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Sydney Korgan Case Study

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Background 1. HMAS Sydney sank on 19 November 1941, after engagement with HSK Kormoran, a disguised German raider as a Dutch merchant vessel off the coast of Western Australia (Bathgate, 2007). All 645 members of her crew were lost whilst the Kormoran lost 81 members of its 399 crew (Royal Australian Navy, n.d.). The lack of clarity of the events surrounding the engagement has resulted in conspiracy and controversy towards the actions of Sydney, with the addition of the unknown location of both vessels until 2008. Sydney is the greatest maritime disaster in Australian history. (Affairs, 1999) Aim 2. To investigate the actions of the Sydney and Kormoran towards each other and how they effected the overall outcome. The analysis of the strategic …show more content…

From the accounts of the crew of the Kormoran and the damage of the wreck of Kormoran which was found in 2008, it is clear that the crew continued to fight even after communication was lost with the bridge. The crew of Sydney was highly trained, being praised for actions in battle especially in the sinking if the Italian destroyer Espero (Royal Australian Navy, n.d.). Thus, Sydney would have been able to bring themselves to action stations for each individual department without the usual reliance on the executive branch. For the damage that was inflicted on the Kormoran to cause her to sink would be only possible if continued to fight even with critical damage and beginning to sink. Throughout a battle Sydney's crew had three main objectives; fighting the enemy ship, coping with floods and fighting fires. The training the crew had practised before would have meant that would have worked frantically on these 3 objectives rather than self preservation. Even though these actions resulted in Sydney's crew to unable abandon ship as there was no direct order to evacuate and resilience of Sydney would have trapped a majority of the crew inside the hull. It is miraculous that the crew of Sydney was able to continue fighting for long and inflict the amount of damage on the Kormoran even with a surprise attack, proving the resilience of its crew. (Lewis,

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