PINQ.SUBS.002.0040
SUBMISSION No 36
HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY 1997
SUBMISSION
Barbara Poniewierski
(Barbara Winter)
2')• ,J'J
PINQ.SUBS.002.0041
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. poniewierski
PREAMBLE: MY STANCE TOWARDS THIS INQUIRY:
I have been researching the loss of HMAS Sydney for over 20 years,
unfortunately. My book, HMAS Sydney: Fact, Fantasy and Fraud, was pUblished in
1984; most of it is still valid, and I do not intend to repeat the substance of it in a
new submission. Anybody seeking to make an informed judgment on the matter
ought to have read it carefully, especially Chapter 17 (Aftermath) and Appendix 6
(Refutation of the Letter of Proceedings), and should not take the attitude of one
man in Carnarvon who said that he did not know what was in my book, and he was
not going to read it because it was all lies. If, after having read my book, somebody
wants to tell me I am wrong, which I am in a few places, it would be a matter of
courtesy, as well as of intellectual integrity, to provide evidence of this.
However, my book The Intrigue Master may escape notice, as it is not
specifically related to Sydney. Therefore I enclose photocopies of some relevant
material that was unknown to me at the time I wrote the book on Sydney. (Namely
pages 115-118, 180-181, and 233.) There is other material in this book relevant to
the general background of the time, but not so closely related to the Sydney story.
No doubt members of the committee investigating the loss of Sydney and the
existence or otherwise of documents are being well paid for the job. On the other
hand " having done years of expensive research throughout Australia, as well as in
New Zealand, the United States and Germany, resent that I need to spend more
time in composing this submission, with nothing to gain. I feel an obligation to do
this. While I am not an expert on technical matters concerning ships and gunnery, I
have the best knowledge in Australia of the Intelligence, cryptanalysis and political
background to the affair. As the rest of the world is not greatly interested in it, that
means I have probably the best such knowledge in the world.
It is unfortunate that, over the course of these 20 years, much of my material
has gone astray. Some has been lost; much has been donated to the Naval
Historical Society and is in Sydney out of my reach. Hence, I am no longer able to
be precise in many of my references to sources and dates. If what I say is doubted,
the Committee can do its own checking, or can commission somebody to do it. I am
not going to spend any more money on it. Also, as my time is in considerable
demand at present, the amount that I am willing to spend to pander to the neuroses
of a small gang in Western Australia ;s very limited.
_ Chapter 16 - TIu: Storm Builds Up-
Major G. Egerton Mott: Special
rations Executive. Singapore.
Squadron Leader Garnet Mal : Deputy Director. COIC. MclllOu e.
Charles Drage: Secret Intel 'gcnee Service. Hong Kong.
Ger<11d Wilkinson: Secre ntelligenee Service. Manila.
(Sir George Sansom
gone to Burma and Thailand. wh' Robert Scon and John Proud
were in Australia on b iness.)
Rupert Henderso was in Singapore. but may not hav
n at .the conference. thou~h he
conferred with G vin, suggesting a man be sent to Th and; GalVin arranged c er for him as
a scientific j rnalist. After the conference. Gal 'n went to Hong Kon on a mission."
Henderson sited 'Percival, the Herald man in
ila. and went on to H aii and the United
States. to ange syndication in US papers of ories by the reporters 0 were being paid by
theB'sh"
.
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Long was appalled by the Singapore defences. There was no chance of holding the island.
and senior British officers were making little effon to put this message across in Britain.
Unfortifnately. officers who do point OUt what superiors and politicians prefer not to believe are
the ones who do not get promOled to a rank that gives them authority to make changes.
Long left Singapore on 21 November. arriving in Sydney on 27 November." In the third and
fourth weeks in November. both Long (DNI and D/COlC) and Malley (D.D/COlC) were out of
Australia. while Vice-Admiral Royle (CNS) was preparing to go to Singapore to confer with
Vice-Admiral Sir Tom Phillips. Commander Gower was Acting DNI. and Commodore
Dumford was ACting CNS. Both Dumford and Captain Getting (DeNS) were very busy with .
tWO jobs, and they may not have had full access to Ultra material. It was clear Japan would soon
launch a massive attack somewhere. and a suspicious ship was being hunted off Hoban. so it
did not cause much wony al firsl when HMAS Sydney was overdue.
Sydney had been due in Fremantle on the afternoon of 20 November. and no action was taken
for nearly twenty-four hours; then the District Naval Officer Western Australia notified Navy
Office. DNOWA was Captain Farquhar-Smith, who had been ACNS and DNI (1927-29). and
of whom Brooksbank wrote that he believed in masterly inactivity, for most problems solved
themselves. This lime, he was wrong. Sydney had met the German raider KOn/lOran (Raider
41), the one which Intelligence. for weeks past, had said was in the Pacific, and both ships had
been sunk.
On the evening of Sunday, 23 November. naval wireless stations were ordered to call Sydney
and ask her to report her position. The next day, search aircraft went from Pearce. bUI they were
in the wrong area. Rear-Admiral John G. Crace. RN. (RACAS: Rear-Admiral Commanding
Australia Squadron) was not told that Sydney was overdue unlil 24 November; he wrote in his
diary for that day: "N.B. [Naval Board) think there is a possibility that a Vichy slm (SUbmarine]
escorting a Vichy ship has torpedoed her," If Long had been in Melbourne. the Naval Board
would hardly have been so silly. No Vichy ship would have been near the track Sydney should
have been following; the few Vichy warships in the Indian Ocean were fully occupied escorting
merchanlmen between French colonies (lndo-China. Mauritius. Madagascar. French
Somaliland). The Naval Board knew that, after RN ships seized five Vichy ships and took them
to Durban the French Admiralty ordered attacks on any British ships seen, but they should
have kno~n that the Vichy submarines in the Indian Ocean were between Djibouti and
Diego Suarez."
That afternoon (24 November) the tanker Trocas reported she had picked up Gennan navy men
from a lifcraft. Then the aircraft began to search in the right area. On 25 November. Wellington
reported again that Raider 41 was in the Pacific. On 27 November. Long returned to Sydney.
having heard only an outline of events.
The loss was fell keenly. The RN had suffered heavy losses in men and ships. but the RAN
, had sufferecJ little. and people had not perceived that sea-power cost blood as well as money.
Almost everyone in Navy Office had lost a relation or friend in Sydney, Long more ~an mOSt.
He had been with Captain Burnell at the RANC for four years; they had been ID the old
Australia as midshipmen in 1917. had done courses in England together. had recently been
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together at Navy Office. He had been with Commander (Engineering) Lionel Sydney Dalton at
the RANC and in the new Australia. Commander John R. Hasker and the Reverend George
Stubbs had been with him at Navy Office in 1936. It would have been natural to wonder if
things might have been different if he had been in Melbourne. Now he could only try to find
out what had happened.
Survivors from Konnoran were picked up at sea by Aquitania. Centaur. Koolinda, Trocas
and HMAS Yandra, while two groups made their way ashore north of Camarvon. The shore
groups were mixed with survivors picked up by Centaur. but other groups were kept separate
until interrogations were completed. Commander Ramage was head of Naval Intelligence in
Western Australia. Commander Emile F. V. Dechaineux went from Melbourne to help him. and
Rear-Admiral Crace joined them. With Royle away. Long had to stay in Melbourne; sad as the
loss of Sydney was. worse things were about to happen.
Captain Famcomb, also a friend of Burnett, interrogated in Sydney the men picked up on
23 November by Aquitania. They had left Kormoran early and for several weeks they did not
know there were other survivors. Some tried to tell more of the story than they really knew and
some lied, but the outline of stories told by men from each group. despite discrepancies in
detail, was that Sydney sighted them about ISO nautical miles south-west of Carnarvon and
approached to within about half a mile. Then Kormoran dropped her disguise as the Dutch East
Indies registered Stroot Malakka and landed some ISO shells on Sydney. as well as hilling her
with a torpedo. Ablaze from stem to stem. Sydney was last seen heading slowly south-east.
Kormoran had taken four hits. of which only one was serious; but for that one shell. she might
have escaped."
On 4 December 1941, the Naval Board told the Advisory War Council that it rejected the
suggestion that a second German ship had been involved in the loss of Sydney."
Nothing could undo the disaster. but Long tried to get every detail. if only to try to prevent
such a thing happening again. He asked the army to plant German-speaking personnel secretly
among guards esconing prisoners by train to Victoria. and microphones in the officers' camp
in Murchison.
One thing escaped attention: Kormoran had more telegraphists than really necessary. Some
worked as cryptanalySIS. for large warships on the high seas, including auxiliary cruisers,
carried cipher-breaking units. Aided by hints from home and by captured material. they read a
lot of the messages sent to Allied merchant ships.'" The knowledge Ihat raider captains had
about merchant ship movements was blamed on spies in Australia and New Zealand rather than
on messages sent by the RN and the RAN in vulnerable codes.
The German navy knew almost as much about the salient points of the action as did the RAN.
for the B-Dienst was reading not only the Merchant Navy Code in which signals were sent to
Trocas, but also. since September 1941, much of the Naval Cypher No.2 in which messages
passed between Australia and Britain."
,.
Both naval and military Intelligence kept trying to leam more. to see why Burnett had gone
so close to an unidentified ship, although that was not as unusual as has been claimed; even
Collins had done it. A seaman's diary records:
•
Thursday 23rd Jan. Action Stations sounded off again at noon today smoke was seen on the horizon we
thought it might of being a raider however it turned OUllO be a British cargo boat we went pretty close
she had two guns on the stem which were ready and manned I guess they were releived when they sCIOn
our White Ensign."
What may be part of the answer is not in archives nor mentioned in the official hislory. possibly
because it was obtained after the first official repol1 was written.
The navy and the press were still on poor terms after the Argus allack a year earlier. and
concerning the loss of Sydney the navy had been at its most reticent and sections of the press at
their nastiest. Lieutenant-Commander James Lumley Rycroft. RANVR, Intelligence Officer at
Fremantle, was involved from the beginning. He was disgusted with the press. The stories being
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concocted did no credit to t1leir originators. The initial fuss had died down when he had a
chance to pUlliue a different line.
Stories that the Germans hlld murdered survivors, or that a Japanese submarine was involved. "ignore the fact that the Germans were nol the only survivors: there were three Chinese. formerly
of Eurylochus. They had stayed aboard KormorOll as laundrymen. One of these. Shu Ah Fah
("Max"), hlld been questioned in English in December 1941. He was still in custody in 1942.
February 1942 brought refugees and military personnel from Malaya and the Indies to
FremantJe. Among them was Acting LieutelUlllt Leslie Denis Emerson-Elliotl. A businessman in
Malaya and a member of the RNVR (Straits Settlements). he knew the Chinese dialect spoken by
Max. After Emerson-Ellioll had helped Rycroft with rebellious Chinese seamen. he was asked to
question Max to see if he could leam anything more.
Max confirmed the German story in all major points. but he added two details. He said that.
just before the action. he could see what was happening aboard Sydney and Sydney's crew could
have seen him. Burnell would have expected to see a Chinese seaman on a Dutch East Indies
ship. but not on a German raider.
The second point was that. as Sydney drew near. she elevated her main guns slightly. and
they were no longer trained directly on Konnoran. as though the captain had decided the ship
wa~enuine." It might have been an optical illusion. but al least the guns were not depressed
to compensate for decreasing range. When Sydney opened fire. her only full salvo passed a few
feet above KormorOll. It was a plausible explanation for the fact that Sydney missed a sitting
shot at point-blank range.
A critical point in the aftermath of the sinking concerned wireless signals, and whether
anything that should have been known might have led to starting a search earlier. and perhaps
finding survivors from Sydney. Before the battle. Kormoran had sent QQQQ signals to mislead
Sydney. They were picked up in mutilated form by Geraldton and the coastal vessel Veo.
Neither reported the signal at the time. Geraldton was not manned full-time; as it was meant for
civil aviation use, operators did not feel responsible for scraps of naval messages. Camarvon
had been due to commence operations in November. but was not ready until January 1942.
There have been rumours that a message sent by Sydney after the battle was picked up at
naval wireless stations COonawarra (Darwin). Harman (Canberra) and Applecross (near
FremantJe). at Pearce RAAP base. and by PMG stations at Geraldton and Marble Bar. Some
stories about wireless signals are clearly false; some are errors, but a few have a ring of truth.
The officer in charge of Hannan, the station for ship-tQ-shore communications. was Acting
Lieutenant-Commander Archibald Duncan Maclachlan. His wriler. Robert W. Mason. put this
story on record. Retuming to Harman in the evening of 19 November. he found Maclachlan on the
telephone talking to someone in Melbourne. A telegraphist told Mason that Sydney had "bailed up
a quere [sic) customer" in the Indian Ocean and was trying to identify her. Maclachlan took over a
ship-shore set, then left it to return to the phone and was not replaced. The operator on the only
other set covering the frequency dropped his headphones and rushed [0 Maclachlan's office.
saying: "He says he is about to open ftre." While both sets were left unattended briefly. bystanders
heard another signal corne through. but could nOI understand it.'"
The next morning. most of the staff were sworn to secrecy. but Mason was overlooked. He
claims that on this morning, 20 November, he asked a friend: "The Sydney's gone. hasn't she?"
The story is odd. No decoding was done, so were the alleged signals in plain language? No
signals were heard on Kormoran. On 20 November. there was no need to cover up the incident.
Only by concealing messages and delaying a search would anyone have done anything really
wrong. What of the person on the phone in Melbourne and others in that office? Would they
have been sworn to secrecy? Would a decision have been made in Melbourne or Canberra? It
would be a grave charge 10 make: thaI deceirdeprived possible survivors of Sydney of a chance
of being rescued.
