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POST Newspapers Online: Headline News

Nedlands academic Kim Kirsner allowed himself some moments of excitement when word came through last weekend that the wreck of HSK Kormoran had been discovered.

He was led to his theoretical wreck location by a fascinating process that involves working out how human beings remember information, and how they express it.

Years of research with Associate Professor John Dunn had narrowed the theoretical location of the wreck to within three nautical miles of where it was eventually found.

Both men are cognitive scientists at the University of WA.

The search by the survey ship Geosounder started on the eastern side of a 1800-square-nautical-mile box.

It was in the north-east corner of the box the two ships were found - just where Professor Kirsner said they would be, ending decades of speculation.

Some more fanciful researchers placed the wreck 200 nautical miles away, close to Geraldton.

The UWA researchers gathered 80 eyewitness statements from 20 crew members of the Kormoran about how her battle with the Sydney had progressed, and where their ship went down.

Their statements were cross-checked and the language studied to ensure the Germans were trying their hardest to give accurate accounts.

"At the end of the analysis we ended up at the same point of origin," Professor Kirsner said.

"But there was still no way of knowing that we had the right starting point."

He said the earliest statements were generally more accurate.

German survivors were picked up by different ships and some landed on shore, so they did not have the opportunity to cross-check their stories until they were in prison together.

When that happened, the views of people of higher rank, or with more forceful personalities, tended to prevail.

Also fielding calls of congratulation this week was Shenton Park engineer Greg Bathgate, whose calculations put the wrecks a mere 25nm from the correct location (POST, 27/10/07).

The Geosounder surveyed tracks 50nm long and 6km wide.

Mr Bathgate's book, HMAS Sydney: The Analysis, was based on "hindcasting" flotsam from the two ships that was picked up by search ships in 1941.

He calculated currents at the time by tracking the logs of ships using the shipping route, then tracked them back to their point of origin - where he believed the Sydney sank.

Search director David Mearns used tide and wind information calculated by new methods.

Mr Bathgate's theory that the ships sank on the drop-off from the Continental Shelf and the point where two opposite currents meet appears correct, although the ships are in deeper water than he predicted.

Also vindicated by the find were the managers of Carrarang Station at Shark Bay, Joe and Ivy Mallard (POST, 18/8/07).

Their description of the battle noise, smoke and explosions observed from the station homestead from the land coincides with the sequence of events described by the Kormoran crew (POST, 18/8/07).

The known battlefield lies within the "cone" that would have given the Mallards the only line of sight to the battle area.

The nearest landfall to the wreck is Steep Point at the south passage entrance to Shark Bay.

Shark Bay council now has a good argument that the beautiful HMAS Sydney memorial in Geraldton is in the wrong place, built hundreds of miles from the battle site after Port Gregory residents wrongly gave accounts to an author of seeing the battle from the shore.

Mr Bathgate said the most intriguing aspect of the find was the battlefield site, where huge chunks of ship were located on the ocean floor.

The pieces, presumably parts of the Sydney, were up to 33m long and 11m wide, and quite tall.

He said if the pieces were identified as coming from the Kormoran, the whole course of the battle would have to be re-thought.

Very high quality underwater pictures from the wreck sites are expected next week when the Geosounder returns to the site with cameras and lights in remotely operated vehicles.

Researchers say they expect to see horrific damage to the Sydney.

The Kormoran fired up to 400 high-explosive shells at point-blank range that easily pierced the Sydney's armour.

The shells were fused at the back, so that they entered the ship before exploding.

Just the shockwaves inside the ship would have caused many fatalities, not to mention the shrapnel and fire.

The Sydney was still under power and steering after being hit by a torpedo, and having her entire command lost when her bridge and gun control centre on top of it were hit by armour-piercing anti-tank ammunition from the Kormoran in the first seconds of the battle.

The Sydney had emergency control positions manned during action stations, including one at the stern below the water line.

There, crew members had no vision, no communication with the bridge and only a large crank handle to manually steer the rudder. They would have heard the shells hitting the ship and felt the impact of the torpedo on the bow, causing the bow to rear out of the water, then come crashing down under the waves.

With incredible bravery, whoever was steering the ship turned her behind the Kormoran and headed south-east, towards either Geraldton or Fremantle. The ship never made it.

Mr Bathgate believes the Sydney travelled more than the 10nm she was found from the battlefield site, then drifted back on wind and current to her sinking position after the engines stopped.

The bow appears to have broken off at the point where the torpedo hit. If this happened before the sinking it would have caused her to go to the bottom. But it may have broken off on the way down.

So far there is little to indicate whether anybody got off the Sydney before she sank, other than the unidentified deceased man who washed up in a life-raft on Christmas Island 11 weeks later.

Although casualties on board would have been horrific, it is known that some men were still alive when the Sydney passed behind the Kormoran.

The rear guns were firing at the Kormoran as were the Sydney's torpedo tubes. Four torpedoes all missed their marks.

The Sydney's lifeboats would have been shattered, and inflatable life-belts or life-rafts, known as Carley floats, would have been the only way to stay afloat.

An empty Carley float was picked up by a search ship and is now in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, the only known artefact from the Sydney.

Two inflated Sydney lifejackets were picked up, one with a broken strap that indicates its occupant lost it in wave action.

The search for the Sydney and her crew did not begin until the fourth day after she sank. People immersed in those waters last no more than 24 hours.

The 317 German survivors were in lifeboats and rafts.

There is anecdotal evidence that crew members on the lighthouse ship Cape Otway spotted bodies in the water more than a week later near the Zuytdorp Cliffs, directly west of the sinking zone.

The relevant pages from the Cape Otway's logbook are missing from the archives.