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Aussie WW2 ship's tomb reveals the harsh truths of war
Reuters | Thursday, 20 March 2008

Is all really fair in love and war? It's one of a raft of ethical posers surfacing from the newly discovered wreck of HMAS Sydney, the warship at the heart of Australia's greatest maritime tragedy.

So shocking was the loss of all 645 crewmen, so little was known about their dying moments, and so much time – over 66 years – has elapsed that all manner of suspicions have filled the deep, dark void.

The circumstances of the Sydney's loss in 1941 have been clouded by the fact that there was not a single allied account of what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd this week called "the particularly bloody and brutal" encounter.

The sum of knowledge about HMAS Sydney's demise came from the 317 survivors from the German raider Kormoran, itself fatally wounded and scuttled hours after the battle.

That fund of knowledge will doubtless expand following this week's sensational discovery of both wrecks, an Australian equivalent of Tutankhamen's tomb.

But most, if not all, of those highly charged claims will probably remain unfounded.

They include allegations that a Japanese submarine may have helped the Germans sink the pride of the Australian fleet off the West Australian coast on November 19, 1941.

Further claims have it that Australian survivors were killed in the water by fanatical Nazis, that the German survivors lied to their captors and that the enemy had engaged in "criminal" behaviour.

An Australian parliamentary inquiry has already addressed all of these suspicions, and largely dismissed them.

The 1999 joint inquiry could find no justification for a criminal investigation into the deaths of the Sydney crew who, an awe-struck nation learned this week, lay in one of the most watery graves of all – on the floor of the Indian Ocean, some 100 nautical miles off the West Australia coast at a depth of almost 2.5km.

"The deaths occurred as a result of a wartime engagement, and no evidence was presented to the committee to suggest that any agencies or individuals acted in a 'criminal' manner," it concluded.

The Kormoran, it's true, was disguised as a Dutch merchant ship, the Straat Malakka.

But if soldiers can disguise themselves on the battlefield, why not ships at sea?

It's not as if the Kormoran was camouflaged as a Red Cross ship.

German survivors say the Sydney's captain, Joseph Burnett, allowed himself to be duped by the smaller and less powerful enemy raider.

Burnett could have blasted Kormoran out of the water from afar with his powerful six-inch guns, they say, but incompetence led him to approach fatally close, to within 1,000 metres.

The president of the Kormoran Survivors' Association, 89-year-old Ludwig Ernst, called that Capt Burnett's "crime" and blamed him for Sydney's loss.

Burnett's defenders, however, say the Sydney commander was reasonably entitled to believe the suspect ship might have been carrying allied prisoners of war, and refrained from firing to prevent hundreds of sailors being lost.

German captain Theodor Detmer told his allied interrogators that before opening fire with guns and deck torpedo he had decamouflaged and shown his battle flag.

But allegations persist that he used a "trick of war" by first firing a torpedo from an underwater tube, then firing as that torpedo struck home.

The positioning of the ships may help determine if this is so.

But in any case, there are those who argue that war is war and there is never such a thing as a "fair" fight.

The ships have certainly both been found pretty much where the Germans said they were.

For those wondering why it took 66 years to find them, the ocean is so vast and deep as to be barely comprehensible.

Searchers once famously remarked that the hunt for HMAS Sydney could not be compared to finding a needle in a haystack, because they had not yet found the haystack.

The Australian parliamentary inquiry found that despite years of questioning and cross-examination, the Kormoran's survivors maintained they told the truth.

"While the committee accepts that relatively few of those on board Kormoran would have known exactly what happened on 19 November 1941," it said, "the endurance of the German accounts over time lends weight to the survivors' recollection of events."

The inquiry also said claims that survivors from Sydney were killed in the water had proved unfounded.

An Australian War Memorial investigation of a Carley float recovered during the search for Sydney ruled out the possibility of the float having been damaged by machine gun fire.

The committee said there was "absolutely no evidence" to suggest a light speed boat was used to shadow survivors in the water and kill them.

"Continued claims of such behaviour, as with so many unfounded claims about the whole Sydney-Kormoran engagement, are both malicious and distressing to family members of those lost on Sydney," it said.

Neither was there any hard evidence of Japanese involvement.

This possibility "appears to have had its genesis in the shock of the loss and the inability of people to accept that Sydney could have been defeated in such a manner".

"It is unfortunate that the claims of third party involvement still continue to circulate in the absence of any substantive evidence," the inquiry observed.

One claim that still disturbs many families of the Sydney crew is the suggestion of an official cover-up.

The Curtin government withheld the news of Sydney's loss for 11 days, coming as it did in one of the darkest periods of World War 2.

The Germans controlled most of Europe and the Japanese were advancing through Asia; Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour was just weeks away.

But there are further suspicions that documentary evidence was either destroyed, misplaced or concealed.

The 1999 inquiry described as regrettable the fact that "a full inquiry does not appear to have been held immediately after the loss of Sydney, or in the post-war years when much information might have been obtainable".

"It is unfortunate that the inquiry is only now being held, when so many who may have been able to shed light on the events of November 1941 are either dead or infirm."

Authorities are now grappling with many ethical dilemmas, including whether to leave HMAS Sydney untouched in its seabed grave.

Experts say crew possessions, ship's logs and even human remains could be found if sufficiently isolated from oxygen and covered with sediment.

They point out that paper and bank notes were recovered from the Titanic, which sank in about fourkm of water in the Atlantic.

But HMAS Sydney is unlikely to reveal all of her secrets.

Naval historian Tom Lewis believes the Sydney wreck is going to be so badly damaged that a survey of it "will tell us only a little of her final moments".

Patrick Burnett, the 80-year-old son of Sydney's captain, told a reporter this week: "We will never know the real story, because you only ever hear one side."

And as Australia's joint parliamentary inquiry concluded: "At least on some matters, there are some things that will remain unknown and unknowable."

Last edited by Pubic (2008-03-20 07:52:24)