Stories involving Darwin and Pearce are clearly wrong. One claim is that the RAAF at
Pearce received a message from Sydney. reported it to the DNO in Fremantle. and was ignored.
Another is that GeraldlOn picked up a message and for security reasons sent home the female
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PINQ.SUBS.002.0043
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telegraphists. Yet another has it that a message picked up in Darwin was sent on the !'>.M.G.
(Postmaster-General) circuit via Marble Bar to Penh. This message existed. but had nothing 10
do with Sydnty, The key is in an entry in Ihe South West Area Combined Headquanel'll Log for
vessel. resulting in a meeting between someone on shore and a hostile person landed from a
submarine.
On 30 October. MI sent out another officer. No lights had been seen since the previous visit.
and the officer reported that he placed little reliance on some of the observations. but as regards
the lights seen by the Coast Watching Post:
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llJI.I!Cllllnalnm I'flllpri (".lllI'r"1 (Irrnhllllt1 I'l'fll1l1.11111' lit hlRIl/lC'tnlllf1lll11tnlny nn 1,1.~ IlII'\",' hpnnl
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The character or !he men is such thai il cannol be suggesled thai all of them are suffering with
hallucinations. I do nol aecept the theory Ihal these lights are either astronomical plw:nomena or merely
II may be fmm HMAS "Sydney". Later Geraldlnn report slrenglh of slgnllincrea.~ini.
SIMS."
Darwin wa.~ alerted to watch the 24.S metre band. (RIl' is a voice signal.) Darwin identified the
transmitter as P.M.G. Sydney calling P.M.G. Darwin. Someone jumped to the conclusion that
a transmission< fmm Sydney (the city) came from Sydntry (the ship).
The loss of Sydntry. the only warship of any size on the west coast. made Western Australians
feel vulnerable; but Sydntry had never been there primarily to protect the West. She was there
to protect convoys taking troops to Malaya and Singapore. Neither the Commonwealth nor
Britain could protect Western Australia. Only the United States could do that.
II
The army asked that all Italians be removed from the area. not because they were thought
responsible for the signals. but because they might be a danger at some future time. They said
it was likely that the enemy planned 10 land in the area and sabotage the power works at
Yallourn or capture Bairnsdale airfield. It was also<reported that two Beauforts and a Hudson
had left Baimsdale early on 2 November and had disappeared without trace.
Long sent Lieutenant Whittaker (his former Timor agent) to the area. where he spent from
12 to 20 November. checking on the lights and footprints. Two Aborigines from the Aboriginal
Settlement at Lake Tyers said they had been in the area on the day in question. but the Assistant
Superintendent wa.~ prepared to swear on oath Ihat nobody had left the settlement until the nellt
day. This made a landing seem the only possible explanation.
Whittaker reported that some of Ihe suspicious lights were no doubt car lights. cycle lamps.
stars or burning lree Slumps, but thaI there had been some shore-to-sea signals. and there was a
report of a vel)' small. single-engined. fairly silent aircraft wilh no navigation lights passing
near Orbost on the night of 4 October. He recommended that Naval Intelligence officers go to
Orbost and Marlo as civilians to see what they could find out.
There were obvious problems about the theol)' of a plane from an enemy submarine and the
landing of an agent. It was hard to imagine what purpose would be served by a small aircraft
flying over dense bush on a dark night. and it was harder 10 imagine that an enemy submarine
would choose broad daylight to land an agent. and could do so unseen by any coastwatching
post.
It was possible that someone was communicating with an enemy vessel by light signals.
rather than risking using a wireless. but DIF stations had shown no trace of enemy vessels off
the east or south-east coast for some time. and there was little point in communicating sailing
times of vessels. for traffic in the area was so heavy that a submarine would be sure to find
a target.
Taking up Whittaker's suggestion. Long sent to Gippsland Walter Brooksbank and Kevin
Reilfy. senior clerical officer at Navy Office. In the guise of amateur fishermen. they left
Melbourne at midnight on 27 November by rail to Bairnsdale. then by bus to Orbost. There they
contacted the local chief of the Volunteer Air Observer Corps (Cecil Platt) concerning the lights
and the searches made by the Volunteer Defence Corps. The Marlo Hotel licensee gave them a
lift to Marlo. After talking to locals. they set out along the beach with tent and fishing gear.
keeping their eyes open as they fished. Camping in the sandhills. where the cold kept th~
awake. they saw some strange lights. but as these rose in the sky they turned out to be stars.
Walking along the beach toward dawn. they found that heavy surf would make a landing
from a smali boat unlikely. Soon they were picked up by a soldier from a coastwatc}ting post
that had had them under observation as suspicious persons. The rain, which had recently
brought floods to the area. began again. and after proving their identity they were glad to
take sheller.
Brooksbank decided that the lights were not the result of enemy activity, that most were
natural phenomena. although some might have been caused by mischief-makers. When they
returned to Marlo on I December. there was a message for Brooksbank saying that his father
had died. and he decided to waste no more time.
The police and the Security Service took up the matter of the mysterious footprints. Photos
had been taken of the prints. and these were compared with plaster casts from the feet of the
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Aborigines and of Japanese internees at Murchison. The taking of plaster casts of Japanese
footprints has been linked erroneously with claims that Japanese lanL1ed on the coast north of
Carnarvon at about the time Sydney was sunk.
By the end of December, Captain John L. Hehir, who was in charge of the inquiry into the
footprints, was satisfied they had indeed been made by the Aborigines. He took the two
Aborigines down to the beach to compare their prints with photos of the previous ones. The
Assistant Superintendent now only thought the Aborigines had told him they had gone away on
Thursday. not Wednesday. and was no longer prepared to swear to anything.
Long ended tIv: investigation in a report to the Deputy Director of Security, copy to General
Staff Intelligence: "It is not proposed to resume the investigation."
The lights were never identified officially. Nothing found during or after the war indicated there
had reall)lobeen enemy activity in the area. The local story told later was that some of the lights had
come from lads playing a joke on their fathers, who took their civil defence jobs very seriously. and
that, once police arrived. they could not confess. If this was lIUe. Brooksbank's assessment was
exaclly right. How many other rumours regarding spies and landings started in a similar way?
On the other hand, there were reports of Japanese submarines off the west and south coasts
during December 1942 and January 1943: on 6 December, 147 miles west by south of Carnarvon;
on 19. 22, 29 and 31 December. six to seven miles west of Cape Naturaliste; on 4 January.
jifty-Ihree milesfrom Li:lUs Emrance.u The Lakes Entrance report is very dubious, and no ship was
attaCked, much less sunk.. On 10 January, submarines of the 30th Flotilla were ordered to create a
diversion to distract attention from Guadalcana1. [·166 attaCked Cocos Island; on 23 January,
having found nothing more useful to do. [-165 shelled Port Gregory, a minuscule senlement north
of Carnarvon on the west coast." Because of the remoteness of the area. the attack could be kept
secret from the Australian public. unlike the shelling of Sydney and Newcastle in June 1942.
The end of 1942 brought a windfall Intelligence bonanza. On II November. the Dutch tanker
Ondino and a lightly armed escort, the Indian corvette Bengal, were attacked south of the Cocos
Islands by two Japanese merchant raiders. Aikoku Maru and Hokoku Maru. (The first
infonnation on Hokoku Maru was obtained on 18 April 1942 in Seattle from the master of the
Soviet ship Kim. who had been stopped by her on 12 March."') Although both were seriously
damaged. Bengal reached Diego Garcia; Ondino. having been abandoned and reboarded,
reached Fremantle. One raider, Hokoku Maru. was sunk. The Japanese raiders were less
effective than the Germans. They were less heavily armed and their gunnery was not as good.
Hauraki. on 12 July 1942. wirelessed infonnation about her attackers for more than half an hour
before she was.boarded. On receipt of Bengal's wireless signals. which were not jammed. AMC
Kanimbla was sent from Fremanlle to hunt for the attackers.
Into this siruation ambled the unarmed German blockade-runner Ramses. On 28 November. she
crossed the path of a convoy escorted by the cruiser Adelaide (Captain Esdaile). the Dutch cruiser
Jacob van Heemskerck and rwo corvettes. She was sighted first by Adelaide and attacked by both
cruisers. Wireless operator Gerhard Krtiger dumped the secret documents overboard, but Adelaide
made no attempt to board. Ramses scuttled. and Adelaide picked up survivors. who were taken to
Fremantle.
The crew were a mixed bag. Some were ordinary seamen. Some were civilians who had
signed on nominally as crew. as Ramses was not allowed to carry passengers. There were some
navy men. intended as a prize crew for a raider. And there were ten Norwegians. First
interrogations were held in Fremantle and the main interrogation in Sydney. Some were sent to
ATIS for more thorough treatment.
There were some interesting men aboard: businessmen, journalists. a diplomatic courier. The
courier had disposed of his documents. but had a notebook containing names and addresses of
German couriers in the United States. These were forwarded to the FBI, but it is not known if they
were of any use.
Little information was obtained from the naval men, except that, in claiming their right to
naval pay. they conflmled that they were ind~ed naval personnel. and the deductions of "prize
crew" and "rendezvous with a raider" were not hard to make.
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In September, eighty-one days were lost, mai nI
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to other ~ps. Then things improved. Twelve d y owmg to ~e Dumosa dispute, which spread
~ent on Slnke over their beer ration. and trimme:!s were lost III October. when Greek seamen
n~, DOceserters were now imprisoned until they agr~~~ Y~roslav Olg? Topic struck for a pay
sw on any ship that needed them
n tober 1942. Censorship sent Lon
Union to Harry Lundberg of the Sailors Jn~o':~y ~~ a l;tter from Eliot V. Elliott of the Seam~n' s
off in Australia and replaced with non-union AU~~:' an Franci~o, about American crew paid
b~ak down working conditions. Long sent a co Ian crews; ~s. he wrote. was an allempt to
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Y seamen helped lose the war?
The Japanese seldom attacked
have brought Australian coastal ~:rcand ~;I~:oys. If the~ had use~ German tactics, they could
1943, there had been no attacks south of N
~ of ~upplles to the Islands to a halt Since April
the threat of submarines south of 20. ewc: e; Slllce J~n~. none at all. By Dec~mber 1943
4 December that .convoys in this area would ~~~e was neghglble. Notification was given o~
~urther ~nh, Elhott told Dixon that most of the S on 7 ~ectf~ber. as escorts could be better used
m areas where they had former! sailed i
earnen s mon would not sail without an escort
178 ship-days in December.
gave ;~sn~oy.~ Trouble ov~r cessation of convoys cost
and the crew of Sibigo was arrested at Lae whe slon or naval raungs to take over some ships
The ~NS. Acting Captain Roy Russdn Doretonv~r were continuing in any case."
•
E. V. Ellion and Bill Bird, who argued that the w mg, ~ussed the matter with union leaders
not be tol~ that cryPtanalysts would Probably gIt ~:re not glve~ e~ough infonnation. They could
south a.gwn. After talking to Dowling. Ihe a
ance wlllTUng, if Ja~ese SUbmarines headed
some did not. Between 23 and 31 DecembeY ?reed to try to get ships movmg again Some .':Ied
'.
r. SIX were manned ·th
.
-.
'
gIven
to Isswng Warrants for desertion but tim
all
WI naval crews. Consideration was
That was the last massive hold-u Durin e was owed to see if matters would improve
fo~~pShips and tankers. or if sUb~nes :e~~~:nt:o~ ,were gradf,all~ di~ontinued. ex~ept
an , ustralian seamen caused litlle loss of time In Jan
man area. Thngs Improved greatly
Danish Aase Maersk; crew were arrested and'
uary. three and a half days were lost on the
lost in a di~graceful incident at Thursday Island ~h~~~ by a nav~ crew. In March, six days were
and were mcapable of manning the ship Th
I
rew of COriO broached cargo, pillaged liquor
was £30 ~n tw~ men. It did not help disciplinee ~:e';th~ti~or ca~si?g the ship to miss a convoy
In Apnl. thirty-one days were lost' M
on pwd II.
inc,luding twenty on Evi Livanos, whi~~nsail% :~~ :~e day. In June. thiny-one days were lost,
Chmese seamen were detained under National Securit ew crew•.and ten on Panamanian. where
the year. only four days were lost again on E . Li YRegulauons. From then until the end of
where fifteen Chinese were replac~d after th VI ~anos, and .later seven days lost on Klang
of beller character having returned _ were 0 ey~~ac ,ed an engmeer. Australian seamen _ men
lost. Actions taken in 1942-43. backed bynC:nin ~:mg very well., In 1945 there was lillie time
clashes and the poor state of some ships it co ld' ~been effecuve. Considering personality
.Although Michel, the last Gennan 1lle~chan~ rd,~ot expecte~ that no time would be lost.
rlUders had litlle success. Long issued a w . ~ er. was s~nk m October 1943. and Japanese
arnmg m an Intelligence Summ .
A merchanl ship of unproven identity may well be ! r e a t e ' .
ary.
warship. There is liule or no visual dislinclion bet
~.W~th!he clrcumspe<:tion accorded an enemy
armed commerce nll~er; also there is always the Ch,:~n ~ Ig ~IY.~ed blockade runner and a heavily.
cunrn
U·boats, Raider 'J', sunk In 280 S 2'0 W
.
e at t e s Ip may be operating in company with
Expenence hus demonstnlted the wisdom :~I~~~npany. with the runner "Tannenfels".
range rather than by close examination. Raider 'E' ,; ~rehnunary identification by 'deduction' at long
a range of g miles. In World War I H M S "Ra
~ned 10 have opened fire on the S.S. "Allst" at
torpedoes while lowering boalS 10 bo:.rd di~g~ised ~~~~rs o:,nd H.M.S. "AlcanUlr." were both Slink by
Long probably had' Sydney in mind althou h sh
.
unide~tified ship closely. but Ihe m~rchanl ~ide~ was n~t .the only warship to approach an
even trom submarines in the Pacific and
th~ eastem 7:~::m'~~~: and there was little danger
233
PINQ.SUBS.002.0045
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
COMMENTS ON SUGGESTION THAT KORMORAN CREW BE INTERVIEWED:
DOCUMENTS OF POSSIBLE USE:
Bundesarchiv·Milit~rarchiv, Freiburg
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
im Breisgau:
The records of all wireless communications between Germany and the auxiliary
cruisers.
