Cormorant (ship, 1938)
 The cormorant at sea, 1940
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The Kormoran was a German armed and converted merchant ship for the trade war against the Allies in World War II . It had been taken over by the Navy as ship 41 for war use and was used as an auxiliary cruiser under the designation Handelsstörkreuzer 8 (HSK 8) . At the British Royal Navy was Cormorant as Raider G known. The Kormoran was the largest German auxiliary cruiser in World War II.
history
The ship was built in 1938/1939 under construction no. 578 at the Germania shipyard in Kiel . Before the war, the 8,736 GRT diesel-electric ship sailed under the flag of the Hamburg-America Line HAPAG under the name Styria on the route to East Asia. It was converted into an auxiliary cruiser by Deutsche Werft AG in Hamburg-Finkenwerder at the beginning of 1940 and put into service as a trading sturgeon cruiser on October 9, 1940. Corvette captain (later frigate captain ) Theodor Detmer from Witten an der Ruhr took over command .
commitment
The Kormoran sailed from Gotenhafen on December 3, 1940, disguised as the German barrier breaker ship 41 . On December 12th, in bad weather, the enemy managed to break through the Denmark Strait unnoticed by the enemy into the Atlantic.
After the sinking of the Greek freighter Antonis on January 6, 1941, ten more ships with a total of 68,274 GRT were brought in, including the gas tanker Agnita , which was sunk on March 22, 1941 . One of the ships was taken as a prize , the others were sunk. From February 7th to 9th, the auxiliary cruiser met the supply ship Nordmark , from which 1,338 t of fuel and other supplies were taken and 170 of the prisoners took over from the Kormoran . During its mission, the Kormoran also repeatedly supplied German submarines .
From October 16 to 24, the cormorant met in the Indian Ocean west of Australia at the “Marius” supply point with the supply ship Kulmerland sent from Japan , which delivered fuel, lubricants, provisions for 6 months and white metal stores. The camps were urgently needed for the auxiliary cruiser's engines to be operational.
Cruiser battle and sinking
On November 19, 1941, there was a battle with the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney off the west coast of Australia .
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The cormorant tried to avoid the Sydney , which was far superior in terms of fighting power, at top speed, but was overtaken by the faster ship. When asked about the identity and destination of the supposed cargo ship, the Germans responded slowly and laboriously, in order to keep the distance to the rapidly approaching cruiser as small as possible if the camouflage should be seen through and a fight should become inevitable. The name of the ship was given as that of the Dutch freighter Straat Malakka and the port of destination Jakarta . Captain Detmers could not answer the request for the secret identification code and therefore ordered fire to be opened at around 5.30 p.m. The Sydney had come to less than 1,000 meters at this point.
Within five minutes, about 50 hits were made on the Sydney with the 15 cm guns and numerous more with the 2 cm and 3.7 cm flak . The bridge of the cruiser and the fire control station were destroyed with the first hits, and the shells of the main guns penetrated the armor and exploded inside the ship. The aircraft on board was hit and its leaking gasoline resulted in a large fire amidships. After the cruiser's first salvo, the two front 6-inch turrets of the Sydney also failed, and after three salvos, which did not hit, the Y tower , the rearmost turret , also failed . In addition, at least one of the cormorant's two torpedoes hit the cruiser at the bow.
The last still operational turret X of the Sydney hit, among other things, the funnel and the engine room of the Kormoran , which caused devastating fires there. Subsequently, the Australian cruiser turned towards the Kormoran and went on the opposite course to use its starboard torpedoes. However, the four torpedoes passed just behind the stern of the auxiliary cruiser. At the same time, the Kormoran's engines collapsed and the ship was unable to maneuver. The rear guns fired until 6:30 p.m. on the retreating Sydney to the south and scored several hits, then the commander of the cormorant ordered the cessation of fire.
