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Sydney found by joining up German's dots Tony Barrass | March 22, 2008
IT has all the makings of a Boy's Own blockbuster: a mass breakout by German POWs from a rural Victorian internment camp; a mysterious dictionary revealing dotted codes of vital military importance; and a body washed up on a remote Indian Ocean island.
These events - three of many surrounding the evolving, extraordinary story of HMAS Sydney - continue to fascinate historians, who are now tantalisingly close to solving a military riddle that has haunted the nation for more than 66 years.
In the next few days, shipwreck hunter David Mearns and his crew aboard the SV Geosounder will sink high-resolution photographic equipment and get the first proper images of Sydney in six decades to the world.
They have found the light cruiser in 2400m of water 112 nautical miles off the West Australian coast. But it will probably be up to others to examine what are expected to be spectacular images of the hull and speculate how and why the ship went down as it did, with no survivors of the 645 crew.
But the historic discovery may not have eventuated if a small German-English dictionary had not been found when Theodor Detmers, the commander of the German raider Kormoran, was arrested in Shepparton, Victoria, after one of the most daring and little-known wartime escapes on Australian soil. Detmers was one of 315 survivors from the Kormoran, the first batch of 26 being picked up more than three days after the November 19 battle with the Sydney. Over the next four days, the remaining German survivors were recovered in six separate groups. Some were rescued by passing tankers and warships, while two boats carrying 103 sailors made it to shore, north and south of Carnarvon, 814km north of Perth.
With them were three Chinese nationals - plucked from the Atlantic 10 months earlier when the Kormoran sank the Eurylochus - a monkey and a dog, presumably the ship's mascots.
As news trickled back to Canberra that the Sydney was missing, prime minister John Curtin, just six weeks into the job, called a meeting of the advisory war council, a bipartisan arm of his war cabinet, on which sat the brightest, toughest minds in the country: Robert Menzies, Billy Hughes, Arthur Fadden, Frank Forde, Jack McEwen and the best of the senior military brass.
Notes taken at that November 26 meeting, two days after aerial searches began and a week since the battle, show that Curtin, the former journalist, was wrestling with how to inform Australians of the horror without demoralising the public and handing the enemy an extraordinary propaganda victory. They had to be told. But told what?
The military knew little of what had happened and were desperate to find out more. Catalina flying boats were dispatched from Townsville and Perth to seek out oil slicks or any signs of wreckage. Interrogation of the Kormoran survivors began immediately.
On December 1, navy intelligence informed Canberra that one of the survivors, a leading seaman named Gerhard Keller, who was attached to the propaganda section of the German navy, said he had taken footage of the battle and had filmed the sinking of the Sydney. But he also insisted the film went down with the burning ship after commander Detmers ordered the crew to lifeboats before scuttling the boat.
Another survivor, Fritz List, who made it to Red Bluff in a steel lifeboat, claimed he had taken about 30 photographs of the drama with a 35mm Leica camera and that, when he reached land, he buried the camera and film inside a cave on the beach. List was taken back to the Gascoyne coast and led authorities to the cave. The expedition spent a fruitless week digging and searching and concluded that high tides and storms had washed away any hope of finding the treasure.
As the war went on, Detmers was moved to the German POW camp at Dhurringile in rural Victoria. Some time in 1944, Detmers, as camp leader and in line with his duty, hatched an escape plan by excavating a 120m long tunnel out of the camp, which began under a false floor in a music room.
On the night of January 10, 1945, Detmers and 19 others escaped into the countryside. He was on the run for eight days before being arrested in Shepparton. When he was searched, authorities found a small, coded notebook. It was immediately seized and sent for decryption and analysis.
What the authorities did not know was that Detmers had left behind a small brown German-English dictionary at the camp, in which he had used a pencil to put faint dots under letters on each page, giving the same details of the Kormoran's co-ordinates and log details as were in his seized notebook.
The war ended and Detmers was repatriated in 1947. He returned to Germany, debilitated by a stroke down his left side. His dictionary was his most prized possession.
But in 1990, Brisbane author Barbara Poniewierski, on a research trip to Germany, uncovered the existence of Detmers's dictionary while attending a reunion of Kormoran survivors.