I have been assured that these exist, but I have not seen them personally.
Among other things, they may close a little of the gap between the end of
Kormoran's logbook in late October 1941, and the date when she was sunk.
There may be photocopies or microfilm of these in either the National
Archives and Records Administration, Washington, in the Public Records Office,
Kew, or both.
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC:
The records of the Naval Intelligence wireless intercept service. If they have
survived and can be found in the muddle of unclassified and non-sequential
intercepts, they may show more precisely than I can where Japanese submarines
were located in November and December 1941.
Failing that, the Intelligence Reports based on them may do so.
Public Record Office, Kew:
Michael Montgomery has made much of the fact that a communication f~om
Churchill to Roosevelt on 25/26 November 1941 is withheld. On the basis of thiS, he
claims that the cable "must have" shown that Sydney was sunk by a Japanese
submarine. I think it probably refers to something much more sensitive, as neither
Churchill nor Roosevelt would have considered Sydney really important. Would it be
possible to persuade the British Government to release it? Tony Blair might be more
reasonable than Margaret Thatcher. As a Labour man, he would have fewer qualms
about embarrassing Churchill.
Failing that, there is undoubtedly' a copy of this message, inwards, in
Washington, and there may even be a decrypted intercept in Germany. The
Germans were reading more of British codes and ciphers than has been generally
admitted, and were apparently reading some conversations from scrambler phones,
when these could be intercepted.
The comment by Senator MacGibbon, as reported in the Courier-Mail of 24
November 1997, is a little optimistic. The youngest surviving crew member is 74. All
officers would be at least 80, and few survive. The situation with petty officers is
very similar. Captain Detmers died in 1976; if he had still been alive, he would have
been 95. I append a list of officers, showing their fate, as far as is known. Ranks are
as at 19 November 1941. Most received promotions before the end of the war.
OFFICERS:
Killed aboard Kormoran:
Kapitanleutnant Hermann Stehr (Chief Engineer)
Leutnant Egbert von Gaza (Electrical Engineer)
Died since 1947:
Fregattenkapitan Theodor Anton Detmers (Captain)
Kapitanleutnant Kurt Johannes Otto Foerster (First Officer)
Regierungsrat Dr Hermann Heinrich Fritz Wagner (Meteorologist)
Kapitanleutnant Henry Karl Martin Meyer (Navigation Officer)
Oberleutnant zur See Fritz Julius Skeries (Gunnery Officer)
Oberleutnant zur See Edmond Bernhard Josef Schafer (Speedboat and
searchlights)
Oberleutnant zur See Wilhelm Gerhard Brinkmann (Anti-aircraft Officer,
Prisoners)
Leutnant zur See (S) Rudolf Wilhelm Jansen (Prize Officer)
Leutnant zur See (S) Johannes Diebitsch (Prize Officer)
Leutnant zur See (S) Bruno Hermann Kube (Prize Officer)
Leutnant zur See (S) Wilhelm Christian Bunjes (Prize Officer)
Leutnant Dr Fritz List (Reporter of Propaganda Department)
Leutnant Walter Hrich (UFA cameraman)
Marinestabsarzt Dr Karl Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Lienhoop (Physician)
Marineassistenzarzt Dr Siebelt Habben (Surgeon and dentist)
Still alive when last I heard:
Kapitanleutnant Herbert Bretschneider (Executive Officer)
Oberleutnant zur See Reinhold Karl Max, Freiherr von Malapert (Wireless
Officer)
Oberleutnant zur See Heinz Christoph Max Messerschmidt (Mines Officer)
Oberleutnant zur See Joachim von Gosseln (Administration and training)
Oberleutnant zur See Joachim Hans Greter (Torpedo Officer)
Oberleutnant zur See Heinrich Friedrich Ahl (Naval Air Observer)
Von Malapert is somewhere in South America.
Ahl had a nervous breakdown after his wife died about 1991 and is not fit to be
interviewed.
Von Gosseln is also in poor health.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0046
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Engine Room personnel, Division Three:
WARRANT OFFICERS:
Killed aboard Kormoran:
Obermaschinist Friedrich Nagel (Engine-room)
Stabsmaschinist Fritz Holzel (Engine-room)
Stabsmaschinist Alfons Storney (Engine-room)
Verwaltungsfeldwebel Johann Hahn
Verwaltungsfeldwebel Johann Duismann
Died since 1947:
Stabsoberfunkmaat Paul Kahn (Wireless)
Obersteuermaat Sigmar Weinig (Navigation)
Stabs*Pwk Johann Schneider (Secondary Armament)
(unsure of correct full designation of rank)
Stabsmaschinist J. Fritz Noll (Engine room)
Obermaschinist Rudolf Johannes Wilhelm Lensch (Engine room)
Still alive when last I heard:
Obermaschinist Gerhard Hermann Karl Mitzlaff (Engine room)
Oberbootsmaat Emil KOhlen (?)
No information:
Waffenwart Oskar Aloysius Marwinski (Mines)
Obermaschinist Edmund Schmidt (Engine room)
PETTY OFFICERS:
Seamen, Division One:
"Oberbootsmaat Karl Reidt
Oberbootsmaat Hans Kuhl
*Bootsmaat Paul Bergmann
Bootsmaat Ernst Hennig
Bootsmaat Friedrich Ahsbass
Bootsmaat Herbert Krahn
Killed:
Oberbootsmaat Leonhardt Treutler
Seamen, Division Two:
*Oberbootsmaat Richard Emil Adolph Kohls
Oberbootsmaat Josef Auer
Bootsmaat Erich Berger
Bootsmaat Otto JOrgensen
*Bootsmaat Paul Kobelt
Bootsmaat Erhardt Saalfrank
Killed:
Bootsmaat Willi Dobileit
Maschinenobermaat Emil Karl Albers
Maschinenobermaat Martin Duffy
*Maschinenobermaat Siegfried Frossel
Maschinenobermaat Rudolf Hagge (name uncertain)
Maschinenobermaat Ernst Karl (name uncertain)
Maschinenobermaat Otto Knauthe
Maschinenobermaat Hermann Kretzer
Maschinenobermaat Werner Liebisch
*Maschinenobermaat Peter Moller
Maschinenobermaat Hans Johann August Nabig
Maschinenobermaat Henry Wilhelm Max Warnecke
Maschinenobermaat Heinz Weinberg
Maschinenmaat Max Friedolin BOrger
Maschinenmaat Helmut Gonzendorf
Maschinenmaat Heinz Eisenmenger
*Maschinenmaat Max Hahnert
Maschinenmaat Paul Kienolth
Maschinenmaat Heinz Kitsche
Maschinenmaat Karl Albert Gustav KOgler
Maschinenmaat Hans Maier
Maschinenmaat Hans Naregaard
Maschinenmaat Gerhard Seegar
Maschinenmaat Friedrich Schwenzer
Maschinenmaat Paul Gustav Vogler
Killed:
Maschinenobermaat Bruno Demandt
Maschinenobermaat Helmut Heinzemann
Maschinenobermaat Heinrich Knupper
Maschinenobermaat Otto Lenz
Maschinenobermaat Alfons Ross
Maschinenobermaat Fritz Tiemann
Maschinenmaat Franz Heinze
Maschinenmaat Wilhelm Hinkel
Maschinenmaat Franz Pastuschka
Miscellaneous, Division Four:
*Signalobermaat Erich Ahlbach
Funkobermaat Wilhelm Grun
Funkobermaat Karl Ropers
Funkobermaat Erich Trottmann
Funkobermaat Willy Tummers
Funkmaat Helmut Gunther Ewald Funke
Steuermannmaat Hermann Hahn
Steuermannmaat Karl Will
Mechanikerobermaat Karl Kurzius
Mechanikerobermaat Hermann Muhlhausen
Mechanikerobermaat Willy Rotzin
Mechanikerobermaat Gustav Thieme
Mechanikermaat Anton Haussler
305
PINQ.SUBS.002.0047
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Mechanikermaat Georg Meissner
Mechanikermaat Werner SchOller
Verwaltungsmaat Edgar Emmerich
Schreibermaat Erich Jacobeit
Mach{?)maat Kurt Dzudek
Feuerwehrmaat Gerhard Reinsch
Feuerwehrmaat Willi Menk
Zimmermannobermaat Friedrich Gustav Christian Wilhelm Westpfahl
Killed:
Mechanikerobermaat Gerhard Gause
Steuermannmaat Joachim Martin
Steuermannmaat Herbert Rickert
Steuermannmaat Kurt Quednau
Verwaltungsmaat Alex Barthel
Verwaltungsmaat Horst Schuster
Sanitatsmaat Bernhard (Berthold?) van der Tweer
Of course, many more must have died than I know about, particularly in the
last few years. If an inquiry had been held when Michael Montgomery suggested it
in 1981, or I did in 1984, or even when the Sydney Forum in Fremantle called for it
in 1991, it might have served some purpose.
However, hardly anyone still alive is fit to be interviewed. Otto JOrgensen has
long been the spokesman for the Kormoran crew, as he spoke and wrote very good
English. (He had taught English at Secondary School.) About two years ago, his
mental faculties apparently degenerated to the point where he is incapable of
responding to letters or telephone calls.
The situation has been made worse by several people in Western Australia
who have written abusively to individual Kormoran crew members threatening them
with dire consequences if they do not finally "tell the truth". Thus they have, after
years of this sort of unconscionable harassment, developed considerable resistance
to approaches from Australia.
The Germans who have been involved in this have developed a great
contempt for the mean-spiritedness of those Australians who are not mature enough
to accept an unpalatable truth (namely, that the captain of Sydney blundered), and
who therefore seek to blackguard others. This is combined with a patronising but
genuine pity for the unfortunate relatives of the men lost on Sydney for the way they
are being constantly tormented by the revival of these accusations.
The person who would be in the best position to be interviewed would be
Joachim Greter. He is highly intelligent, speaks excellent English (better, in fact,
than JOrgensen did), and he has a broad outlook. However, he has been harassed
to the extent that he would need very polite and tactful handling, and even then
might refuse to cooperate. They think: "What is the use of saying anything if we are
not believed? We have told the truth over and over again. If we have not been
believed so far, what chance is there that we are going to be believed now?"
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
The delay in holding an inquiry has had another consequence. Captain
Detmers' wife, Ursula, died early in October 1997. They had no children. This
means that her property has been dispersed, and the Cassell's German-English
dictionary into which Captain Detmers enciphered a secret report on the action, has
probably been lost. Before anyone gets too excited about this dictionary, I must say
that I saw it and decoded some of it, and it was identical, except for minor variants in
wording, to the story that the crew have always told.
Crew in Australia:
Hermann Ortmann (Matrosengefreiter, Division One), resident in Victoria. He
has always been aware of and disgusted by the antics in Western Australia and
thinks that the inquiry is a waste of time and money. However, he may talk to a
polite representative of the inquiry.
Helmut Kloppe (Matrosenobergefreiter, Division Two), was resident on the
Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore or Mooloolaba. He has a silent phone number and
is tired of being pestered.
Helmut Pieknik (Maschinengefreiter, Division Three). Address unknown;
probably Victoria, possibly New South Wales.
Wilhelm Elmecker (Matrosengefreiter, Division One), lives in Victoria, near
Tatura. After an unpleasant experience with Michael Montgomery, he has been
unwilling to discuss the matter with anybody.
Erich Ernst Falk (Maschinenobergefreiter, Division Three) lives in New South
Wales, probably in the vicinity of Katoomba. I have not met him; I hear he is a
"difficult" man.
To the best of my knowledge, other Kormoran crew members who returned to
Australia, and one who remained here, have died. These were Viktor SchOttenberg
(Matrosenobergefreiter), Heinz Homann (Matrosengefreiter), and Paul Kobelt
(Bootsmaat). I have no confirmation of the story that Siegfried Frossel
(Maschinenobermaat) also settled here.
Other witnesses:
People repeat with monotonous regularity that the Germans were the only
surviving witnesses to the battle between Sydney and Kormoran. Of course they
were not. There were three Chinese. Interrogation of only one of these is retained
in the files relating to Sydney, as there was difficulty finding an interpreter. At least
one of them was interviewed, about April 1942, by Lieutenant Leslie Denis
Emerson-Elliott of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (Straits Settlements), a
Chinese-speaking MI-6 contact agent with certain Chinese and native groups
(Jakuns and Sakais?) in the Malay Peninsula. Emerson-Elliott lives in Canbe.rra;
however, he is approaching ninety, and has become forgetful. I do not know If he
could still give a worthwhile account of this interrogation, nor do I know what
happened to any report that might have been written on the basis of it.
']/)'-:I
,).
PINQ.SUBS.002.0048
8cllccrca
151
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by 8. Poniewierski
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF MUCH OF THE CONFLICT CONCERNING
SYDNEY.
Th~ acc~sations of conspiracies, and the counter-conspiracies, originate
almost entirely In Western Australia. It must be difficult to keep a clear and level
head there when being worked over by a few vocal fanatics with access to the
press. There are various psychological processes at work, and I have said that
anybod~ who wishes to make a further contribution to the body of material
concerning Sydney needs to be not a historian but a psychiatrist specialising in
certain types of abnormality.
I d~Ubt that the Inquiry will serve any useful purpose, as the unwillingness of
the conspiracy advocates to recognise that what has been revealed is about all that
there is has little to do with facts, and much to do with their psychological problems.
