormoran too. I was surprised that they are having another inquiry into the circumstances of the sinking of Sydney but on reflection it is possibly necessary and probably a good idea. |
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CVA02 |
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Posts: 362 ( 5-Apr-2008 20:41:30) |
Michael ODonnell wrote: Kormoran was lost due to an engine room fire, largely due to a design flaw common to German motorships of the era. Kormoran was not the only German merchant raider lost to an engine room fire, but she was unique in being the only one that ever managed to sink an Allied cruiser in return. The loss of a cruiser with all hands was an unequal exchange for a converted merchant ship which suffer a minimal loss of life in return. |
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CVA02 |
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Posts: 363 ( 5-Apr-2008 20:57:38) |
jim3au wrote: No doubt, memories of wartime propaganda, with entirely spurious claims that a Japanese submarine machine gunned the crew of the Sydney, served to distress "the relatives of the Sydney" crew more than the wreck photos. HMAS Sydney had received large volumes of 20mm fire to the superstructure at close range, making it almost certain that boats, rafts and life saving gear would have been damaged or destroyed before any attempt was made to abandon ship. With the poor leadership at the beginning of the engagement, and massive damage to bridge early on, it is questionable whether Sydney would have been efficiently evacuated in any case. Lastly, there is the issue of distance and weather. Heavy seas resulted in a German lifeboat capsizing, with 40 Germans being lost to the sea as compared to only 20 killed during the engagement, and both ships were at least 150km from land, so even if were survivors from Sydney, they might have died in the water in any case.
Last Edited By: CVA02
5-Apr-2008 21:01:50.
Edited 1 times.
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jim3au |
Kormoran Damage | ||
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Posts: 1410 ( 5-Apr-2008 22:58:35) |
According to the crew of the Kormoran, she took very few hits during the engagement but the one six inch hit she took was to the engine room. The damage was
supposed to be irreparable. Some stories have it starting an engine room fire that they cannot control.
Some accounts that I have read have Kormoran firing hundreds of rounds [300] of 5.9 inch at Sydney. I have wondered at the time of reading that account why there was anything left of Sydney. Previous engagements had proved that Kormoran's gunnery was pretty good. |
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jim3au |
Propaganda | ||
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Posts: 1411 ( 5-Apr-2008 23:57:44) |
One common thread to relatives' suspicions and doubts is that they do not trust the Government. They do not think that the Government was frank at the time
and they are probably correct. More than the Japanese, it is the Australian Government that they blame and mistrust. Many believe that someone in Government
knew what happened and just kept it quiet.
Some of the stories that I have heard [and I know that they have been refuted or are unlikely] include the following. Sydney is sent out with missing or non-functioning equipment. Most recently it was in the papers about a gun mount that could not be properly trained. I have heard of aircraft, radios and ships boats. The Government did not allow the search to start soon enough or and did not disclose the correct location. This is often associated with the stories of the intervention of a Japanese submarine. The Government sent a green crew out with a green captain. This is pretty tough to refute because they lost the ship but ... The Government knew what Burnett was told that caused him to approach the ship because they told him. When I say government, I include the highest levels of the military. In my view, if there was a conspiracy it was most likely amongst the German crew. As a raider, they were always close to breaking the rules of war. They were foolishly imprisoned together so that they could get their stories straight so the early interrogations were simply inadequate. They could have had common cause for keeping quiet. If something wrong was done it most likely had few people who knew, at least in the beginning. It would have had to do with signals and communications that only a few on the bridge of Kormoran were aware of and the rest of the crew would have had no first hand knowledge. I think that it was suspicious that they did not appear to leave the ship together. I think that it was suspicious that the exact location of the Kormoran wreck, as provided by relatives of the German crew, was not well known and established at the earliest stages of any inquiry. It seems to me that the most likely reason for Burnett to approach the Kormoran as he did was to lower a boat or boats. It seems to me that he made the mistake of believing that Kormoran was stopped dead in the water and drifting when she still had way and that allowed her to position herself to maximum advantage. Whatever the signals given by Kormoran made Burnett sufficiently sure of himself that he hazarded his command. An old soldier that I know said that whenever Collins approached a suspect ship he always fired a six inch gun to wake up his crew as much as to intimidate any possible enemy. Burnett did not. |
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Mark E Horan |
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Posts: 349 ( 6-Apr-2008 02:08:40) |
Gents;
