The Life and Death of HMAS Sydney (II): Part 4

November 18, 2021

First of all, I just want to take the moment to thank everyone at Team Fusion Simulations for all of their hard work these past years in improving the game and the effort spent making Desert Wings-Tobruk and all the post-release patches, and I look forward to the Visual Update and what you have planned for your next installment. @Buzzsaw, I want to thank Team Fusion for including the Leander-class light cruiser in Desert Wings-Tobruk as this series would not have been possible without that ship... even though HMAS Sydney was a modified-Leander class. Lastly, I want to thank @Jason_Williams for all you have done for TFS as this series also would not have been possible without you.

Anyway, onto Part 4:

Today in Australia is November 19th, which means that it is exactly 80 years since the final battle and loss of HMAS Sydney (II) and in this part we will explore this battle.

The day of November 19th was a good one: the sky was clear, which provided unlimited visibility, and the swells were light. Just before 1600 that afternoon, the 2 ships met in Shark Bay, 200 km off the Western Australian coast. Kormoran was now disguised as the Dutch freighter, Straat Malakka. Kormoran, heading north, sighted what at first appeared to be a tall sailing vessel over 15 km away off her port bow. But then the crew realized that it was a warship and turned to port, increasing speed to 14 knots. An alarm sounded which indicated to the crew to man their guns. Sydney, heading south, turned to starboard and followed Kormoran which they believed was an Allied ship. Captain Detmers knew that Sydney was his enemy, but Captain Burnett may not have known that the freighter was an enemy. Sydney signaled via searchlight “ You should make your signal letters”. This was a code that was given to all Allied supply ships, which the crew of Kormoran did not understand because German ships were not given these codes. Sydney then signalled “ Make your signal letters clear”. Kormoran then signalled that they were the Dutch freighter, Straat Malakka, a ship which Captain Burnett was quite familiar with but was not on the list of ships that were to be in the area. Dutch supply ships had been issued these codes only three months prior on June 1st so it’s likely that the delay in giving their code was understandable to Sydney’s bridge officers. Sydney then radioed “Where bound?”; Kormoran replied “Batavia”. At 1703, Detmers sent a wireless message that he was being pursued by a raider in an attempt to make Sydney go away. Captain Burnett made a fatal error that sealed the fate of Sydney: inexplicably, he was approaching ~1,300 meters of a ship without being 100% sure that this was an Allied ship. By approaching this close to Kormoran, Sydney lost the advantage of her speed and long-range firepower against the enemy ship. The reasons for Sydney's close approach to Kormoran is a question that will likely remain unknown. Some people, including that of former Sydney crewman Alistair Templeton would state that Burnett was an incompetent Captain as Sydney was the first ship he Captained and he was not qualified to command Sydney. Others have suggested that Burnett got close so he could launch a boarding party.

Sydney trains her guns on Kormoran

According to Kormoran’s crew, Sydney had her main turrets and port torpedo tubes aimed at Kormoran and her crew appeared to be at battle/action stations. But then the crew appeared to have been relaxed from duty as there was now movement on deck and they could see the crew and the cooks and stewards (some have proposed that cooks and stewards were really ammunition men, who also wore white uniforms) standing out on the deck enjoying the sight of another ship out there or trying to see what kind of ship it was. They could also see that the secondary guns were not manned. Leutenant Heinz Messerschmidt saw men walking very slowly and a lot of Sydney's bridge officers in white caps looking very relaxed. To them it meant that Sydney was no longer at battle/action stations and the rest of the crew were below deck having dinner. Kormoran’s crew stated that Sydney was preparing to launch the Walrus aircraft, possibly to confirm the identity of the freighter, and the Walrus’ engine was started and running. But at 1725, Sydney’s crew likely concluded that the distance between them and the freighter was too close and the engine was shut down and the catapult was swung into the stowed position.