Some years ago, ~ome gentlemen in Western Australia were saying that they had
hundreds of questions they wanted me to answer. On one of my visits there, I
devoted much of one day to talking to them. They asked a few questions, and
assur~d me they had no more to ask, but within a few months they had gone back to
repeating that they had hundreds of questions to ask me. They are in love with their
fantasies and immune to reason.
1. Hypnagogic hallUcinations.
. These are ~kin to the "false memory syndrome". The person who presents
stones.u~der the mfluence of such a false memory or hallucination, which can be
more VIVid than reality, is not lying, and can become very disturbed if his memory is
challenged by the presentation of facts that show he is wrong.
EXAMPLES:
1. Ean McDonald and allegations of wireless intercepts aboard HMAS
Perth.
2. ~robably operative in the case of the stories told by Pat Young,
which fooled Michael Montgomery, but did not fool me, because I
checked certain things that could be checked against electoral rolls
and Shire Council records.
3. The story that Kanimbla was sent out to hunt for Kormoran in
November 1941. I was told this by at least two separate crew
members. Fact is that the ship was in the Persian Gulf during most of
November 1941, but was sent out to hunt Michel in November 1942.
Even with documentary evidence, they were probably not convinced.
,)
;') ).'
,) , \ )
'.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0049
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
~
..
'.
2. A false chain of logic.
Someone constructs this logic: "It is possible that A happened. If A
happened, then B might have happened. Therefore 8 certainly did happen."
From an uncertain hypotheses, one makes a speculation and treats the result
as a certainty. This cannot be done. This chain of faulty logic has been used
repeatedly by the conspiracy theorists, and is particularly noticeable in Michael
Montgomery's book. It is particularly seductive if a reader wants to believe that B
happened.
EXAMPLE:
Although he has recognised that the so-called "Kitsche diary" was not
a diary but a translation of an ill-informed piece of fiction by Robert
Shaw Close, Montgomery continued to write in later editions so though
this were genuine; he has not drawn the inescapable conclusion that
all the claims he has made that are based mainly or solely on this
document are also invalidated.
In fact, nobody with any knowledge of naval or military procedure or
the German language, even if totally unfamiliar with the SydneyKormoran affair, should have been fooled by this diary for a moment,
as a Commander does not address a junior officer as "Herr Leutnant".
"
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3. "Somebody said so" syndrome.
The person who "said so" may have been a passing contact in a train or a
hotel bar. He can often not be identified, or, if he can be, is almost always dead, so
that his statement cannot be verified.
EXAMPLES:
1. Jack Heazlewood and the story that Cape Otway found a lot of
bodies. As the logbook of Cape Otway for the relevant period is
missing, this was given some credence, even though many ships' logs
are missing. A researcher in Western Australia has found a crew
member who was aboard at the time, and who says that it was not so.
2. A woman who refused to identify herself on the telephone claimed
that Kormoran had been in the Mediterranean in the early part of the
war. She knew, because a naval officer had told her. She became
abusive when I suggested that the Royal Navy might not have let a
large German surface vessel out of the Mediterranean by either the
Straits of Gibraltar or the Suez Canal.
3. Dr I. Wittwer's claim that "gunnery officers" from Kormoran said that
a Japanese submarine sank Sydney. He also claims that ASIO is
suppressing relevant documents. See separate submission.
4. Michael Montgomery claimed on Lateline that an Italian who was in
the same prison camp with Kormoran survivors in Harvey (Western
Australia) was told by them that they had hoisted a white flag before
opening fire. Now, while they were in the same camp, they were not in
the same compound, and communication was very limited. This Italian
should be identified and asked how he made contact, and in what
language, and why a German seaman entrusted to him a secret they
would have been desperate to keep.
Jlo
'.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0050
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etter, \.l'a"e u POll the sea,'.
cCfI:\in tree on the somhrrn slopes of the Hinl::lt.ps a he·crow "'ith his mOle, In Ihe bollo"o or Ihe lOme nu d...elt
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ours 1h:a1l sUn'h-e"."
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I h:lve paliently endured the \ill~iny 01 Ihe bbel m.le, bUI , ,h. II
DOlf no longer pUI up ,..ilh il!"
"AI... busband," nid Ihe she.crow. • ...e 're powerless .g;sin51 him:"
"Enough 01 this 131k," he ,,",wered, "H.,·c )'OU IlOI heord Ih.t
he "'ho is cle"e< is urong: he \"ho i' stupid is ,,'C.k? ~Olf 1 h.'e
a str.l:Igem," Ihe he·crow .nswered. "Tlie SOli 01 Ihe r:ljah I, in
Ihe b.bit 01 coming 10 bolhe in )'Ondcr ble, nerore plnnging in
Ihe ...aler, he deposit< Ihe golden eh.in lie ...ran .ronnd his neel. on
a O.t ror"- 11 will be lonr I.sk 10 5Iral Ihi, cI,.in Ihe nexl liul.
Ihe prince eOllles 10 b.,he, :rnd Ihen drop il in Ihe hollo.. 01 our
Iree, Then, \..hen Ihe raj.h·' men m.ke a ... reb lor Ihe lost orna.
ment, Ihe "'i1 one is '"re 10 be ...,n and 10 be killed."
Thlls il ....s <lone: Ihe gold.n chain
Stol<n, hidden, and re,
COtered, and the skull 01 the bl3Ck cobra bl' Ihe ujah', mell \\,,,t
crushed.
Therelore it is 53id:
lI·h.ln't, if impossibl. 10 palnrm b] 'IUIII:'It, UII, ""y do "1
!»
(\)
11er ne", of gallant Illen "all
sunk benealh the \Yne,"
-AJinJu 5at
TIID[ U'Tn on
r.
!eIII
-....t
TOLL FOR THE BRAVE
leu pl:ul:s, Iickl:11 the \,'ounued rous silence, he slared at her
",ith hellish longues, • •
with fanatical fUl")'o He turned
The Kormom,,'s own first to the grimed ligure beside him,
broad.idc: sllla;hcd into the
"Herr Oberleutnantl"
S)"dl:<fs bridge, silencing her
"Jawohl, Herr Kapitan?"
"You quite understand )'our
main b:lllery. But wilh inde'
penden( firing her guns slill oruers?"
i"Oared like running Ihundel',
"Jawohl. Herr Kapitan•.••
The raider floundered under All able are to abandon ship in
the ,',mcussion of continuous the remaining boats and pull
The forelllast toward the enemy cruiser as if
shell bursts,
buckled anu thumped acro~s the seeking to be picked up by her,
fo'c'sle in 3 snarl of flaying Immediatclr our boats are clear.
shrouds. The smoke Slack fold, I am to loose two torpedoes at
ed up lile crumpled lead, On the S)'dnlJ from the undamaged
the Illain deck, plates belched. tubes on the main deck, I am
, , A bro:ulside gun hunled up, then to join )"ou with the tube
In the gllastl)' liglll of while hot cre"'s in the remaining boal,"
metal. !1001'S, stanchions, meJl,
",-\nd qnickly, Herr Obert
and folding sheets of steel all leutnant,
By the feel of her
mingled in a debris of flying she will drop from under us at
,
death. )len \l'rillll~d and drag. an)' moment."
"Our wounded, Herr Kapged their mangled bodies round
and rounu. like killens clawing itan?"
,
.
"They will have the honor oC
in a \"ell oC lire,
From the Kormorml'S 101'11 d~'ing for the Vaterland and
and smoking bridge, came the their Fuhrer:' was the harsh
sudden order: "Cease Fire:" In reply.
the ,'aCUUtll oC Hilled gUlls rose..,
"Heil Hitler!"
the grinding of me:al 011 llIetal,
"Hei! Hitlerl"
The Obert
the lerrible cries and moaning lelllnant acknOWledged with upof Ihe "'ounced and d~ing, flung aIm.
'
Somewh~re a dangling, \,'reeked
From the sinking KOl'momn
bridge ):H!der banged monOlon, packed boals splashed into the
01151)' to each roll of the sinking water and pulled awa)' in the
ship, Along the broken decks. flame·lit sea.
.
tallgled lire ho;es curled like
Across ,the narrow chanqel.
enormo::s \'iscera \'Tenched Crom the S)'dney \,'aited for her vic.
the ship's broken bOh·els.
tim's sun'ivon, Her midships
~he Kormoran's commander still glowed \dth the lire that
clung to a twisted bridge SIan, demoyed her own boats and
chion, As Ihe \'iclorious ~uns Carley floats.
of Ihe S,~dlJq cea.ed int,o ch'ival. , Suddenly two bUbbling tracks
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PINQ.SUBS.002.0051
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
7. The hidden agenda merchants.
One needs to ask: what psychological motive does this person have for
peddling this theory? If he really believes it, what has bent him that way?
EXAMPLES:
1. The late Gordon Laffer: his cousin Peter was lost in Sydney. Gordon
was in the RAAF. Peter's mother blamed the RAAF, and by proxy
Gordon, for not having done enough to find survivors of Sydney. Mr
Laffer would have denied that this affected his judgment, but it
undoubtedly did.
2. The Sunday Times vendetta: who in a high position in this paper
has a vested interest in printing accusatory and defamatory material
that a reasoned analysis should show to be false? Most of this material
is so obviously suspect that no other paper in Australia will touch it. (I
suggest a confidential interrogation of certain reporters, who could be
anxious for the security of their jobs if they told the truth.)
8. Contaminated evidence:
The old blokes get together in a hotel and chat, and persuade one another of
something that is not so.
EXAMPLE:
Reg Lander and the case of wireless signals allegedly sent by
Kormoran and tracked by a HFIDF unit in Australia. He admitted in
1991 that they did not know the origin of the signals, but his evidence
has since been contaminated by John Doohan. See separate
submission.
9. Confusion of dates or merging two separate events into one.
The concept of the passage of time is one of the most fallible aspects of the
human memory. We all make mistakes in this respect, sometimes quite quickly, let
alone after fifty years or more. However, some people will not admit that they could
possibly make such a mistake, and others believe such evidence too readily.
EXAMPLE:
1. See reference to the Kanimbla story under "hypnagogic
hallucinations".
2. One man'claimed that they had passed through a field of debris
from the Sydney-Kormoran associated with a number of icebergs. The
presence of icebergs off Carnarvon would be quite a phenomenon.
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
10. The honour of the service.
Once the navy has taken a stand on a topic, it is unwilling to retreat from it. In
this, the navy is not different from the Australian Medical Association, the police
forces, the education authorities, the Bar Association, the Press Council and other
professional associations where members close ranks and do their utmost to thwart
the emergence of a truth that would embarrass a colleague or lead to legal action.
Although I endorse to a large extent the official account of the loss of Sydney,
the navy has foolishly laid itself open to accusations of "cover~ups" in significant
matters, because it has engaged in distortion in some minor ways, and in a few
cases naval personnel have told outright lies. (In a like case, it is evident that the
navy's efforts to cover up certain material regarding the collision between Melbourne
and Voyager were not only reprehensible but so clumsy as to be counterproductive. )
EXAMPLES:
1. The body on Christmas Island. The official handling of this matter
has been an absolute disgrace. See separate submission.
2. Let's not embarrass Captain Burnett's family. Many naval men know
exactly the sort of thing that went wrong before and during the action.
They refuse to admit it outside a closed circle, out of consideration for
Burnett's family. This has caused great grief to many other families,
and it is time for them to face up to the truth and state the facts. I doubt
that many will do so without legal compulsion.
3. Let's not suggest that higher naval authorities had to bear some of
the blame for sins of both omission and commission, in what they
failed to include in Intelligence Reports and orders, and in publishing
things that were misleading and dangerous.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0052
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
DOCUMENTARY ORIGINS OF THE CONFLICT CONCERNING SYDNEY:
1. Documents incorrectly identified.
One important such document is the so-called "logbook" in the Australian
Archives in Melbourne. It is not a logbook, but a rather poor translation of a
summary of Kormoran's cruise, compiled in Berlin ca 1943. Anybody with even a
scant knowledge of naval procedure should recognise that no navy would be
satisfied to accept such a skimpy and incomplete account as a fog. Michael
Montgomery accepted the designation of the account as a logbook, and said
Detmers was lying about certain matters because they were different in this account,
or not in it at all. In most cases, they are in the real log, which would not have been
difficult to find, as there are copies (at least on microfilm) in England, the United
States, Australia and Germany. (Of course, the log is in German, which Montgomery
cannot read to any great extent.)
The newspaper report or book that gets the wording or translation
2.
slightly wrong.
The initial error may have been quite innocent and insignificant, until taken as
the basis for an otherwise untenable hypothesis, indeed, one that is demonstrably
false. It may also have been done deliberately to "spice up" a story for financial gain
to the writer.
EXAMPLES:
1. The claim that Kormoran had a motor torpedo boat and used it
during the action. This is based on a mistranslation in one book of the
word "LS-Boot" (Leichtes Schnellboot). These boats, which appear to
have been similar to an "E-boat", could be equipped to carry either
torpedoes or mines (but not both), or adapted for some other purpose.
The LS-Boot on Michel could carry torpedoes; the LS-Boot on
Kormoran, as well as the one on Komet, was equipped to lay mines,
and could not carry torpedoes. On the basis of a shoddy translation in
one book, the story has grown up that Sydney was attacked by
Kormoran's torpedo boat, which she did not have. This is
demonstrably wrong, but the conspiracy theorists cannot or will not
understand this.
2. David Kennedy's claim that a German wireless operator told a
Norwegian wireless operator that while in Tokyo he had picked up a
signal from Kormora". after the battle. See separate submission.
3. The frequent confusion between Back (forecastle) and Heck (stern
or poop). Montgomery relied on this error to justify claims that Detmers
had lied in connection with Kormoran's smoke generator.
