soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:02:03 -0400, redvet wrote:

>On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:31:21 -0400, "YMC"
> wrote:
>
>>"a425couple" wrote in message
>>news:S8adnYKBjObpGn_anZ2dnUVZ_hynnZ2d@comcast.com...
>>> "YMC" wrote
>>>> -- Kormoran was a raiding ship - with little armor and managed to
>>>> sink a warship cruiser.
>>>> The Kormoran shouldn't have stood a chance against the Sydney.
>>>
>>> It would not have had 'much' a chance in, a clear from the start,
>>> naval battle.
>>> Just as an enemy (with a pistol, knife, or exposives)
>>> does not have much chance against a marine with a rifle.
>>> At ranges from 500 meters/yards down to 10, the marine
>>> has all the odds, if the opponent is identified as an enemy.
>>>
>>> If the opponent is disguised/unknown and is allowed to
>>> get inside 15', then all 'advantages' are lost.
>>> (i.e. - a fight with hand grenades inside a cement
>>> bunker - is not a pretty sight, nor desirable outcome)
>>
>>I agree with you. Even an IJN destroyer if it was in near point blank range
>>to a USN BB or fleet carrier would have sunk it with its 9 torpedo tubes.
>>
>>But what exactly do the present underwater researchers hope to find? The
>>flags would have been all disintegrated with age. At best they would find
>>small arms calibre marks and other types of destruction on the Sydney that
>>would indicate that it got too close.
>
>
>True enough, but an earlier poster made mention of the sequence of the
>shelling against the HMS Sydney. If the forensics match the testimony
>of the survivors...
>
>While I am only vaguely familiar with the sinking of the Sydney,
>surely there was an investigation of some sort. It is difficult to
>get three people to tell the same lie. Even mediocre investigators
>would have been professional enough to interrogate a ship load of
>enemy survivors for whom they had little sympathy. What was the
>finding of the investigation? - redvet

The *only* inquiry was done in *1999* (57 years later) to the Senate's
Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade!

You can read a summary of the report's conclusions and methodology at
...

http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/hmas_sydney/inquiry.htm

The report is online at ...


Some relevant excerpts on the interrogation of the German survivors at
the time and the veracity of their claims ...

"6.54 The evidence obtained through the interrogation process has
been assessed quite differently. For example:

The one thing that gives the German story more credibility is the fact
that the survivors were quite dispersed when they were picked up and
they were interrogated in different positions ... So there was a
remarkable consistency within the story of what actually occurred, as
it unfolded, to give it more creditability (sic)/

But ...

What I am saying is and from the record ... is that all the evidence I
have and, I think, people way above me have is that the whole German
story is a mass of contradictions; it is a mass of lies ..."

... and ...

"Criticisms of the Interrogation Process

6.55 Several problems were encountered in the interrogation
process, which may have led to inaccuracies in the way the action
between Sydney and Kormoran came to be understood. According to the
Australian Archives Guide:

Until 2 December the interrogations were carried out with little
formal guidance and were not handled well in the view of some. ... The
failure to segregate the prisoners in the early stages appears to have
escaped the attention of Captain Farquhar-Smith ... The Instructions
for Interrogating Prisoners of War ex No. 41 were finally issued on
2December by Rear Admiral Crace, but by then a considerable amount of
interrogation had already been undertaken ... By December 9 all the
prisoners in Western Australia had been interrogated except for two
who were still hospitalised, and preparations were made for their
transfer to Victoria. They were interned at Murchison prisoners of war
camp in northern Victoria, along with those rescued by the Aquitania
and taken to Sydney. The officers were later moved from Murchison to
nearby Dhurringile and in 1943 the men were transferred to a timber
felling camp at Graytown. The prisoners were finally repatriated in
1947

6.56 Frame also criticised the manner in which the interrogations
were carried out. He wrote:

As practically no preparation had been made for such a contingency,
the whole interrogation was handled poorly from the beginning. It was
disorganised, very amateur, lacked a sense of urgency ...

