Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

46 Missing Pieces
set of drawings produced by the Dutch Navy in the Netherlands East Indies covering
German ships known to have been sheltering in neutral ports in the Far East since
the outbreak of war. 112
On 19 November 1941, Sydney, returning to Fremantle from an escort task to Sunda
Strait, encountered HSK Kormoran to the west of Geraldton. Both ships were sunk in
the subsequent action, and the mystery of why Sydney was manoeuvred into a situation
where her overwhelming speed and firepower were negated by proximity to the HSK
continues to puzzle and perplex historians. What can be ascertained from German reports
is that Sydney was suspicious of Kormoran, which used the identity of the Dutch ship
Straat Malakka, but her command team made use neither of the cruiser’s aircraft nor of
radio interrogation of the VESCAR system to resolve this identification problem.
Captain Joseph Burnett of Sydney and his officers had all the raider intelligence that the
system could provide, with the possible exception of the latest WIR. Burnett himself
had the knowledge gained in his previous posting as Director of the Operations and
Intelligence Division of the Naval Staff. Sydney’s actions suggest that she was closely
following the instructions of CAFO 143, but she may also have been attempting to board
Kormoran in accord with the sense of CAFO 480/1941. The final answer will never be
known, but had the intelligence system provided Sydney with sufficient information
to perform her role successfully?
The light cruiser HMAS Sydney lost with all hands following an engagement
with HSK Kormoran on 19 November 1941