This is the only known success of an auxiliary cruiser against a regular warship. Since the fire on board the Kormoran had irreparably destroyed the machinery and the fire extinguishing system and the fire threatened to spread to the ammunition stores and mine stores, Detmers ordered the ship to be abandoned. Two of the Kormoran's lifeboats with 57 and 46 men respectively reached the Australian coast north of Carnarvon independently of one another and without outside help . The remaining surviving German sailors were rescued by five ships ( RMS Aquitania , Centaur , Koolinda , Trocas and Yandra ) and were also taken into Australian captivity , from which almost all were only released in 1947. Of the crew, 316 of the 397 men survived, as did three Chinese who were on board as laundry workers.
The survivors of the cormorants were able to see the heavily burning Sydney until 10 p.m. in the south and for another two hours now and then watch a glow over the horizon. After that, she was no longer seen. None of the cruiser's 645 Australian sailors survived the unobserved sinking.
Captured and sunk ships
The information on prisoners and fatalities diverges slightly in different sources.
| Surname | Type | country | date | Tonnage in GRT |
Whereabouts | position | |
| 1 | Antonis | freighter |
.svg){kind=small} Greece
|
January 6, 1941 | 3,729 | sunk, no casualties, 29 prisoners | 18 ° 17 ′ N , 28 ° 32 ′ W. |
| 2 | British Union | Tanker |
 United Kingdom
|
January 18, 1941 | 6,987 | sunk, 11 dead, 28 prisoners, 6 men escaped by boat | 26 ° 29 ′ N , 31 ° 7 ′ W. |
| 3 | Afric Star | freighter |
United Kingdom
|
January 29, 1941 | 11,900 | sunk, no casualties, 76 prisoners | 8 ° 44 ′ N , 24 ° 38 ′ W. |
| 4th | Eurylochus | freighter |
United Kingdom
|
January 29, 1941 | 5,723 | sunk, 2 dead, 43 prisoners, 28 men with boats escaped | 8 ° 15 ′ N , 24 ° 4 ′ W. |
| 5 | Agnita | Tanker |
 Netherlands
|
March 22, 1941 | 3,552 | sunk, no casualties, 38 prisoners | 3 ° 20 ′ S , 23 ° 40 ′ W |
| 6th | Canadolite | Tanker |
United Kingdom
|
March 25, 1941 | 11,309 | Sent home as a prize (later deployed as Sudetenland ), no casualties, 48 prisoners | 2 ° 30 ′ N , 23 ° 48 ′ W. |
| 7th | Craftsman | freighter |
United Kingdom
|
April 9, 1941 | 8,022 | sunk, 5 dead, 46 prisoners | 0 ° 32 ' N , 23 ° 37' W. |
| 8th | Nicolaos DL | freighter |
Greece
|
April 12, 1941 | 5,486 | sunk, no casualties, 38 prisoners | 1 ° 54 ′ S , 22 ° 12 ′ W |
| 9 | Velebit | freighter |
.svg){kind=small} Yugoslavia
|
June 26, 1941 | 4.153 | shot on fire, 16 (?) dead, 9 prisoners, 9 (?) men stranded with the wreck on the Andamans | 8 ° 22 ' N , 87 ° 52' E |
| 10 | Mareeba | freighter |
 Australia
|
June 26, 1941 | 3,472 | sunk, no casualties, 48 prisoners | 8 ° 15 ' N , 88 ° 6' E |
| 11 | Stamatios G. Embiricos | freighter |
Greece
|
September 26, 1941 | 3,941 | sunk, no casualties, 30 prisoners | 0 ° 1 ′ S , 64 ° 30 ′ E |
| 12 | HMAS Sydney | light cruiser |
Australia
|
November 19, 1941 | 6,830 | sunk, 645 dead, no survivors | 26 ° 0 ′ S , 111 ° 0 ′ E |
Discovery of the wreck
The wreck of the cormorant was discovered by a search team from The Finding Sydney Foundation on March 12, 2008 at a depth of 2,560 meters ( 26 ° 5 ′ 49.4 ″ S , 111 ° 4 ′ 27.5 ″ E ). The site of the battle between the Kormoran and the Sydney was also identified; it is about four nautical miles south of the location where the Komoran wreck was found and around 150 miles from Shark Bay on the west coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean .
