Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Images of Kormoran released

Another sequence of images from The Finding Sydney Foundation have appeared online overnight. This time they are of the German auxiliary raider HSK Kormoran, the vessel which engaged HMAS Sydney and sank it in November 1941.

Reportedly the survey of the battle scene has concluded. I guess that by now SV Geosounder has returned to Geraldton and this morning everyone is resting up. There is to be a press conference midday tomorrow at the Fremantle Maritime Museum.

I suspect a lot of people have been astonished by the three sets of public images released over the past week. I've counted 22 pictures in all, plus there has been a few 'movie' clips appearing on TV news programs. The ABC is preparing a documentary, I think it's telecasting date is set for the 15th. It was going to be last week, but evolving events overtook the plan. I would expect a repeat of the program on Anzac Day, the 25th April.

I gather there are some 22 kilometres of shelved documents in the Australian Archives related to the sinking of HMAS Sydney in 1941. It's curious to think that a great deal of that stuff has now probably been rendered redundant with the release of these few images. They have in one fell swoop confirmed much of what the German survivors related about the battle.

For me the most striking image in the latest pictures is of Kormoran's awesome six inch (5.9) inch gun. There is something particularly business-like about it's appearance.

Last week I had a phone call from an elderly gentleman named John Doohan who has spent the last several decades pursuing his theory that everything the Germans had said about the battle were lies. He lives not far from me. With a calm frankness, he accepted that he had been wrong with that assumption.

He's not going to get any credit for the final discovery of the wrecks, nor would he expect it. Indeed he was a staunch critic of The Finding Sydney Foundation when it was established and began to attract political and financial backing.

It was a different approach to what Mr Doohan had tried. His strategy had tended to confrontational and sometimes accusatory. Worse, he had a tendency to be long winded and confusing. Nevertheless, over the decades he'd became a relentless thorn in the side of innumerable state and federal governments by his unflinching insistence that the loss of Sydney had to be fully investigated.

In a way his effort was heroic for the fearless way in which he challenged the perceived apathy of innumerable politicians on all sides, and with some justification the shameful impotence of the Royal Australian Navy. Were it not for Mr Doohan and a small group he founded called End Secrecy on Sydney, the interest in Australia's most significant naval loss may well have waned long ago.

Presumably there will be a substantial analysis undertaken of the entire data set recently gathered by those aboard SV Geosounder. Over time, I guess there will be other TV documentaries, and a few books as well.

I suppose some conspiracy theories will persist. Even after the first pictures of Sydney went online last week there was widespread speculation about missing lifeboats - was this evidence that some of the crew had launched and made off in them? But then a few days later most of the boats were found resting on the bottom near the wrecks.

There has also been a renewed allegation this week in the media that ASIO still maintains a secret archive relating to the loss of Sydney and that this is secure for a hundred years. The problem of archive searching and security time limitations was discussed in the final 1999 report
of a major inquiry into the loss of Sydney by a Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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