HMAS Sydney, another heroic disaster

HMAS Sydney

News of the discovery of HMAS Sydney's wreck has started a bit of a flurry of historical revisionism, especially with regard to the events of the sinking by the German raider HSK Kormoran (Cormorant).

Luwig Ernst, a witness on board the Kormoran stated:

Mr Ernst accused Burnett and his officers of allowing themselves to be duped by a much smaller ship. "I observed Sydney's incompetent command structure from the moment Sydney appeared over the horizon and turned to pursue us," he said. "Whenever we came across an unidentified object, it was standard practice to fire a shot at 5000 metres across its bows. We on Kormoran were all expecting Sydney to do the same, but it never came … And that is Burnett's crime - he closed an unidentified ship to within 900 metres. When Sydney did ask us for our secret call signal, the only answer we had was our guns."

Mr Ernst said the Sydney's officers were sitting ducks on the bridge when the light cruiser was supposedly at action stations.

"The bridge was full of white caps … But what really enabled our survival was the incompetence of Sydney's gunnery officer. He fired a bracket, Sydney's first salvo going over us and the second falling short. At point-blank range you didn't need to do it."

SMH

The first part of his account is pretty awful. There is no reason whatsoever for a fast, heavily armed warship to approach to 900m of an unidentified ship, especially when that warship is on the look out for disguised raiders that pretend to be unarmed ships. That range is knife-fighting range for ships. The second part, that Sydney's officers were all on the bridge is possibly even worse. That suggests that at least some of those officers should have been somewhere else, supervising other duties on a ship that should have been at action stations but clearly wasn't. If other reports by Kormoran crew members are accurate, that probably contributed to the sinking. Kormoran fired at Sydney's bridge, probably killing or incapacitating most of it's officers. That would have had dire consequences for damage control. I have a feeling that there will be lots of open bulkheads on the wreck, meaning the Sydney wasn't ready for battle.

This brings us to the final part of Ernst's account, that Sydney bracketed the Kormoran. That means that as Sydney closed on the Kormoran the gun crews didn't update their firing solutions or even train their guns on the Kormoran. That means when the battle began, Sydney's initial salvo went over the Kormoran, while the Kormoran, negating Sydney's armour and fire control advantage with close range, was able to hit her several times with 6 inch guns and with 20mm AA guns which would have been devastating to the exposed bridge crew. That and a torpedo hit was what did Sydney in. It's likely that Sydney lost her ability to fight in the first few minutes of the battle with the loss of many officers.

The SMH article gives space to someone who suggests that the Kormoran pretended to surrender before opening fire, something not corroborated by any of the Kormoran survivors. It would seem strange that 320 men would maintain a conspiracy of silence for 67 years about something that would constitute a war crime. Secondly a surrendering ship should still be under the guns of the ship it is surrendering to. The crew of the Sydney were brave men who did their duty defending their country against some pretty steep odds. That they met their end as a result of an error in no way reduces the merit of their service. Rather than trying to rewrite their deaths as some sort of crazy conspiracy or devilish machination, we should recognise that those men died as the result of a series of mistakes. The biggest and first being the people of the belligerent nations allowing the war to happen in the first place. Instead their deaths will be used to glory in war by politicians and commentators.