Detmers had apparently bequeathed the dictionary to his sister's son and, when Poniewierski got a phone call from famed shipwreck hunter David Mearns seeking confirmation that the dictionary existed, she gave him the name of Detmers's relatives in Hamburg.
When Mearns got his hands on the dictionary, he engaged former Royal Navy captain and linguist Peter Hore to crack the code. It wasn't hard. It was just a matter of, quite literally, joining the dots. They spelled out a few words a page, detailing the battle, the co-ordinates, and all the log details of arguably Australia's most famous naval encounter. It confirmed Detmers's original notes seized from him at Shepparton more than 60 years earlier.
Mearns has said he used Detmers's dictionary as "factual ground zero". And he knew if the dictionary could lead him to the Kormoran, it would also reveal to him the final resting place of HMAS Sydney.
"Captain Detmers's versions were nearly always identical, so I concluded he was always telling the truth," Mearns told journalist Carmelo Amalfi. "No other shipwreck hunter has had so many vital clues about the Sydney's resting place."
Australian authorities had been told by the Germans where to look for the Kormoran from day one. Their inexplicable lack of action over passing decades only fuelled never-ending conspiracy theories involving governments, politicians and the navy.
Mix in with that a raft of intriguing, heart-breakingly sad Sydney stories that tumbled into the newspapers year in, year out such as mothers waiting for sons who never returned.
Just last year, authorities exhumed skeletal remains washed up in a Carley float off Christmas Island in 1942 and buried on the side of a hill overlooking a bay.
They now believe the "unknown sailor" might have been the only man to survive the Sydney sinking. What was thought to be a bullet hole in his head turned out to be shrapnel.
But forensic experts believe that with a bit of luck they may eventually be able to identify the sailor by dental records.
Not long afterwards, a man diving in the crystal-clear waters off the Gascoyne coast discovered a clump of unusual coral. He chipped away and underneath was a German handgun, probably tossed overboard by survivors of the Kormoran as they came to shore. The Sydney has at last been found, but those who know her history suspect the full story of her demise is yet to be told.
IT has all the makings of a Boy's Own blockbuster: a mass breakout by German POWs from a rural Victorian internment camp; a mysterious dictionary revealing dotted codes of vital military importance; and a body washed up on a remote Indian Ocean island.
These events - three of many surrounding the evolving, extraordinary story of HMAS Sydney - continue to fascinate historians, who are now tantalisingly close to solving a military riddle that has haunted the nation for more than 66 years.
In the next few days, shipwreck hunter David Mearns and his crew aboard the SV Geosounder will sink high-resolution photographic equipment and get the first proper images of Sydney in six decades to the world.
They have found the light cruiser in 2400m of water 112 nautical miles off the West Australian coast. But it will probably be up to others to examine what are expected to be spectacular images of the hull and speculate how and why the ship went down as it did, with no survivors of the 645 crew.
But the historic discovery may not have eventuated if a small German-English dictionary had not been found when Theodor Detmers, the commander of the German raider Kormoran, was arrested in Shepparton, Victoria, after one of the most daring and little-known wartime escapes on Australian soil. Detmers was one of 315 survivors from the Kormoran, the first batch of 26 being picked up more than three days after the November 19 battle with the Sydney. Over the next four days, the remaining German survivors were recovered in six separate groups. Some were rescued by passing tankers and warships, while two boats carrying 103 sailors made it to shore, north and south of Carnarvon, 814km north of Perth.
With them were three Chinese nationals - plucked from the Atlantic 10 months earlier when the Kormoran sank the Eurylochus - a monkey and a dog, presumably the ship's mascots.
As news trickled back to Canberra that the Sydney was missing, prime minister John Curtin, just six weeks into the job, called a meeting of the advisory war council, a bipartisan arm of his war cabinet, on which sat the brightest, toughest minds in the country: Robert Menzies, Billy Hughes, Arthur Fadden, Frank Forde, Jack McEwen and the best of the senior military brass.
