Posted on 11/14/2021 11:11:46 PM PST by naturalman1975
The only body recovered after the nation's greatest maritime disaster has been identified 80 years after HMAS Sydney was sunk in a World War II naval battle.
All 645 officers and crew aboard the Sydney were lost when she was attacked during World War II by the German raider Kormoran off the coast of Western Australia.
The action on November 19, 1941 in which both vessels were sunk remains the most grievous loss in the history of the Royal Australian Navy.
The wrecks of HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran were not found until 2008, solving one great mystery, and now another has been solved by DNA technology.
Almost three months after HMAS Sydney went down, on February 6, 1942, the body of one of the light cruiser's sailors was found on a life raft at Christmas Island.
The sailor had suffered a shrapnel wound to the head but naval investigators were never able to identify his remains.
He was was white, believed to be aged between 20 and 30, and between 167cm and 187cm tall.
He was described as having blue eyes and blond, light brown or read hair and was wearing blue overalls, suggesting he was not an officer.
The sailor was originally buried on Christmas Island and exhumed in October 2006 to be reburied near Geraldton's Dome of Souls memorial to HMAS Sydney.
Before his remains were reinterred in November 2008 bone and dental samples were taken to extract DNA in a last bid to put a name to the unknown hero.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem
I thought I knew a lot about WWII. I never knew that the Germans used converted freighters as ‘raiders’.
Thanks for the post.
Since the DM article was derelict in detail, I searched and found this account of the battle, which reflects the conclusions of the 1999 inquiry into the Sydney’s sinking.
In never knew the Germans got anywhere near Australia.
Taken out by a German Q-Ship. I read about these as a child back in the 1950’s. Very Democrat. Very cowardly. Right out of the bottom of the disgusting dirty tricks bag.
Kormoran was but one of several armed merchant cruisers that Germany deployed in WWII. Exploits of the Atlantis was made into a movie. I’ve not seen it in some time, but IIRC it was reasonably authentic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_raider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_Ten_Flags
Germany had used raiders in WWI.
http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/MaraudersWW1/Raiders.html
It was the British who invented the Q ship back in WWI.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship
In the early part of the war, German subs would surface alongside a merchant ship and give the crew a chance to get to lifeboats before sinking it with their deck gun.
After some U-boats were sunk, the Germans started just torpedoing the ships.
How is this “..one of World War II’s greatest mysteries ..” ??
Doesn’t seem “mysterious” at all.
The identity of the only body found from a ship sunk with all hands.
That’s the mystery.
And until the wrecks were found a few years ago, there was the added mystery of how the Kormoran was able to so easily destroy a significantly superior ship.
The Germans sank about 18 ships in Australian waters during the course of the war.
That makes it “one of World War II’s greatest mysteries “ ?!?
Nearly everything today is hyperbole. What I really dislike are those insipid headlines how someone's reply "destroys" somebody else's argument and when you read it there is nothing more than a single, mundane tweet.
Yes. It is an incredible naval story. There is a great little museum in Geraldton where they have some displays.
In Australia, yes, it does. This is one of the most significant of Australian war stories and the identity of the body has been a big part of that.
And this article is from an Australian based news source.
Consider it this way.
HMAS Sydney was one of Australia’s most powerful warships, and one that had been very successful in the Mediterranean.
And it vanished virtually without trace. We knew what had happened to it, from the reports of the survivors of the Kormoran - but it was just gone. No wreckage, and just one liferaft with an unknown body on it, and one lifebelt. Nothing else.
Now can you get why in Australia, this has always been seen as something of a mystery? A big one?
And you’re going with that ?
As a retired officer of the Royal Australian Navy and a military historian, I actually do think this is a significant story. You are entirely free to believe otherwise if you wish.
A significant story, yes, but, if “We knew what happened to it ...” then how is it a great mystery ?
Is every ship/sub/aircraft lost without a trace similarly a “great mystery” ?
When it is the most famous ship in the entire country, yes.
And that is what HMAS Sydney was at the time. Because of her heroic service in the Mediterranean the year before.
A third of all Australian sailors lost during World War II were on that one ship.
I understand that an American has no particular reason to know anything about Australian history.
But in Australia, the loss of HMAS Sydney in World War II is seen as a major event.
It is one of the single most significant Australian war stories.
And aspects of it us seen as a mystery.
What we knew was it had been sunk.
The mysterious aspects were as to how it was lost without virtually any trace, without broadcasting any distress signals. A whole bunch of conspiracy theories grew up about it over the years - one of the most notable of which involved the possibility she was sunk by a Japanese submarine - three weeks before Pearl Harbour. We now know none of those conspiracy theories are true, but they were fed by the mystery and in turn they fed it.
Understand this didn’t happen in the middle of an ocean. It happened quite close to the coast of Western Australia. She was less than a day out of port.
And this headline was in an Australian news source, so it’s not a surprising one.
I'd like to know the answer to the question posed in that last paragraph, too.
Why did the Sydney approach an unknown vessel, forfeiting its superior range and firepower.
Lots of discussion here, with tons of citations to inquiries, books, articles, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_between_HMAS_Sydney_and_German_auxiliary_cruiser_Kormoran
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