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
3. A paraphrased report where the writer has misinterpreted the original.
EXAMPLES:
1. The allegation that a Court of Inquiry was held and the report
withheld. Richard Summerell's analysis of this case is excellent.
However, there is the possibility that the final interrogation of Detmers
by three naval officers could have been considered a "Court of
Inquiry". The report of this interview is filed with the interrogation
reports, but may not have been recognised as a "Court of Inquiry", nor
indeed regarded as one. The officers appear to have been Rear
Admiral Crace, Captain Farquhar-Smith and Lieutenant-Commander
Rycroft, but this is uncertain.
2. A typical example of incorrect paraphrasing, not directly related to
Sydney, occurs in Michael Montgomery's book in Chapter 7 regarding
Orion. See separate submission.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0053
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
STATEMENT OF LOGICAL PRINCIPLES:
ALLEGATIONS THAT A JAPANESE SUBMARINE SANK SYDNEY:
It would almost be possible to write a textbook of logic using nothing but
examples from the Sydney story to illustrate types of logical fallacies.
This claim was an early invention, and has gained widespread credence in
Western Australia almost from the beginning. It has been impossible for some
people to face the prospect that the darling of the Australian fleet was lost through
poor handling on the part of the Australian captain. It simply could not happen to
wonderful us; we were robbed; the referee was on the other side.
Two of the basic tenets of logic are these:
1. If one premise is false, then valid reasoning can lead to a false conclusion. (e.g.
Only birds lay eggs. Geckos lay eggs. Therefore geckos are birds.)
2. Even if both premises are true, then invalid reasoning can lead to a false
conclusion. (e.g. Cats are animals. Dogs are animals. Therefore cats are dogs.)
Michael Montgomery's book abounds in examples of non sequitur of various
classifications, and there are examples of petitio principii.
Sample cases of non sequitur include:
post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after, therefore because of): e.g. the claim that the
communication of 25/26 November 1941 from Churchill to Roosevelt must have
been related to the sinking of Sydney on 19 November 1941.
ad verecundiam (appeal to authority - without regard to the reliability of the
authority): e.g. deductions based on the logbooks that are not logbooks; deductions
based on the "Kitsche diary" that is not the eyewitness account it was claimed to be.
Post-war, the story came to be associated with 1-124, which was sunk off
Darwin in January 1942. She was blamed for the sinking, and for the alleged
sightings of alleged aircraft in the Carnarvon-Geraldton-Pearce area in OctoberNovember 1941, although (-124 was not equipped to carry an aircraft. There was
also no reason to suppose that, since she was off Darwin in January 1942, she was
the vessel off Carnarvon in November 1941, if there had been one there.
(-124 was known to have been in Hainan at the beginning of December 1941,
and could not have returned there from the area of the sinking of Sydney in time to
go to the area allotted to her for the invasion of the Philippines. Some people have
said that she could have made it in time. Perhaps, if she could have travelled on the
surface at top speed, but not by any stretch of the imagination when she would have
had to travel underwater by day, for almost the whole of the trip, while off the
Western Australian coast and through the straits between islands of the Netherlands
East Indies. Underwater travel entailed a dramatic drop in speed.
ignoratio elenchi (irrelevance): e.g. deductions concerning Detmers from alleged
happenings in camps for civil internees, with which he had no connection.
This Inquiry needs basically:
1. a really sharp barrister used to the principles of law and cross-examination, one
with common sense and insight as well as a University degree.
2. a logician who can spot and classify logical fallacies. (I am only an amateur
logician.)
3. a technically qualified naval person, and if the Australian navy is going to close
ranks and refuse to admit evident truths for fear of upsetting colleagues, that person
might have to come from outside, e.g. the United States. (Britain would not do.) This
would at least in part absolve Australian officers of the moral dilemma of choosing
between telling the truth and incriminating fellow members of the service, or
protecting their colleagues by telling lies or preserving a cowardly silence.
4. a historian who knows the background of the period with regard to Intelligence,
cryptanalysis and politics, and is not limited by considerations of technology and
operations.
5. a German linguist (experienced in naval terminology and practice) who can
identify errors based on mistranslations.
With due respect to members of the Inquiry, how many of these categories
are covered adequately? And what steps are being taken to supply any
deficiencies? I am disturbed by the low level of understanding of the situation and
the lack of due care that allowed such a basic error as "KSN" Kormoran to get into
Hansard, remaining through various drafts to the stage of final printing, and even to
find its way into the terms of reference of this Inquiry.
Those who see this point then make the excuse that if it was not (-124, then it
was some other submarine, and each time it is proven that the one they have
nominated could not have been there, they fish around for another candidate.
Japan, however, had only a finite number of submarines, and they can all be located
elsewhere at a time that would have made it operationally unfeasible for them to
have been in the area where Sydney was sunk, at the time when she was sunk.
I append a list of Japanese submarines, and their locations at some place
and date that would have made it impossible for them to be off Carnarvon on 19
November 1941. It is compiled mainly from Submarines of the Imperial Japanese
Navy; 1904-1945, by Dorr B. Carpenter and Norman Polmar, Conway Maritime
Press 1985 London. Somebody with more interest in this topic might be able to
refine'the lo~ations further, and at a date closer to 19 November, or possibly find
errors. I find the matter just too ridiculous to spend more time on it.
It should be noted that there was no such thing as an "I-Class" submarine, as
the submarines with the "I" prefix were of different classes, as is indicated in good
reference books on submarines. Japanese naval submarines had the prefixes "I",
"RO" and "HA", on the pattern of an ancient poem that began "I-ro ha ni-ho~he-to".
Army supply submarines broke with this pattern and used the prefix "YU". Only.the
"\" and "RO" submarines are on the Battle Order, as the others were not operational
in 1941.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0054
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
JAPANESE SUBMARINE FLEET:
Order of Battle, November-December, 1941.
RO Series:
33 and 34: 21 st Submarine Division, 4th Submarine Squadron, assigned to
Combined Fleet Headquarters, to operate in waters south of Japan and cover
landings in Philippines and Malaya.
57, 58 and 59: 6th Submarine Division, training vessels attached to Kure District.
All other existing vessels of this series (60-68) formed the 7th Submarine Squadron,
assigned to the protection of Mandated Islands in the Pacific.
I Series:
(Note: Not all numbers were allotted, and some numbers were changed at varying
times by adding a "1" in front of the old number. Some submarines had three
different designations, and the same number was often given, at different times, to
different submarines. The numbers given are, as far as can be ascertained, those
valid in November-December 1941.)
DATE
PLACE
Left Japan to refuel at Kwajalein in Marshall
1 to 7:
on or after 10.11.41
Islands, then to patrol Molokai/Oahu
(Hawaii)
(presumed as above)
To patrol south of Oahu before and during
8:
the attack on Pearl Harbour
on or after 10.11.41
Left Japan to refuel at Kwajalein, then to
9:
patrol north of Hawaii
10.11.41
Left Yokosuka to patrol Aleutian Islands,
10:
5.12.41
11:
Not completed until 16 May 1942
12:
Launched 1943
13 and 14: Not built
Left Japan to refuel at Kwajalein, then to
15,17:
on or after 10.11.41
patrol north of Hawaii
16,18,20,22,24: 18.11.41
Left Kure for Pearl Harbour; carried midget
submarines
19,21,23: 26.11.41
Left Kuriles with carrier force for Hawaii
26:
19.11.41
Left Yokosuka for reconnaissance of US
bases in South Pacific
Not built
27-39:
Launched 1942
40:
Launched 1943
41-48:
Building cancelled 1943
49-50:
Launched 1921 as 1-44; renumbered 1924; stricken 1941
51:
Launched 1922 as I-51, re-numbered I-52 in 1924; training vessel,
52:
Headquarters, Kure. *
From end November 1941 Invasion support fleet, Philippines, Malaya *
53·60:
Sunk in collision, 2 October 1941
61:
From end November
Invasion support fleet, Philippines, Malaya *
62:
63:
Sunk in collision, Bungo Strait, 2 February 1939
320
64-66:
67:
68-70:
71-73:
74-75:
76:
77:
78-82:
83-85:
86-120:
121-124:
125-151:
152-185:
From end November
Invasion support fleet, Philippines, Malaya *
Lost during training exercise, Bonin Islands, 29 August 1940
Beginning December
Patrol south of Oahu *
Beginning December
Patrol Lahaina anchorage, Maui, then south
of Oahu *
Beginning December
Patrol south of Oahu
Completed 4 August 1942
Launched 20 December 1941
Launched 1942
Launched 1943
Launched 1942 or later, building cancelled, or numbers not allotted
Late November 1941
Hainan Island
Support landings in Philippines. Later to
Early December 1941
Netherlands East Indies or Malaya, then
blockade duties (mine-laying)
Launched 1942 or later, building cancelled, or numbers not allotted
(With gaps) Numbers re-assigned from 52-85, during 1942. Indicated
above with *.
/-121 and /-122 formed the 13th Submarine Division of the 6th Submarine Squadron.
/-123 and /-124 formed the 9th Submarine Division of the 6th Submarine Squadron.
1-121, /-122 and /-123 were originally numbered 48, 49, and 50. They were renumbered /-21, /-22 and /-23 in 1924, and /-121, /-122 and /-123 in 1939. 1-124 had
been /-24 until 1939.
The 6th Submarine Squadron was attached to the Third FleeUBlockade and
Transport Force. They were the only submarines especially equipped for minelaying, although others could carry a few mines. They could refuel seaplanes, but
not carry them. The squadron was commanded by Rear-Admiral Chimaki Kono.
Data concerning their at-sea endurance varies, but the most reliable seems to be 20
days, owing to limited capacity for carrying stores.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0055
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Dr Ivan Wittwer:
Pastor Wittwer is on a different tack. He claims that he was told in 1951 by
"the gunnery officer of Kormoran" that a Japanese submarine sank Sydney. He
names this person as Gerhard(t) or Heinz Grossmann, who came out to Australia to
work on the Snowy Scheme in 1950 or 1951, using the name of his brother
Waldemar, who had been killed in Russia. He has written to a number of people
with this accusation; it has been attributed to him in the press, and he has stated it
on television, where he expanded it to say that "the gunnery officers" (plural) made
this claim. According to him, Brigadier Spry, head of ASIO, and a naval officer .
interviewed Grossmann in his (Wittwer's) presence, using a tape recorder. Wittwer
left the Snowy soon after this, and he claims that Grossmann was deported about
1952. He says that he has applied for the records of this interview, but ASIO denies
that they exist. (As this person used several aliases, it could be filed under a
different name.)
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
I should like to point out that there was at least one case of a German
merchant seaman (PaUl Boese) masquerading in Australia as a former member of
Kormoran crew, and I suspect other possible cases.
As there could not possibly have been a Japanese submarine off Carnarvon
at the time Sydney was sunk, it does not matter much who says that a Japanese
submarine sank Sydney, nor how firmly anyone believes it. This raises several
alternative possibilities:
(1) Grossmann (if he was indeed Grossmann) lied about his status. If so, what other
lies did he tell?
(2) Wittwer's memory ;s faulty. If so, what else has he "remembered" incorrectly?
(3) Wittwer jumped to an unwarranted conclusion. If so, how many of his other
claims are unwarranted assumptions?
The facts known to me are these:
There was only one gunnery officer aboard Kormoran, and that was
Oberleutnant Fritz Julius Skeries. Grossmann existed, but he was not the gunnery
officer, not an officer, not a petty officer, not even a leading seaman
(Hauptgefreiter). He was a Matrosenobergefreiter, an able seaman of the general
division. That is clearly established in records. Wittwer could have checked out this
basic fact quite easily, but he does not seem to be interested in facts. There would
be material on Grossmann in the archival series A7919 (Canberra) and MP11 03/1
(Melbourne), for example, but I have not been to Canberra or Melbourne since
Wittwer made his claim, so have not had the opportunity to check these.
Grossmann had died by 1991, and was last known to be living near
Chemnitz. It seems a bit odd that, having got out of East Germany, he should go
back there. Kormoran crew do not know much about him, as the crew in West
Germany had only limited contact with the crew in East Germany, for the safety of
the men concerned. Grossmann had died before the Berlin Wall came down, so little
was known. If the documents still exist and can be accessed, there might still be a
record of his residence and his movements, including his emigration and return, in
the Polizeiliches Meldeamt in Chemnitz. Every German had to register all changes
of address, and these were kept on a card that went from police station to police
station when a person moved.
Wittwer also said that Grossmann claimed to have been an interpreter at the
1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. As he was born in 1917, he would have been rather
young for this job, but it is possible. If so, it should also be shown on his card at the
Meldeamt whether he was resident in Berlin for a time, if his pre-war records have
survived. Wittwer has admitted that Grossmann was a shady character given to
untruthfulness, but chooses to believe this Japanese submarine story. Wittwer's
hidden agenda is that he has a pathological hatred of the Japanese, owing to torture
of a relative by Japanese troops.
'}9
'j
,) .....)
PINQ.SUBS.002.0056
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
THE BODY FROM THE CHRISTMAS ISLAND FLOAT:
Perhaps the most unworthy aspect of the Sydney affair is the persistence with
which certain Government departments, including the navy, continue to attempt to
discredit the origin of the Carley float and the body found off Christmas Island.
While the Commonwealth Government has some strange powers with regard
to Territories, as shown by the dispute over the euthanasia bill in the Northern
Territory, does it have the authority to forbid the exhumation of a body in a cemetery
that is not a declared War Graves cemetery? I doubt it. I think the local council has
jurisdiction. Furthermore, if the Government now moved to declare the grave of the
unknown sailor on Christmas Island a War Grave, it would be admitting that the
body and the float did indeed come from Sydney, and that the Government knew
this.
However, if the War Graves Commission admitted that it came from Sydney,
it might be obliged actually to do something about it, at least to the extent of
providing a headstone, and that would take too much effort.
