Everything about German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran totally explained
The
German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran (
HSK-8) was a
Kriegsmarine (German Navy)
merchant raider of
World War II. Known to the
Kriegsmarine as
Schiff 41, to the
Allied navies she was
Raider G.
Kormoran is known best for the sinking of
Australian
light cruiser HMAS Sydney with all hands (645 souls) in November 1941, during a
battle off
Western Australia, in which
Kormoran was also destroyed. Following many years of speculation and
searches, on
March 16,
2008, Australian Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd announced that
Kormoran had been found. The wreck is reported to be 150 kilometres west of
Shark Bay.
The abbreviation HSK comes from
Handelsstörkreuzer; the German for "commerce disruption cruiser". The ship is sometimes referred to as
DKM Kormoran, where DKM stands for
Deutsche Kriegsmarine, but the Germans themselves didn't use this prefix.
Early history
Kormoran was built by
Germaniawerft of
Kiel and launched on
15 September 1938 as the
merchant ship Steiermark of HAPAG, the
Hamburg-America Line. Renamed
Kormoran (
German for "
Cormorant"), she entered service as a
Kriegsmarine auxiliary cruiser on
9 October 1940, commanded by
Korvettenkapitän (Lieutenant Commander)
Theodor Detmers.
When in service,
Kormoran displaced 8,736 tons and had a top speed of 18-19
knots. The ship was a prime example of the relatively successful "disguised freighter" technique used in
commerce raiding by the Kriegsmarine in World War Two. The largest of the German raiders,
Kormoran operated in the
South Atlantic,
Indian Ocean, and the
South Pacific. In common with other auxiliary cruisers, she'd substantial (hidden) armament: six 150 mm (5.9 in) guns, torpedo tubes and seaplanes, but lacked the armour protection, fire control systems and speed of a proper warship. Successful raiding depended on surprise and disguise.
Raiding voyage
The first of the German Navy's "second wave" of
commerce raiders,
Kormoran departed from Germany via the
Denmark Strait on
December 3 1940 under the command of
KK (later
FK)
Theodor Detmers for operations in the South Atlantic. In four months, she accounted for eight Allied ships, one of which was sent as a prize to occupied France, while the rest were sunk.
Kormoran then moved to a new operational area in the
Indian Ocean; this was less profitable, and saw only three ships sunk between April and November 1941.
In November, she was cruising off the west coast of
Australia, prior to a planned move to a new area in the South Pacific. However, her career came to an end on
19 November 1941, when she destroyed, and was herself destroyed by, HMAS
Sydney.
In a cruise lasting for 352 days, from
3 December 1940 to
19 November 1941,
Kormoran sank ten merchant ships, comprising a total of 56,965 tons, in addition to the one sent to France.
| Date |
Name |
Tons (GRT) |
Location |
Notes |
| January 13 1941 |
Antonis |
3,729 |
|
|
| January 18 1941 |
British Union |
6,850 |
|
|
| January 29 1941 |
Africa Star |
11,900 |
|
|
| January 29 1941 |
Eurylochus |
5,764 |
|
|
| March 22 1941 |
Agnita |
3,552 |
|
|
| March 25 1941 |
Canadolite |
11,309 |
|
Captured and sent to Bordeaux |
| April 9 1941 |
Craftsman |
8,022 |
|
|
| April 12 1941 |
Nicolaos D. L. |
5,486 |
|
|
| June 26 1941 |
Velebit |
3,644 |
|
|
| June 26 1941 |
Mareeba |
4,884 |
|
All 48 crew captured and taken onboard the Kormoran. Ship sunk by demolition charges placed by a boarding party. |
| September 26 1941 |
Stamatios G. Embirikos |
3,580 |
|
|
| November 19 1941 |
HMAS Sydney |
6,980 |
|
|
Final engagement with Sydney
On
19 November1941 the
Kormoran encountered HMAS
Sydney in the
Indian Ocean at, off the coast of
Western Australia between
Carnarvon and
Geraldton. At the time, the German raider was flying a
false flag while posing as the Dutch freighter, the
Straat Malakka, with a black hull and black funnel. Taken by surprise,
Sydney was hit about 50 times by the raider's heavy guns before she managed to return fire. Overall,
Sydney received approximately 150 hits. A
torpedo hit, scored relatively early in the engagement, caused massive damage to the bow of
Sydney. The two heavily damaged ships drifted apart and
Sydney was last seen by the crew of
Kormoran in flames on the horizon, followed by some kind of explosion.
Sydney had inflicted medium damage to
Kormoran, but one hit caused a fire that couldn't be controlled due to the fire fighting equipment being out of order. With 20 dead and the fire in engine room approaching the mine storage deck, Detmers decided at 18:25 to abandon ship to save as many lives as possible. Explosive charges were placed to
scuttle the ship and the surviving crew took to the boats, with Detmers the last to leave. A further 40 men, mostly wounded, lost their lives when their lifeboat capsized in the rough seas. Shortly after midnight the charges were set - at 00:35, the mines exploded and
Kormoran went down rapidly by the
stern.
Detmers and about 320 of his crew (including 3 Chinese
prisoners of war) were rescued from their lifeboats and liferafts by five ships:
Aquitania,
Trocas,
Koolinda,
Centaur and
Yandra. A further two lifeboats came ashore just north of
Carnarvon at 17 Mile Well. Nearly all spent the remainder of the war in an Australian
prisoner of war camp, from which they wouldn't be released until January 1947.
The fact that the only survivors of the battle were from the
Kormoran has allowed the battle between
Sydney and
Kormoran to become the subject of much controversy, speculation and
conspiracy theory. Eventually, it was realised that
Kormoran had inflicted sufficient damage on
Sydney for the Australian warship to be lost without survivors.
Discovery
Kormoran was discovered by the Finding Sydney Foundation, led by search director
David Mearns — a prominent American shipwreck hunter — on
12 March 2008 at, approximately off
Steep Point at depth of . The probable scene of the engagement between the
Kormoran and
HMAS Sydney was also identified by the search team as being approximately south of the wreck of the
Kormoran. The following day,
17 March 2008, Rudd announced that the wreck of the
HMAS Sydney had been discovered from the
Kormoran.
The wreckage of the
Kormoran was provisionally declared to be a historic shipwreck under the Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976 on 17 March 2008.
Further Information
Get more info on 'German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://german_auxiliary_cruiser_kormoran.totallyexplained.com">German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