On March 16, 2008, the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made the formal announcement of the discovery . A day later, on March 17, 2008, Rudd announced that the wreck of the Sydney was also discovered on March 16, 2008 at a depth of 2,470 meters about 22 kilometers from the Cormorant ( 26 ° 14 ′ 37 ″ S , 111 ° 13 ′ 3 ″ O ). The distance to the scene of the battle is about eight nautical miles (approx. 15 kilometers).
Both wrecks were added to the Australian National Heritage List on March 14, 2011 as national monuments .
See also
literature
- Theodor Detmers , Jochen Brennecke : Auxiliary cruiser Kormoran. 2nd Edition. Koehler, Herford 1975, ISBN 3-7822-0110-8 .
- Gröner, Erich / Dieter Jung / Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945 . tape 3 : U-boats, auxiliary cruisers, mine ships, net layers and barrier breakers. . Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7637-4802-4 , pp. 164 f .
- The Search to find and identify the wrecks of HMAS Sydney (II) and HSK Kormoran . 2008. Report from HMAS Sidney Search Pty Ltd
- Schmalenbach, Paul: The German auxiliary cruisers 1895-1945 . Gerhard Stalling AG, Oldenburg, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7979-1877-1 .
- James Taylor: Prisoner of the Kormoran WA Jones' amazing experiences on the German raider Kormoran and as a prisoner of war in Germany. Australasia Publishing Co. Pty., Sydney 1944.
- Barbara Winter: Duel against Australia. Auxiliary cruiser Kormoran against cruiser Sydney. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin a. a. 1994, ISBN 3-8132-0441-3 .
Web links
- The deadly bluff in Shark Bay. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , March 18, 2008
- Ingenious secret code for the battle report. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , March 18, 2008
- Showdown in Shark Bay. on one day
- Underwater footage of the wrecks of the Cormorant and the Sydney (Finding Sydney Foundation Photo Gallery)
- An eyewitness to one day
- The Loss of HMAS Sydney II ; Final report of the official commission of inquiry of the Australian government ( Commission of Inquiry concerning matters related to the loss of HMAS Sydney II ) from August 2009.
http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?202087
Footnotes
- ^ Frame, Tom (1993). HMAS Sydney: Loss and Controversy. Rydalmere, NSW: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 0-340-58468-8 . OCLC 32234178
- ↑ Winter, Barbara (1984). HMAS Sydney: Fact, Fantasy and Fraud. Spring Hill, QLD: Boolarong Publications. ISBN 0-908175-72-8 . OCLC 11783441
- ^ The Loss of HMAS Sydney II
- ↑ sinking of the Antonis
- ↑ sinking of the British Union
- ↑ sinking of the Afric Star
- ↑ The sinking of the Eurylochus
- ↑ Immersion of the Agnita
- ↑ Sunk in Brest by the Royal Air Force in 1944
- ↑ Sinking the Craftsman
- ↑ sinking of the Nicolaos DL
- ^ Sinking of the Mareeba
- ^ Sinking the Stamatios G. Embiricos
- ↑ HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd
- ↑ Wreck of the legendary cruiser "Kormoran" discovered . In: Spiegel Online , March 16, 2008
- ↑ HMAS Sydney Search Pty Ltd, Official Press Release: HSK Kormoran Discovered in the Search for the HMAS Sydney II , March 16, 2008
- ↑ Prime Minister of Australia, Press Conference: Statement by the Australian Prime Minister ( July 19, 2008 memento in the Internet Archive ), March 17, 2008
- ↑ environment.gov.au : HMAS Sydney II and the HSK Kormoran Shipwreck Sites , in English, accessed October 30, 2011
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