If the RAN admitted that it came from Sydney, it would be admitting that the
official historian, G. Hermon Gill, had made a mistake. In fact, he made a lot of
mistakes, as can be seen from the Errata in the second edition, and that list is far
from complete. It would also be admitting that the then Director of Naval
Intelligence, Captain Oldham, did an irresponsibly shoddy job of investigating the
matter.
Thus somebody in one of these departments informed the Minister for
Territories, Warwick Smith, that the float did not come from Sydney, and he in turn
wrote to Mr J. Heazlewood with that story, and it was published in a newspaper in
Western Australia. Make no mistake: if he had said that in Parliament, a good case
could have been made that he had misled The House, no matter who was to blame
for the falsity. It would be far from the first time that a department has landed its
Minister in strife by carelessness in preparing a statement.
The suggestion that the float might have drifted down from the Netherlands
East Indies is utterly inane. The currents are totally wrong. The approximate
currents are shown not only in navigational handbooks but even in sixty-year-old
school atlases; they flow in the opposite direction. Always, despite a certain amount
of local eddying at times, and varying speeds at different times of the year. Low-
lying floats do not drift contrary to ocean currents.
The drift card survey, carried out under the control of Dr John Bye of Flinders
University, Adelaide, re-affirmed the direction of the currents. I trust he or somebody
involved in the survey is making a submission, so I shall not enlarge on it.
A truly weird and puerile attempt was even made once to claim that the float
might have come from HMAS Perth, even though it was found on or about 6
February 1942, while Perth was sunk on 1 March 1942, and north of Java at that. It
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
seems that there are people who will not shrink from any degree of stupidity to
discredit the origin of the float.
It is seems that the logical principle of reductio ad absurdum is not
understood. That is: that if a proposition, positive or negative, when carried to its
inevitable logical conclusions, would lead to an obviously absurd result, then the
proposition is false. This principle was used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in some
Sherlock Holmes stories: When a/l theoretical possibilities except one have been
disproved, then the one that remains must necessarily be correct, no matter how
improbable it appears.
It was also used in Euclidean geometry, when a theorem was deemed proven
if the supposition of its opposite would lead to an absurdity. Thus this principle of
logic is over 2,000 years old, and it is a pity that it is apparently beyond the grasp of
some naval officers and ministerial staff. In my school days, a student was expected
to understand it by the age of thirteen. Applied to the case of the Carley float at
Christmas Island, this means that, if all other possibilities can be discounted, the
float did come Sydney.
I assume that members of the Committee will have read the basic documents
on the float, so I shall just recap the salient points.
1. Australian steel was used in making the Carley float, so the vessel from which it
was lost must have been in a position to acquire such a float.
2. It had been under fire, so it came from a war loss, not a marine disaster loss.
3. It contained the body of a Caucasian male, so it came from a vessel from which a
European seaman had been lost.
4. It had been in the water for several months (as shown by marine growth below the
water-line), so the ship must have been sunk by December 1941 at the latest.
5. It had drifted from the south or south-south-east (direction of currents).
6. It would be unreasonable to claim that it had been in the water longer than a year,
by reason of the marine growth, and the buoyancy of the float.
7. It would be unreasonable to claim that it had come from the Atlantic or Pacific
oceans, or from a fairly closed area of water circulation, such as the Bay of Bengal.
It has been claimed that there is no proof that the float came from Sydney.
However, putting the above conditions together, it must have come from one of the
ships sunk by a German surface vessel. Admiral Scheer was operating north-west of
Madagascar until late February 194,1; after that, the only enemy vessels in the
Indian Ocean were the auxiliary cruisers, and every ship sunk by them is known.
Widder never entered the Indian Ocean, and Thor not until 1942. Komet and Orion
were in the Indian Ocean in 1941, but sank nothing. The only vessels to sink
anything in the Indian Ocean in 1941, apart from Scheer, were Atlantis, Pinguin and
Kormoran. There were no German submarines in the Indian Ocean until much later,
nor were there Japanese vessels operational in the Indian Ocean until after the end
of 1941. Somebody may hark back to the suggestion that a Vichy ship or submarine
had sunk something, but the Vichy navy at this time was bluff and bluster and no
action. In addition, there were also no ships unaccounted for in the Indian Ocean
during 1941, apart from those sunk by Scheer and the auxiliary cruisers.
')')5
.1 ... ,
PINQ.SUBS.002.0057
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Ship name
Date
Ole Wegge"
14-15.01.41
and whale catchers*
Mandasor
24.01.41
Speybank*
31.01.41
Ketty Br6vig*
02.02.41
British Advocate*
20.02.41
Grigorios
20.02.41
Canadian Cruiser
21.02.41
Rantaupandjang
25.04.41
Clan Buchanan
28.04.41
British Emperor
07.05.41
Velebit
26.06.41
Mareeba
26.06.41
Stamatios G. Embiricos
24.09.41
Sunk by
Pinguin
Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis
Scheer
Scheer
Scheer
Pinguin
Pinguin
Pinguin
Kormoran
Kormoran
Kormoran
Under
fire
No
Missing
men
No
Yes
No
Yes
Query
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No#
Query#
Query#
Yes
No%
No
r..
;.
.1.. ~tnt-~ jA~/v. :.:JJ..... ~d ~~''0
-O~~.,;.£.
'''·0 '
:
4 Mar
Apart from Sydney, these were the only ships sunk in the Indian Ocean in 1941. The
float must have come from Sydney or from one of these ships. Only the Yugoslav
Ve/ebit definitely lost Caucasian crew, and it would be hard to account for how she
obtained the Carley float, or how such a float could have drifted out of the Bay of
Bengal to Christmas Island.
To allow myself to be colloquial for a moment: the people who claim that the
float did not come from Sydney are so far off the planet that I should not be very
surprised to hear someone claim that it came from Marie Celeste.
..
'
y,'
",,'
",'
* Indicates that the ship was not sunk but taken in prize.
# These ships were sunk shortly before Pinguin herself was sunk; when she was
sunk, there was very heavy loss of life both of her own crew and of the crew of ships
sunk. Records were lost and accounts of the actions in which these three ships were
sunk are imprecise.
% The men lost from Mareeba were lost in the Atlantic when Spreewald was sunk.
I do not have the full records for Admiral Scheer to hand, but a float from the ships
attacked by her would have had to drift through the Mozambique Channel, without
stranding on the coast of East Africa before entering the Indian Ocean proper.
369
GERMAN RAIDIlRS IN INDIAN OCEAN
mediately "as I was still suspicious of a 'booby trap' in the merchant ship
in the shape of a couple of torpedoes".
Malleson now decided to land and board the tanker before she sanJc:.5
The aircraft landed alongside, and Mallcson stripped and swam the
led'
9(J'
3fl
10
:.
*K
10
N D 1 A N
10'
*0
0 C E A N
y,'
34'
eo
10
lO'
100'
90
Activities of Ge~ Raiden in North·West Indian Ocean, January·May 1941
A-Raider Atlantis sank Mandasor 24 Jan 1941. B-Raider A!lalllis captuted
Speybank 31 Jan 1941. C-Raider Atlaruis captured Kelty BroVl~ 2 Feb 1941.
D-Meetinl place of raidetS Scheer and Atlantu, and IIlpp1y ships Tannen(e./s.
Speybank and K<tty Brovig 11 Feb 1941. E-Raider Scheer captured Br/ltsh
Advocate 20 Feb 1941. F.-Raider Scheer $3IIk Grigorios CJ! 21 Feb 1941.
G-Raider Scheer sank Canadian Cruiser 21 Fe~ 1941. H-:-RaJdcr Scheer sank
Rantallpandjang 22 Feb 1941. J-Raider Schur Sighted by altcra~ from Glasgow
22 Feb 1941. K-Canberra at sinking of Coburg and Kett! Bro~lg ~ Mar 1941.
L-Raider Pinguin sank Empire Light 25 '\pr 1941. ~-Raider Plngurn sank Clan
BucJuz1l4n 28 Apr 1941. N-Raider Pinguin sank Bmish Emperor 7 May 1941.
twenty yards or so to the ship. "I regret," he la1er wrote, "that the sensible
course of using the rubber dinghy did not occur to me, and f~~ my own
peace of mind 1 did not see the several sharks that were Crtltsmg round
until I was safely back in the aircraft." He made a hasty survey of the
io,o.• La......ck, RAAP.
t'I1lc ai,erat'I'1 ..... we,e U C. v. S. Mail....n. RN'Do~:t=1 U
pilot; ...4 Lcldlnl Tele"lIlblll Il. Yo HU\ChIICa, ""'"
OPCII
t,~ti-l~ €LdYL-? .aM?tA·
''i;..rJ1.
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t/l-'l.. l~L-7
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"-'
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/
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•
~o/t~
().
ry
A'IA..
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~{ldJ}.I.I../d lJJ-..u1-'
A J( It.;}y\fl
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11
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J
PINQ.SUBS.002.0058
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
ALLEGED WIRELESS SIGNALS:
A. f.<... /j1L~ty" <..rT!...,.{tr ~
_
~~ ~d;h.,"t AJcJYfLtJa.-;- Ji.. .
.{'
l
~
. !.lt1.
'f
~
,
"
.
Robert Mason:
Robert Mason, former naval writer (not telegraphist) at Harman, made the
claim that two messages were received directly from Sydney just before the battle,
and that these were covered up in collusion between officers in Canberra and
Melbourne. He lodged his version of these alleged events with the Manuscript
Section of the National library in Canberra (at MS7460).
This has been refuted by Marion Stevens, a WRAN telegraphist at Harman,
who has also given a reason wny Mason might lie in this matter. She may make a
submission to the Inquiry. If not, I should like to draw attention to a statutory
declaration that she has lodged with the Naval Historian in Canberra.
The Darwin message:
Allegations of a wireless message sent from Sydney to or through Darwin
have been analysed comprehensively and intelligently by Richard Summerell. There
is little to add to this.
Ean McDonald:
McDonald will quite likely make a submission of his own on the topic of
signals allegedly intercepted aboard HMAS Perth. I have covered this matter in my
book, on page 235.
!
.,
;.
..
I.ANTONIS
1,06,41
1.18.41
1.29.41
2. BRITISH UNION
3. AFRIC STAR
4. EURYLOCHUS
1.29.41
-I
1 ~~~TE
OF
5,
6. CA/lAOOlITE ( )
7. CRAFTSMAN P
S. NICOLAOS 0 L
, •
()U.'l:--~tzl'X-·
KORMORAN
•
I
~
~
9. VELEBIT
10, MAREEBA
4,09.41
4.12.41
11. STAMATIOS G. EMBIRICOS
12, H,M.A,S, SYDNEY and
KORMORAN SINK
-~ l~.(, ~111'tZ7V ~
I
I
'r
3,22.41
3,25.41
rJl- ~y~ 4.t~
'
+
6,26.41
6.26,41
9.24,41
11.19.41
1
~,
\.:
David Kennedy:
Kennedy, a reporter working apparently partly for The Australian, partly
freelance, has claimed that a Norwegian marine telegraphist (Larsen) told him that a
German telegraphist (Hermann) told him that, while he was working in the wireless
establishment run by the German Naval Attache in Tokyo, he intercepted a message
directly from Kormoran during or after the battle.
First: on the videotape that Kennedy was kind enough to send me of an
interview with Larsen, the Norwegian avoided saying that the German had told him
that he had picked up the message. He said. three times, such things as "gained the
impression", or ''was given to understand", but not that he ''was told". Kennedy says
that Larsen did say this off camera; but the fact remains that, when he knew he was
being recorded, he dodged this issue. Larsen should be asked, under oath
preferably, exactly what was said.
Second: Kennedy told me that he had made inquiries among wireless
personnel, and they had said that it would have been possible to have picked up in
Tokyo a signal sent from a location off the coast of Western Australia. In his
newspaper article. he wrote that wireless personnel had confirmed that a signal from
Kormoran had been picked up. I pointed out to him that this was a quite different
thing, and asked if he could substantiate this latter claim. He did not give me an
answer. If he continues to make this claim, he must identify his informants so that
their competence, and their actual statements, can be verified (preferably on oath).
PINQ.SUBS.002.0059
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Kennedy has done some energetic and deep research into this story,
including trying to track Hermann, who is dead, like just about everyone who could
give first-hand authentic evidence. The story has gone through several mutations.
Both of us read the translation of the War Diary of Admiral Wenneker, the Naval
Attache in Tokyo; it gives some interesting background information.
1. Hermann was not in Tokyo on 19 November 1941, but still aboard Kulmerfand.
This ship arrived in Kobe on 16 December, and Hermann reached Tokyo on 18
December.
2. Thereupon Kennedy toyed with the idea that Hermann had picked up the signal
while aboard Kulmerland. The nature of the problems with manning schedules in
such a vessel, the wave lengths covered at anyone time and the capacity of the set
in a merchant vessel of that time makes it an infinitesimally remote chance that this
could happen.
It is less certain that the signal could not have been picked up in Tokyo, if
one had been sent. (But why would not other stations have picked it up?) However,
the only records of a raider sending messages to Tokyo show that they were sent in
1940 to Choshi Radio for the firm of lilies & Co., under the cable address "Hillcam",
and that they came from Orion, using the call signs of Swedish ships. The Naval
Attache did not have sufficient staff to man an effective monitoring service.
During September 1940, at Japan's insistence, increasing restrictions were
placed on direct communication between the Naval Attache and raiders, supply
ships or blockade runners, until on 25 September 1940 it was ordered that it be
stopped altogether, except for SOS messages.
On 31 October 1941, it was arranged that the Attache's station should listen
at the following times on allotted wave lengths:
0300 GMT on 13275 kHz
1100 GMT on 8875 kHz
1720 GMT on 11340 kHz
2300 GMT on 13275 kHz
The auxiliary cruiser was to repeat ABCD several times, then send the message
"blind".