6.57 Frame also compared the methods of interrogation in Sydney and
Western Australia, and concluded that '... the circumstances for
conducting interrogations in Sydney were very different from those
prevailing in Western Australia, where the prisoners had been reunited
and discussion between them was taking place'.

... and ...

"6.59 From the initial interrogations, it appeared that the
government was largely satisfied that it had obtained a clear picture
of what had happened to Sydney. It was felt that:

... from th[e] interrogation it was possible to get from the Germans
an almost complete picture of the action. How far this account varied
from the truth, however, is something that it would be almost
impossible to establish.

6.60 In his second and final public announcement on 3 December
1941, the Prime Minister noted that:

In releasing this information [ie a reconstructed account of the
action], I emphasise that in the absence of any information from the
Sydney, one side only is given from direct evidence. Certain of the
aspects on board the Sydney must remain a matter of surmise as to
details. The broad canvas can, however, be taken as giving an accurate
picture.

6.61 Notwithstanding the official endorsement of the German76
accounts, and contrary to Gill's claim that 'no room for doubt was
left as to its accuracy',77 doubt still remained for many about the
veracity of the German version. It was not the 'Germanness' of the
accounts that called into question their integrity. Rather, it was the
nature of the way in which the information was obtained that gave rise
to doubts about its accuracy. In his book Who Sank the Sydney? Michael
Montgomery pointed out that 'it should be borne in mind that most
officers, on whatever side, held in captivity considered that they had
an absolute duty to do all they could to deceive the enemy'."

.. and ...

"6.65 In his book Frame was more specific about the inconsistencies
in Captain Detmers' account of the battle. According to Frame:

There were four significant differences between the information
Detmers had given under interrogation at Swanbourne Barracks, and in
the action report which was later confiscated. First, Detmers stated
that Kormoran was ordered to stop before the cruiser signalled in
plain language for the secret callsign of the Straat Malakka to be
hoisted. Second, that Sydney was preparing to lower a boat. And third,
that the cruiser had fired first. Fourth, that Kormoran's first salvo
fell short of Sydney. Detmers' later descriptions were inconsistent
with these statements.

6.66 Rather than focusing on the possibility that new information
might come to light, some concentrated on criticising the Germans for
misleading their captors. For example, MrE V Ryding expressed a
sentiment that:

... if all the [Germans] who were able were on the upper deck to
abandon ship, they would all have been told the circumstances prior to
opening fire and what had happened when they did open fire. They are
being told that by their captain who was, we believe, a real Nazi.
There was no way that any of those men were going to tell anything
else. They were all national heroes. Were any of them going to admit
that they opened fire with a white flag, thereby spoiling their
position as national heroes after knocking off the Australian pride of
the fleet? You believe in Father Christmas if you believe that.

6.67 It is important to bear in mind the fact that few of the men
on board Kormoran would have been in a position to see the engagement,
or been privy to the motivation and tactics behind it. On this basis
it is possible to challenge the German accounts, if only because at
some point some of them were probably relaying information which had
been passed on to them, rather than recounting their own personal
recollections of the incident."

The committee does conclude, of course, that the Kormoran survivors
did tell the truth simply because they never changed their story.

However, Detmers, of course *did* change his story ... and there seems
to have been no consistent (if any) attempt in the 1997-9 inquiry to
question the survivors or, indeed, to even determine if any of them
were in a position to actually verify the final story that Detmers
told rather than the initial ones which, with minimal change to the
timeline, would support the possibility that he opened fire under a
flag of surrender.

NB: Apart from 3 or 4 submissions marked "confidential" in the
Committee's report, ALL of the submissions are from non-German
sources. No attempt was made, it seems, to actually question surviving
German survivors. A strange omission for what was supposed to be a
definitive Inquiry.

Phil

Author, Space Opera (FGU); RBB #1 (FASA); Road to Armageddon;
Farm, Forge and Steam; Orbis Mundi; Displaced (PGD)
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Email: aspqrz@pacific.net.au