The Life and Death of HMAS Sydney (II): Part 3

[Enceladus828]

On November 17th, Sydney and Zealandia arrived at Sunda Strait and met up with the cruiser HMS Durban for the next leg to Singapore. Sydney sailed back to Fremantle with an arrival date of the late afternoon of November 20th. As Sydney sailed away, nobody onboard Zealandia or Durban knew that they would be the last allied personnel to see HMAS Sydney and her crew.

Sydney and Zealandia meet with HMS Durban. The 1936 German destroyer was used as a placeholder for the Dinae class light cruiser

 

HMS Durban

 

Unknown to Captain Burnett, a German raider, HSK Kormoran, under the command of Theodor Detmers, was sailing in the area to place over 300 sea mines off the Western Australian coast. She was the same ship that HMAS Yandra had encountered off Rottnest Island in October.

Captain Theodor Detmers

Her compliment consisted of 399 men: 36 officers, 359 sailors and 4 Chinese laundry men. Kormoran, originally named Steiermark, was built in 1938 in Kiel, Germany for the Hamburg Amerika Line and was intended to sail on the East Asia run. However, when war broke out in 1939, she was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine and converted into a raider in 1940 and renamed Kormoran. Kormoran was 515 feet long and following her conversion, displaced almost 9,000 tons, and was armed with six 5.9 inch guns (one of which was from the SMS Seydlitz), two 37mm anti-tank guns, five 20mm anti-aircraft guns, and six 21 inch torpedo tubes: two tubes above the waterline on each side and one underwater torpedo tube on each side that could only be fired if stationary or at a very slow speed; 24 torpedoes could also be carried, and she could carry two Arado 196 seaplanes. She was the largest and most heavily armed raider in the Kriegsmarine and was known to the Allies as "Raider G".

Kormoran in 1940.

Kormoran was commissioned in October 1940 and departed Kiel that December and sailed through the Denmark Strait into the Atlantic and later the Indian Ocean. She would be resupplied by resupply ships. In the almost 12 months that she would be at sea Kormoran took on several different disguises and sank 10 supply ships from January to September 1941 and in March captured the Canadian oil tanker, Canadolite, which was then renamed Sudetenland was sunk by RAF bombers at Brest in 1944.

 

Kormoran enages Canadolite. Please note that because there is no Victory or Liberty class ship in the game and the other freighters were too small, the German tanker was deemed the best choice for Kormoran.

Kormoran captures Canadolite

 

Detmers had planned to mine the shipping lanes near Cape Leeuwen but after intercepting a radio transmission from the HMAS Canberra, instead decided to sail further north and mine the shipping lanes off Shark Bay, approximately 150 nautical miles southwest of Carnarvon. After that they would head for the Bay of Bengal before returning to Germany in early 1942.

 

Stay tuned for 22:00 UTC on November 18th for Part 4: the climax of this series. Hopefully our Australian community don't mind getting up early in the morning to see this.

Part 4 available here: The Life and Death of HMAS Sydney (II): Part 4 - Screenshots - IL-2 Sturmovik Forum (il2sturmovik.com)

 

Part 2 here: The Life and Death of HMAS Sydney (II): Part 2 - Screenshots - IL-2 Sturmovik Forum (il2sturmovik.com)

 

Enceladus.

Edited November 18, 2021 by Enceladus

[BladeMeister]

Nice work Enceladus!

 

S!Blade<><