Kormoran probably received these instructions. There would have been only
one period of probably five or ten minutes when she could have sent a message
between the opening of the battle and her destruction, with any hope of having it
picked up in Tokyo.
.
An entry for 8 January 1942 says that a continuous radio watch was not
possible owing to shortage of personnel.
This story is not very important, just another example of a misunderstanding
that somebody will not let go, and that other people may take up.
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Reg Lander:
Lander mentioned at the HMAS SYDNEY Forum in November 1991 that he
had been with a HF/DF unit in October-November 1941, and they had been tracking
Kormoran along the coast of Western Australia as she sent daily wireless signals. I
gave the forum session some brief information on raider practice with regard to
wireless transmissions, but was not allowed to complete this explanation.
After that session, Lander told me indignantly that he had never claimed that
the signals were from Kormoran. (He had; I include a transcript of the relevant
section of the session for comparison.) He said he just knew they had been asked to
track daily signals from a mobile German unit for OF purposes. Now, it was U-boats
that sent daily reports; there were, of course, no U-boats off the WA coast in 1941,
but it was not uncommon for it to be difficult to tell whether a signal was from an
"antipodal" location - e.g. whether it was from New Zealand or the North Atlantic.
There are a number of references in Intelligence reports to this problem, including
some in October-November 1941. Even if the records series still exists, it would be
nigh impossible to locate the actual OF intercepts referred to by Lander, as he
cannot date them.
These records are ones that Doohan is making a fuss about, with
accusations of covering up evidence of tracking Kormoran. It is nonsense. The
auxiliary cruisers sent very few signals, usually from isolated areas and with long
intervals between. Once it became necessary to send a signal, the ship sending it
moved; their survival depended on their location remaining a mystery.
After having been worked over for months - perhaps years - by John Doohan,
Lander then recanted, and at a forum in Fremantle early this year he said that he
now "knew" the signals were from Kormoran. My point: if he did not know in 1941,
and did not know in 1991, then he still does not know in 1997. His evidence has
been contaminated and is worthless.
The following documentary evidence should be noted, as it almost certainly
refers to the incident that has stuck in Lander's memory. It is in the Daily Summaries
of the Combined Operational Intelligence Centre (COIC), held in Navy Office. It
records, approximately 21 October 1941, that there had been a "flap" with regard to
a German mobile unit during the period 26 September to 21 October, but it had
been found that one bearing was incorrect.
Wouldn't there be a row and a string of invective if it was I who suggested to
Lander and Doohan that a bearing was wrong? Not possible! Silly woman! We could
not have made a mistake. However, this Intelligence Report says that such a
mistake was in fact made, and it is assumed that the persons investigating this knew
their job.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0060
--------
t.
',h a·~.J-c rt/r.(', 'l'"A cJ- t>- and ~ ..k ~J, I c·y!. "
10
9
H.i./.~.s ./f-Ifd'-<.,IF $U),\/ ~'KI>I.-{t .",t&- / 'lt~cw.rYz.I-.J.y' {C{ttt .
we were getting the signal over the land area of 2000 miles at a skip distance,
the ionosphere up top[ was playing havoc with the signal but we did do what
we thought was a very good job and we actually plotted the progress of ItIc
ship from outside Fremantle just nonh ~f Rott~est ri&ht up as f~ as
Camarvon. This ship had a radio schedule WIth Radio DanZIg an operanonal
centre for the German communications people, they had a very powerful
transmitter. You could read the sign~ from right ~un? the world, 45 metres
was a commercial frequency at that nme. Now thIS .Shlp had a.rendezvous. at
24 hrs GMT every night with Danzig, [digresses] It has ~othmg to do WIth
the sinking of the Kormoran but it is a story when. the Airforce and Navy,
Civil Aviation and Post Office, PNG, all knew what It was about.
from the Kormoran in Western Australia, migrated here. There wel"C,Jlo
Kormoran crewmen ever settled in Western Australia, anyone who says they
are from the Kormoran is lying. I think it was an error, the names have not
been given, the excuse seems to be that they arc afraid that the rest of the crew
would slaughter them or their families if they named themselves. I think it
was because they know that they can be identified as not being from the
t.
Kormoran..
,
Mr .J,.att81'ey?:
'hHt!tr
There was another point, yes. the point about Sal/and and Burnett knowing
that there was a myst~rious ship there. Captain B~ett presided over the
co~rse of ~e enqulJ'Y lOto the Salla":" and that affau' was concluded quite
sansfactonly. There was no mystenous ship there, the Commander of the
Yandra has sprained his ankle and was off-duty and his deputy and second in
cQnu;nand couldn't read morse, and they faked the whole thing. There was
con~lderable uproar a,s to. whether they should be coun-marrialled, but they
decIded Japan now bemg 10 .the war there were more important things.
I am 3? ex Queenslan.der and it is 16 .years to the day since I was working as
a Radio operator at 10 Sydney. It IS not my intention to speculate on the
sinking of the Sydney. I would like to tell you how the Kormoran was
tracked
up
the
West
~ast of ~ustfl!lia. In a p~cular time about the end of October, AW.A (that
IS ~ustraha Wireless) had Just developed a high frequency direction finder
which operated on 45 metres and they were installing this equipment at a place
ca~led I-!-0ldswonhy Army ~emount Depot in Sydney....It was my job on
thIS stanon to calculate the hIgh frequency direction finder so that we should
get ~e nonh and magnetic bearings, plus the magnetic variations of the
panlcular area. And at one panicular period, I think it was about 10 days
before the Kormoran was sunk, we were advised, I must tell you firSt, the
Civil Aviation Department was interestingly mixed up with the PMG and the
Post Office, and all the information that we got, and information we wanted
ca~e t~ough those two s~urces, it mainly came through the Post Office
beheve It or not, who were 10 contact apparently with the War Office. Now it
was my job to calibrate this HFU direction finder, the direction finder which
was ~ cathode ray t~be with .a comp~ss around it, which was good. Now
one mght we were given the lOformanon that there was a raider on the west
coast of Fremantle. and it was working on a frequency of 45 m and it was'
having a r~o schedule at 24 hrs GMT and to listen to this frequency and
take a beanng on the frequency so that it could be crossed with a similar
operation which was taking place at Pearce, by RAAF at Pearce. Now we
were ge~ting perfect cros,ses because you know the Sydney is nonh of Perth,
so the sIgnal was out thIS way and we were getting anything from 45-90°
across it, and we. followed this ship all the way up the coast up as far as
Carnarvon, and we thought we were getting the War Office or who was ever
responsible for this information, we thought we were getting red-hot
information because we knew the Sydney was coming from the Nonh
somewhere to intercept this Kormoran, and we thought at the time that we
were giving spot-on information, which we were of course, and wc were
stagge~ed o~e ~orning to hear that the Sydney had been sunk, we just
couldn t believe It. But one of the problems with our HF-DF equipmcnt in
those days, it was high tech. This equipment was highly irregular, you
~ouldn't tell whether you had. its efficiency ranged from completely
I~accurate ~o comple~ely ~ccurate, S? you coul~ never tell whether you got it
nght. So It was an mbUilt fault with the equipment and it never ever got
anywhere though it was installed at Holdswonhy, Burke and other towns,
Noo~anba:h , Brunei. and Thur~day Island, but it was such a clumsy and
effiCient piece of equipment but It never actually got off the ground, but it did
do a reasonably good job on this Kormoran, but we had disability in Sydney,
')~) ~
,) ,1 ...
"
Mrs Winter:
In the flISt place Kormoran's home wireless station was not Danzig. In the
second place in the 11 months at sea Kormoran sent a total of a~ut 12
wireless signals, Detmers got hysterical when asked to send any signals.
When she had a rendezvous with Kulmerland he would not say he had had
., that rendezvous, he made Kulmerland send an acknowledgement of ~he
rendezvous it 2 days after they had paned... there is absolutely no quesnon
that they had a schedule every 24 hours.... It was ~ither a ~ffer~nt sh~p or
your equipment was picking up something else...[chlUf hastemng diSCUSSion]
Mr Langley?:
This was a receiving, this was a high powered receiving station and it was
high-tech, remote contrOlled .....
.
Mrs Winter:
received signals, the ship wasn't, how can you check were it was. [Chair
requests discussion be held for later].
Mr Faxquhar-Smith: To Mr Macdonald and Mr Laffer. Were you aware of ~he diffe~ent
equipment on the life-boats that Kormoran launched? [Both replied negau~e.
Because one of the things that worried my father [NOIC Fre~antle] ~unng
the search was the scatter of life-rafts, boats; and the one ~lOg he did and
that was why he had Detmers privately to the Nava; Office WIth chaI'!s and the
complete discussions between hi~self, not only With a Naval Captam,.but he
was also a sailing ship master manner and he also knew Detmers preVIously.
He was extremely worried because ~f the scatter of w:eckage and boats and
Detmers as I understand, satisfied hIm, because the life-rafts were blow-up
ones, that skidded across the surface. The boats that reached the shore were
fully equipped ship's life-boats, and the boats that h,e a~d Von Go~seln were
in were dragged out of the lower hold by hand, it didn t have a WlOc~, or at
least they had a derrick but they didn't have power, dropped ~ver ~he s.lde and
any equipment and gear they could flOd they threw and It all piled lOtO It. That
is why they were overloa~ed they sailed extremely poorly and why the
position of the rafts and equipment was so strange.
I'
Ch .
Mr Farquhar-Smith is the son of the former naval officer commanding. The
point being made there relates to a paper I have given you on th~ Carrarang
life-boat, going to bring this point up, a~d of course the other POlOtS you are
making there is that they were very heaVily overloaded.
Mr Carpenter:
A question about the aircraft seen flying over the coast. Presumably there
would have been float plancs and is there any evidence to suggest that the
configuration of those aircraft were float planes
au:
Unknown:
Yes they were.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0061
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
CLAIMS THAT SYDNEY WAS DISGUISED AS NORWEGIAN:
Pinguin and Atlantis had been disguised as Norwegian, so it seemed good
enough for some people to assume that Kormoran was also. This took on a life of its
own, as people repeated it to one another, re-inforcing the initial supposition.
However, while Pinguin and Atlantis were sister ships and of a build that could
readily be likened to a number of Norwegian ships, Kormoran was different, a very
new pattern with few choices of disguise. (This was for reasons not entirely to do
with the silhouette of the ship, but also to trading patterns and political
considerations.) It was a pattern that Norway had apparently not adopted at the
time, and there would have been few if any Norwegian ships as which Kormoran
could have disguised herself. If Montgomery had taken the trouble to consult TalbotBooth's book of merchant shipping silhouettes, he would have seen that there was
no question of Kormoran "closely resembling" Tai Yin, as which he suggests that
Kormoran was disguised. Atlantis was the raider that Tai Yin resembled.
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Fact 2. Only neutral ships had a flag painted on the hull, and Norway was not
neutral.
By this time, Pat Young had very little credibility with me. His daughter, whom
I met later, said that her father "would not lie"; since these stories were definitely not
true, what, then, was he doing?
An attempt has been made to link the letters EBFS, which appear in one
translation of a report written by Detmers in cipher, to a disguise as Norwegian, as E
was the first letter of the call signs of Norwegian ships. However, this report was
written in Vigenere grid cipher, which makes no provision for figures. These are
represented on the system: A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. What Detmers wrote would have
0
been AAAEBFS. This stood for 111 E26S, in other words, 111 East 26 0 South, and
it is translated correctly in two other versions. This is another error that has caused
unnecessary problems and speculation.
This Norwegian story was picked up by Robert Shaw Close, Truth reporter
and writer of maritime fiction, and turned into a magazine article that, when
translated, came to be called the "Kitsche diary". It was repeated in the book
Prisoner of the Kormoran. The navy would have done much better to have told the
truth almost from the beginning to strangle this story at birth.
Then a Carnarvon resident, Pat Young, took up and embroidered the story,
and repeated it later to Montgomery. I interviewed him several years after
Montgomery did, and I took the trouble to check out those of his stories that could
be checked.
1. He claimed he was Mayor of Carnarvon at the time when survivors landed.
Untruth.
Fact: He had been mayor, or chairman of the Shire Council (I forget now
which it was), but he was not in late November 1941.
2. He claimed he had had Dr Piccles run out of town after about two years, because
he was a drunkard. Untruth.
Fact: Dr Piccles was on the Carnarvon electoral roll for twelve years.
3. He claimed that he beat Sergeant Anderson and the others up to find the
survivors at both the 17-Mile Well and Red Bluff, because he went up a different
road. Very doubtful.
Fact: There was, according to local people, no trafficable second road at that
time. I cannot verify that from documents, but as other locals have said that
Young was in one or other of the hotel bars or at the race course almost all
that day, I feel sure that this also is untrue.
4. He claimed that as he drove back to Carnarvon from the 17-Mile Well Erich
Ahlbach told him that Kormoran had been flying the Norwegian flag and had a
Norwegian flag painted on the hull. Untruth.
Fact 1: Ahlbach was picked up by Yandra and was never ashore north of
Carnarvon, therefore Young did not drive him anywhere. It should be noted
that Ahlbach was one of the few names, other than those of officers,
mentioned in Detmers' book, and Young could have obtained it from this
book.
j}~twj)'7 h-
t/rV/17
PINQ.SUBS.002.0062
SUBMISSION TO THE HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
ALLEGED SIGHTINGS OF AIRCRAFT BETWEEN PEARCE AND CARNARVON,
OCTOBER 1941:
Air Force personnel, particularly an ex RAAF officer C. A. V. Bourne, have
become quite emotional when I have discounted the validity of these alleged
sightings, to which they have become very attached.