Notes taken at that November 26 meeting, two days after aerial searches began and a week since the battle, show that Curtin, the former journalist, was wrestling with how to inform Australians of the horror without demoralising the public and handing the enemy an extraordinary propaganda victory. They had to be told. But told what?
The military knew little of what had happened and were desperate to find out more. Catalina flying boats were dispatched from Townsville and Perth to seek out oil slicks or any signs of wreckage. Interrogation of the Kormoran survivors began immediately.
On December 1, navy intelligence informed Canberra that one of the survivors, a leading seaman named Gerhard Keller, who was attached to the propaganda section of the German navy, said he had taken footage of the battle and had filmed the sinking of the Sydney. But he also insisted the film went down with the burning ship after commander Detmers ordered the crew to lifeboats before scuttling the boat.
Another survivor, Fritz List, who made it to Red Bluff in a steel lifeboat, claimed he had taken about 30 photographs of the drama with a 35mm Leica camera and that, when he reached land, he buried the camera and film inside a cave on the beach. List was taken back to the Gascoyne coast and led authorities to the cave. The expedition spent a fruitless week digging and searching and concluded that high tides and storms had washed away any hope of finding the treasure.
As the war went on, Detmers was moved to the German POW camp at Dhurringile in rural Victoria. Some time in 1944, Detmers, as camp leader and in line with his duty, hatched an escape plan by excavating a 120m long tunnel out of the camp, which began under a false floor in a music room.
On the night of January 10, 1945, Detmers and 19 others escaped into the countryside. He was on the run for eight days before being arrested in Shepparton. When he was searched, authorities found a small, coded notebook. It was immediately seized and sent for decryption and analysis.
What the authorities did not know was that Detmers had left behind a small brown German-English dictionary at the camp, in which he had used a pencil to put faint dots under letters on each page, giving the same details of the Kormoran's co-ordinates and log details as were in his seized notebook.
The war ended and Detmers was repatriated in 1947. He returned to Germany, debilitated by a stroke down his left side. His dictionary was his most prized possession.
But in 1990, Brisbane author Barbara Poniewierski, on a research trip to Germany, uncovered the existence of Detmers's dictionary while attending a reunion of Kormoran survivors.
Detmers had apparently bequeathed the dictionary to his sister's son and, when Poniewierski got a phone call from famed shipwreck hunter David Mearns seeking confirmation that the dictionary existed, she gave him the name of Detmers's relatives in Hamburg.
When Mearns got his hands on the dictionary, he engaged former Royal Navy captain and linguist Peter Hore to crack the code. It wasn't hard. It was just a matter of, quite literally, joining the dots. They spelled out a few words a page, detailing the battle, the co-ordinates, and all the log details of arguably Australia's most famous naval encounter. It confirmed Detmers's original notes seized from him at Shepparton more than 60 years earlier.
Mearns has said he used Detmers's dictionary as "factual ground zero". And he knew if the dictionary could lead him to the Kormoran, it would also reveal to him the final resting place of HMAS Sydney.
"Captain Detmers's versions were nearly always identical, so I concluded he was always telling the truth," Mearns told journalist Carmelo Amalfi. "No other shipwreck hunter has had so many vital clues about the Sydney's resting place."
Australian authorities had been told by the Germans where to look for the Kormoran from day one. Their inexplicable lack of action over passing decades only fuelled never-ending conspiracy theories involving governments, politicians and the navy.
Mix in with that a raft of intriguing, heart-breakingly sad Sydney stories that tumbled into the newspapers year in, year out such as mothers waiting for sons who never returned.
Just last year, authorities exhumed skeletal remains washed up in a Carley float off Christmas Island in 1942 and buried on the side of a hill overlooking a bay.
They now believe the "unknown sailor" might have been the only man to survive the Sydney sinking. What was thought to be a bullet hole in his head turned out to be shrapnel.
But forensic experts believe that with a bit of luck they may eventually be able to identify the sailor by dental records.
Not long afterwards, a man diving in the crystal-clear waters off the Gascoyne coast discovered a clump of unusual coral. He chipped away and underneath was a German handgun, probably tossed overboard by survivors of the Kormoran as they came to shore. The Sydney has at last been found, but those who know her history suspect the full story of her demise is yet to be told.