As Sydney got ever closer to Kormoran, Captain Detmers knew that barring a miracle, the crew of the Australian cruiser would discover the real identity of his ship and a direct hit from Sydney would almost instantaneously doom Kormoran due to the total lack of armor, unlike Sydney. In the over 60 minutes since sighting Sydney, Detmers pre-planned where his guns would strike Sydney if they had to engage to minimize the potential damage and casualties from the armament of a light cruiser … and if they had to engage it would be their finest hour.

At 1730, HMAS Sydney had sailed completely parallel to Kormoran and was well within the range of all her hidden starboard guns… literally point blank range. At that moment Sydney signalled “IK” part of Straat Malakka’s secret code. With no response Sydney signalled “Show your secret sign”. Not knowing this code, Detmers knew that he couldn’t fool Sydney any longer. He gave the order to lower the Dutch flag and raise the German flag. Within 10 seconds the German flag went up the mast and was clearly flying, giving them legal authority to fire on Sydney; alarms on Sydney would have sounded at this moment. The hatches hiding the guns on Kormoran flipped up and 12 seconds after the order to de-camouflage was given, Kormoran opened fire. The first salvo fell short, but the gunners quickly adjusted. The next salvo destroyed Sydney’s bridge and gunnery control tower, probably killing Captain Burnett and the officers in the bridge. With the loss of these two critical components, the brain of Sydney had effectively been taken out.

The brain of Sydney has been taken out

Instantly, Sydney fired in anger for the first time in almost a year: a full salvo (all of Sydney's main turrets fired at roughly the same time) which passed over Kormoran. Kormoran then fired 2 torpedoes with an estimated 65 seconds before they hit. Captain Detmers and CPO Otto Jurgensen would state that Sydney fired 2 torpedoes at Kormoran from her port torpedo launcher which missed; the wreck confirms as accurate. The distance between the two ships was so close that Kormoran’s anti-aircraft guns were then used to rake Sydney’s decks and Kormoran’s crew said that many men on Sydney were running across the decks to their guns or had just come up from the decks below and many of them were hit by the machine gun fire. Another consequence of the close distance was that Kormoran’s crew could hear the crying of Sydney’s crew. Kormoran’s salvoes were very accurate; the next salvoes knocked out the forward turrets A and B before they could fire a second time and hit Sydney amidships: one of which struck the forward engine room while the other destroyed the Walrus seaplane and poured fire out along the decks in front of the secondary guns and port torpedo tubes, crippling Sydney’s ability to strike back.

A and B turrets out, crew machine gunned, fires rage amidships on Sydney

Sydney’s rear turrets X and Y then opened fire once again. Y fired a few shots which missed high, but X fired multiple shots that struck Kormoran’s funnel and engine room, setting her ablaze amidships and destroying her firefighting equipment.

Then at 1733, one of the torpedoes struck the port bow of Sydney in front of A turret, the weakest point on the ship and also where the sonar room was located (the other torpedo passed in front of Sydney).

Torpedo hits Sydney (please note this was a very difficult scene to do and the fires were still raging on the bridge and amidships).

The bow sank very deep into the water (fires are corrected in this scene).

Sydney then turned to port on what appeared was an attempt to ram Kormoran (during the turn, Kormoran fired her 10th salvo which destroyed the housing for A turret and blew off the roof of B turret), but she turned past Kormoran’s stern heading for the coast.

Sydney turns towards Kormoran (please note the fires on Kormoran should be a bit more aft but since this happened by chance, I kept it).

The rear turrets had jammed facing port and couldn’t be swung around. Kormoran’s stern gun and AA guns were firing at Sydney’s hull. Men on Sydney briefly opened fire with smaller guns on her starboard side. Captain Detmers then turned Kormoran to port to bring all of his port guns to bear on Sydney.