Without going into any further argument, I shall just refer to the Daily
Summaries of the Combined Operational Intelligence Centre, held in Navy Office.
(not verbatim)
An entry for 14 September 1941 mentions the sighting of a yellow light, at 0430H (=
WA time) on 11 September; reliability grading C3.
On 16 September, this was downgraded by Air Intelligence to C4. (The grading
system for the reliability of the informant ran from A to E; the likelihood that the
report was true ran from 1 to 5.)
.
There is a defect in the records from 2 to 4 November, but on 5 November there IS a
reference to a sighting made at Geraldton on 1 November; this has been
downgraded to 0.4, which is a reflection on the competence or sobriety of the
observer, as well as the unlikelihood that the observation was correct.
An entry for 5 November 1941 mentions a sighting by two pilots at 1430Z (= GMT)
on 3 November, which was "considered to be" the cabin of an unidentified aircraft.
This was graded B.3; that is, a fairly reliable trained observer with a report of
unknown validity.
Another sighting is recorded from Pearce at 0300H on 7 November.
On 11 November, it is recorded that, after a full examination, it was considered
not to have been an aircraft.
Thus it is not only I who discounts these sightings. They were dismissed by
Air Intelligence at the time and after professional investigation and interrogation.
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
CLAIMS REGARDING ENIGMA AND THE BREAKING OF THE RAIDER CODE:
After the publication of the book The Ultra Secret, by F. W. Winterbotham, in
1974, an unfortunate belief arose that this enabled all German signals to be read all
the time. This was far from being the case.
Montgomery has claimed incorrectly that some of Kormoran's signals were
read. So too have Ean McDonald and John Doohan.
Better books have been written on the extent of cipher breaking, notably by
Nigel West (G.C.H.Q.) and Professor F. H. Hinsley (The Official History of British
Intelligence in World War 1/), but the salient feature is that the cipher used by the
auxiliary cruisers on the high seas, called "Pike" by Britain and "Ausserheimisch" or
"AegirJl by Germany, was never broken. NEVER. Nor was the raider Kurzsignalbuch
code. There is a possibility that one signal sent by Alstertor in May 1941, but
relating to Kormoran, might have been read, as it was sent in the wrong cipher.
Thus the Allies never knew the location of a raider by reading its own signals.
Occasionally one was located by HF/DF, and on a few other occasions by reading
the signals to or from a U-boat that was due to rendezvous with a raider.
So few wireless signals were sent by raiders, and so little was known of their
cipher, that Pinguin had been at sea about a year before the Royal Navy recognised
that Pinguin and Atlantis were not the same ship. They were not entirely sure until
Pinguin was sunk. (If a signal from a raider was, however, intercepted, it could be
recognised that it was from a raider, because it had a different format. I do not
remember the nature of the difference.)
Anyone making any claim based on an assumption that the raider ciphers
were being read is poorly informed on the topic. Anyone claiming that the navy
"must have known" where Kormoran was "because we were reading the German
code" is grossly ignorant in this field.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0063
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
1. He was half Jewish and had been in the navy prior to 1933, but was never
an officer. His actual rank is unknown. Some of the officers in Dhurringile knew him
from his time in the service.
2. When he was discharged from the navy, but refused a passport, he
crossed a lot of borders illegally and was in prison in what seemed like about half
the countries in Europe.
3. He took on a job as an officer on a ship running Jewish illegal immigrants
into Palestine. He was caught and imprisoned in Palestine by the British. This was
also known to the officers.
4. He was sent to Loveday camp with interned merchant seaman from the
Middle East. He mayor may not have been an informer for Australian Military
Intelligence, but his fellow-seamen believed that he certainly was.
5. When merchant seamen were reclassified as prisoners of war, he was sent
to the officers' camp, as he had been an officer in the migrant-running ship. Other
officers immediately reported their suspicions of his activities as an informer and
spy.
Detmers handled a dire situation very properly. With this known history, this
man could very well have been killed if he had remained in that camp. End of story.
THE CHARACTER OF CAPTAIN DETMERS:
As many of the stories concerning the loss of Sydney depend on the
character of Captain Detmers, attempts have been made to blacken his character in
all manner of ways simply in order to justify these accusations. According to the
conspiracy merchants, he was a rabid Nazi, a liar, a war criminal. Only so can they
maintain that Kormoran opened fire under a false flag, or that Sydney's crew were
murdered in lifeboats or in the water, by either the Germans or the Japanese whom
they suppose to have been there.
Accusations that Detmers was a rabid Nazi:
Montgomery was at one time trying to find his Nazi Party membership
number. In fact, under German military law no serviceman was permitted to belong
to any political party, nor even to vote in elections. Thus a man such as Detmers,
who joined the navy in 1921 while the Nazi Party consisted of a few hundred
members in Bavaria and he was too young to vote, and did not leave the navy until
the war was over, could say confidently, not only that he was never a member of the
Nazi Party, but that he never voted for the Nazis, simply because he had not voted
at all.
.'
Accusations that Detmers was a war criminal, in regard to the nature of his
attacks on British Union and Ve/ebit:
Montgomery claimed that seamen from British Union were gunned in the
One would expect his political inclinations to be nationalistically inclined, but
that is a different thing. (Gough Whitlam, Tim Fischer and Malcolm Turnbull are
nationalistically inclined.) Several Kormoran crew members have said that they had
been on "Nazi ships" and they knew what that was like, and that Kormoran was not
a "Nazi ship".
lifeboats, and has produced wartime claims that this was so. However, Alec
Bandeen, seamen from British Union, resident in Aberdeen, Scotland, says that this
was not so. He said that, after Montgomery's book was first pUblished, he wrote to
Montgomery to tell him this, but Montgomery rejected his evidence. To have
accepted that the lifeboats from British Union had not been gunned would have
weakened his claim that the lifeboats from Sydney had been. Although he still
grieved over the loss of his shipmates, Alec Bandeen attended the Kormoran crew
reunion in November 1990 quasi as an apology for Montgomery's attacks.
Montgomery claimed that, since Detmers must have been a Nazi, and since
von Gosseln was on the bridge during the action, then von Gosseln must have been
a Nazi as well. (One of the interrogators or interpreters in WA slated von Gosseln as
a Nazi, but the circumstances were hardly such that a valid assessment could be
made.) Von Gosseln was on the bridge because, as he was an officer of the
Administrative Branch, his Action Station was as Battle Watch Officer; that is, it was
his job to write down what orders were given.
Montgomery claimed, on the basis of a report by Oskar Magazinovic
regarding the loss of Velebit, that Detmers was lying when he said that rough
weather prevented him from searching any longer for survivors. Magazinovic wrote
that a seaman from Ve/ebit had said that the weather was not rough. The facts are
that a seaman from Mareeba, sunk in the same area a few hours later, wrote in an
article for the Newcastle Morning Herald that the rough weather had caused their
speed to drop, and that a British Weekly Intelligence Report stated that the failure of
Mareeba and Velebit to make port might not indicate the presence of a raider, as the
weather had been so bad that they could have foundered. To admit this would have
weakened Montgomery's case.
Montgomery claimed that Detmers was "elected" as camp leader in
Dhurringile because he was a Nazi, although Major Bertram was senior to him. This
possibly stems from a mistranslation of ranks from German to English. Detmers was
always senior to Bertram. There was no election to determine seniority in the
military camps. There were elections for camp leaders in civilian camps; that had
nothing to do with Detmers or Kormoran.
Montgomery's stories about someone who had trained at a Nazi spy school
run by Ritter von Epp, or about Gestapo men in one of the (civilian) camps, are also
irrelevant and nothing to do with Detmers, simply an attempt to smear by association
where there is no real evidence.
The story of a man who had to be removed from the officers' camp is true, but
misinterpreted. There are cogent reasons why, in my opinion, this man's name
should not be revealed, but the basic facts are these (from his Security dossier):
i
I;
r
I'
,
t!
,.}
Montgomery also claimed that Detmers was lying when he said that he had
thought at the time that the wreck of Ve/ebit might drift long enough to strand on the
Andaman Islands. The fact is that he wrote this in the logbook. At the time of the first
edition of his book, Montgomery did not know where there was a copy of Kormoran's
logbook although, not knowing what a logbook should look like, he thought he had
seen it. This does not justify repeating this claim in subsequent editions, when he
should have known it was untrue.
PINQ.SUBS.002.0064
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
ANALYSIS OF A FEW TYPICAL ERRORS FROM MONTGOMERY'S BOOK:
Accusations that Detmers was a war criminal, in regard to the flying of a false
flag:
If Detmers had opened fire under a false flag, that would have been a breach
of the laws of warfare. The claim was apparently first made publicly by Robert Shaw
Close in. his infa.":l0us article. Adopting a disguise or flying a false flag in order to put
oneself In a posItion to attack was a legitimate ruse de guerre, and it must be
stressed that Sydney herself had done this in the Mediterranean when she
?isguised herself as Italian in order to approach an Italian port. Sauce for the goose
IS sauce for the gander: both right or both wrong.
It might be noted that attacks made during the day differed in character from
those made at night. Poor British merchant seamen had not been informed that the
Admiralty accepted the German view that a merchant ship forfeited its theoretical
immunity to attack without warning and was considered to be offering resistance to
capture if it:
1. was armed as a Defensively Equipped Merchantman.
2. sent a wireless message.
3. was blacked out at night.
4. zigzagged during the day.
5. was travelling in convoy.
Accusations that Detmers was a liar:
Sample cases of Montgomery's accusations that Detmers was lying:
1. Concerning Kormoran's smoke generator: Detmers was telling the truth;
Montgomery had been deceived by the mistranslation of Back as "stern" instead of
"forecastle". (Mentioned elsewhere.)
2. Concerning the claim that Mareeba could not have met Sydney in the Bay of
Bengal, beca~se Sydney was elsewhere: Montgomery is correct that Sydney was
elsewhere. It IS probable that a mistake was made aboard Kormoran in compiling
results of interrogations of Mareeba crew - or else that one of them had lied
deliberately.
3. Concerning the claim that Kormoran could not have sighted HMS Canton at the
time claimed, as Canton was not in the Indian Ocean then: Montgomery is correct,
but Detmers no doubt felt justified in believing that, if something was printed in an
official publication of the United States Naval Institute, then it had been checked for
accuracy, and the story stems from there.
There are other cases in his book where Detmers' account of some action
does not accord with the facts. In most, they are the result of faulty information
received from what would have appeared to be reliable sources. One account
difficult to justify is the claim that Eury/ochus was boarded after the action. Detmers
possibly confused this with another ship. Perhaps it was scrambled by a co-author
(Jochen Brennecke). Perhaps it was a memory that had been lost as the result of his
stroke. In any case, it is untrue.
During the chit-chat before Lateline programme in April 1991, while the
satellite connection was being tested, Montgomery said that in the May election he
was standing for a seat for the United Kingdom Independence Party. This is
indicative of his nationalistic attitude and, if he hoped to be elected, of his
sometimes fragile grasp on reality. To analyse all errors of fact and deduction in his
book would take the length of three or four books, because the explanations to
simple accusations are sometimes quite complex. Apart from a few examples I have
chosen, I shall not do this unless asked for clarification on specific questions.
Chapter 6: Page 68 in the first edition:
"One item to fail completely, according to Detmers, was a short-range radar
unit, but he is certainly wrong in claiming that it was the first such device to
be fitted to a raider: Orion's logbook records seeing aircraft on hers on three
consecutive days in September 1940."
(Source: MP1S87/1: Item 164E)
Detmers is certainly not wrong. The item quoted is not a logbook; it is, once
again, a poor translation of an abridged report on Orion's cruise. Her logbook tells
the truth. The aircraft were not "seen" on her radar; their call signs were overheard
on a normal wireless set, and their number was known from the number of different
call signs. (There is a copy of Orion's logbook in the Australian National Library,
Canberra, as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project series.)
Chapter 7: Page 81 in the first edition:
(This refers to a remark in Detmers' book that a signal from A/stertor had been
intercepted, but could not have been read.)
"Such confidence was misplaced, however, for the Raider code had by now
been broken and the signal was indeed understood; as a direct result of this,
the Alstertorwas intercepted and sunk in the Atlantic, in turn almost stranding
the Orion, which was then on the last leg of her journey home.
(Source: A. K. Muggenthaler, German Raiders of World War fI, p. 166)
What Muggenthaler wrote in fact was this: "His signal to that effect was to
cause serious consequences for Orion. Alstertorwas one of the supply ships
intercepted by the British in the Atlantic after the Bismarck was sunk. She was
scuttled when caught by aircraft and a destroyer on June 23."
The things wrong with Montgomery's paraphrase of Muggenthaler:
1. Muggenthaler intended no link of causality between the first and second
sentences. The signal sent from the Indian Ocean, in fact on either 17 or 19 May,
had no link directly or otherwise, with the sinking of Alstertor in the Atlantic on 23
June.
2. The "dire consequences" mentioned by Muggenthaler had nothing to do with
supply of fuel from A/stertor to Orion, as seems to be the implication of "almost
stranding". Alstertorwas critically short offuel and could have given Orion none.
Nor was she due to meet Orion. When she was sunk, A/stertor was in the North
PINQ.SUBS.002.0065
SUBMISSION TO HMAS SYDNEY INQUIRY by B. Poniewierski
Atlantic. At that time Orion was in the South Atlantic, having rounded Cape Horn on
20 June.
3. The "dire consequences" involved a close encounter with HMS Cornwall, which
had recently sunk Pinguin. Orion saw Cornwall; the cruiser did not see Orion. The
date is difficult to determine from Muggenthaler; it would be about 20 May.
How long has it taken to explain why a 52-word sentence in Montgomery's
book contains three errors? I shall not continue unless asked questions on specific
matters.
Submission No 37
CONFIDENTIAL SUBMISSION
343