Some random thoughts about the information avaialble thus far and the photos that have been posted. For the record, I don't believe for a second that Detmer's raised the white flag or open fire with any weapons without the German Battle Ensign flying. Given her mission to sink merchant ships, Kormoran was clearly stocked with mostly HE ammunition. What little SAP was available would assuredly have been fired first. The damage to the bridge and especially the dramatic shell hole in "B" turret and the explosive removal of the port side turret top (right in front of the already devastated bridge, BTW), all clearly penetrated. Combined with the torpedo hit under "A" turret, and the fact that the bridge was Detmer's designated target for his 3,7 cm flak guns, I can't imagine that there were many, if any, able bodied survivors forward after the first couple of minutes of the action - something that is immensely sobering given the number of men stationed there. Even HMS Victory's famous double-shotted with grape broadside into Orient's stern at the Nile didn't exceed the hellish destruction Sydney shows. Further, the shell hits photographed thus far show a remarkable accuracy, even for close range - they are well clustered and dead center in the key targets. Detmer's crew definitely "came on" with their "A game" that day. Clearly those past comments bandied about Kormoran "just" being an auxiliary cruiser with cast off guns would not have been put forward by anyone on Sydney. Detmers' account (IMO, substantiated thus far entirely) noted the bridge, "B" turret, and the surrounding structure taken out by 15 cm shells in the first 10 salvos (which, BTW, were all fired within two minutes of the first shots), the bow ruptured by the torpedo hit which surely took out "A" turret, maybe "B" (if the 15 cm shells hadn't done so already - when that shell penetrated in relation to the torpedo hit is not clear to me from the accounts I've read), the 3,7 cm & 2 cm flak concentrating on and taking out the bridge and AA guns, and about the time "B" turret went up the ship's Seagull, running on the catapult, was blown overboard, which ingnited a huge fire amidships. The photos show "A" turret entirely blown out, with the ruptured decking fragmented upwards around the guns. Combined with the damage described above, the resulting influx of water likely eliminated the forward damage control parties and left any survivors in the area cut off by the fires raging amidships. It is, im my opinion, likely that no damage control efforts were ever made forward. I wonder if the torpedo hit resulted in a fire in "A" turret that, unrestricted by any damage control efforts, cooked off the powder and shells in the gun housing, blew off the weakened bow section, fatally ruptured the forward bulkheads, and resulted in the ship sinking while those folks struggling to tackle the damage aft were oblivious of what was happening. In such a scenario, especially if those aft had assumed that there were survivors forward making similar efforts to save the ship, with all able bodied survivors tackling the fires consuming the ship, damn little effort could have been spared to prepare for abandoning the ship, and when the end came it is unlikely that anyone not topside at that moment would have been able to get off the ship and those that did would have been in no condition to survive any length of time in the water. Prior to all of this, however, even as their ship was being blown apart around them, the crew of "X" turret, firing on local control in what it would be an understatement to say were "less than ideal" conditions, did a hell of job htiing back at their foe - three (or four) hits would not appear to be many, but they did the trick. My hat is off to them... Mark E. Horan |
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bager1968 |
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Posts: 2880 ( 6-Apr-2008 07:14:13) |
After 66 years of immersion in salt water, and the marine growth that is evident (even though it is minimal, still it is there), it is not surprising that
there is no visual evidence of fire damage. Were you expecting soot and ashes?
Related to this is the question, were the lifeboats made of wood? I am under the impression that they were, so they would have been badly damaged by the fires, and the ropes holding them to the ship burned away, allowing their remains to float free when Sydney slipped under. |
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jim3au |
Magazine Going Up | ||
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Posts: 1413 ( 6-Apr-2008 09:10:45) |
Being completely ignorant, the forward magazine should have had plenty of ammunition and if it had gone up, I would have expected the ship to have sunk, what
was left of it, immediately.
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jim3au |
Soot and Ashes | ||
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Posts: 1414 ( 6-Apr-2008 09:27:15) |
Badger, I did not expect the ship to be in the excellent condition it is. I did not expect so many small fittings to still be there and recognizable. given
that there seems to have been no current much around the ship since it sank and no evidence of silt covering, actually, if there had been partially burnt wood
that sank with the ship, then I think that it could well still be where it sank and visible.
Parts of the apparatus for launching or retaining the boats is steel. I thought that I saw one of those in an open position. Slipped under the water is right. I had expected that fires reached a magazine and the ship was blown to small bits in an instant. Such is plainly not the case. More interesting to me still is the fact that the ship was not travelling fast laterally when she hit bottom. I would have expected the funnels and mast to be ripped off when she sank, but that appears to be down to Kormoran's work. I have only seen the pictures in the paper and a few on the internet. I would imagine that there are now many thousands more of far better definition available to the experts. The Government has launched an inquiry. I would hope and expect that these pictures and those of the Kormoran would be available to it |
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