At 1735, less than five minutes after the first shots were fired, HMAS Sydney was heading on a course of ~135* to the nearest land 200 km away, gradually slowing down till she was travelling at ~4km/h, she was down by the bow with waves just feet from the forward deck and burning fiercely from bow to stern. She appeared to be under limited control after the battle. Kormoran continued firing until 1750 when Sydney was at a distance of 10km: out of range of her guns. More than 500 armor-piercing and high explosive shells were fired at Sydney, 87 of which had struck her, embedding ~200,000 fragments of hot steel into the Pride of the Australian Navy. It was estimated that 70% (450) of her crew were killed in battle. At 1745 Sydney fired a torpedo at Kormoran from the starboard torpedo launcher, but Kormoran turned to port and it missed. During the turn, Kormoran’s engine had stopped and she was dead in the water. A torpedo was fired by Kormoran from her port-underwater torpedo tube at 1800 which passed astern of Sydney. By this point both ships were heavily damaged and wreathed in flames.

Onboard Kormoran, ~380 of her crew remained alive with ~20 being killed in the battle. Captain Detmers then made preparations to abandon ship as the fires below deck couldn’t be controlled due to the fire-fighting equipment being knocked out in the battle. Fearing the mines would explode, the men got into the lifeboats and liferafts and set scuttling charges; Detmers was the last one to leave. During the evacuation a rubber boat carrying 60 people, mostly injured sailors, quickly sank and only three were rescued. At 1230am, 30 minutes after being abandoned, the mine deck exploded and she quickly sank. They could see the glow of the fires on Sydney for many hours until around 22:00 and on occasion until midnight when she disappeared.

Kormoran on fire and being abandoned. The glow of Sydney's fires can still be seen on the right.

The end of Kormoran

At some point later Sydney sank, all was blackness. There are no accounts of what transpired on Sydney as she desperately limped towards the coast, but that night on Sydney had to be absolutely hell for the surviving crew: hundreds of her crew killed, incapacitated, or trapped below decks and unable to escape, fires on the ship that is the Pride of the nation, especially amidships, raging from bow to stern, corpses of their crewmates, their close friends, littered the decks, quite likely some being dismembered and others resembling burnt or butchered meat. Surviving crew were likely gathered near the stern, the relatively undamaged part of the ship. Those who were alive but injured were probably being given whatever medical aid they could in this situation, damage control teams were likely trying to fight the fires, if able, or doing whatever they could to save their ship or to remain afloat for as long as possible. There may have been attempts to prepare the lifeboats, but with the raging fires where the lifeboats would have been stored this would have been extremely difficult. Before the wrecks of the two ships were located in 2008, people believed that the magazines on Sydney had exploded or she quickly capsized: both would have led to very few survivors. In reality it was discovered that the bow, which had been damaged by the torpedo strike and weakened by the increasing winds and swells, broke off, causing rapid flooding. She would have remained afloat for up to 2 minutes before disappearing under the waves all together.

The end of HMAS Sydney (II): the Pride and Darling of the RAN (the image was set earlier in the evening so parts of the ship and the fires could still be seen).

The main section of Sydney glided upright for 500 meters before hitting the seabed stern first. If some men on Sydney did make it off as she sank they most likely have been affected by injuries sustained in the battle, as well as burns and smoke inhalation. There likely would have been very few survivors who were unscathed by the battle, raging fires and inhalation of toxic gases. Analysis of the wreck would indicate that 5 of her 9 lifeboats went down with Sydney, while for two of the four that weren’t found, the davits were destroyed, so it is possible that these remaining two did get off Sydney only to later sink. Lifeboats are meant for long-term survival at sea as they carry provisions, medical aid, freshwater, saltwater converters, signal lights, etc. while life rafts carry none of that and are meant for short term survival. Lifejackets at the time did not provide head support so if any surviving crewmen fell asleep then they could drown. There also would have been sharks in the water which are attracted by blood; a number of Kormoran survivors witnessed hundreds of sharks in the water in the hours after the battle and before they were rescued. For any survivors of Sydney, they needed to be rescued within 24 hours, especially those who needed urgent medical attention. Little did any of these survivors know that it would be four days before a search and rescue operation for Sydney would be launched.

Part 5 available here: https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/75446-the-life-and-death-of-hmas-sydney-ii-part-5/

Part 3 available here: The Life and Death of HMAS Sydney (II): Part 3 - Screenshots - IL-2 Sturmovik Forum (il2sturmovik.com)

Enceladus

:salute: