At 15:55 the alarm bell rang on board the ?Kormoran?: Ship sighted, portside ahead!  It is the pride of the Australian Navy, the cruiser ?Sydney? armed with 15 cm guns, thick armour and a very modern firing system heading directly for the Kormoran.  The sailor Edmund Buttner jumped from a card game and sprinted to his firing station.  It is the 19^th of November 1941.  With others, he manned one of the three guns hidden behind a removable outer wall.  Tense and filled with fear they waited for the attack. 

What Captain Theodor Detmers has planned is a genuine Coup de Main.  The Kormoran is itself not really a warship.  In peacetime it was named the ?Steinmark? and was a simple freighter.  Through plain desperation it now patrolled, with a pair of guns, the Indian Ocean as an Aushilfskriegsschiff ? and by through sheer bad luck has encountered the Sydney, a ship constructed to search and destroy ships like the Kormoran.

Captain Detmers, using the loudspeaker attempts to generate confidence; ?The enemy is only a light cruiser, we?ll be able to handle it!?  The men cheer but the reality is different.  ?We were all afraid,? sayst Buttner.  ?We were only a Hilfskreuzer ? the enemy was the flagship of the fifth continent.  I thought: This is our end.?

Modern Pirates

Hilfskreuzer were the pirate ships of the Second World War.  Improvised freighters, whose greatest weapon was their seeming innocence ? to which on this day the Sydney would fall victim, the greatest warship ever sunk by a freighter.  With 645 men on board she sank, completely surprised by the attack from the Kormoran off Shark Bay off the West Coast of Australia.  Other than a ruined life raft and a life ring nothing was ever found of the Sydney, she remained a mystery.

Until now.  Two weeks ago the greatest mystery of Australian naval history was solved.  Search teams with modern sonar equipment discovered, in 2560 meter deep waters, the wreck of the Sydney.  The news electrified the giant land, in television the Australian Prime Minister tried to find the right words ? decades long the tragedy had occupied the fifth continent.  The government expended three million Euro on the search.

Halfway around the globe, almost 13,000 kilometres away, Edmund Buttner also saw the images from the depths of the Indian Ocean.  They wouldn?t leave the 87 year old ? Buttner was there as the Kormoran engaged in its bold attack.  Until 1990 the crew met annually in Hamburg - the last crew member Buttner knew died a year ago.  Buttner is the last known survivor of the Kormoran, the last witness of a year of ?caper war? and the perhaps most mysterious sea battle of modern warfare.

Caper voyage in an improvised freighter

At the beginning of 1940 the Steiermark disappeared, a trade ship of the shipping company HADAG with around 8700 Gross tonnes, in a dock in Hamburg?s harbour.  She left the dockyard a few months later as a so called ?Handelsstörkreuzer? (trade disruption cruiser): on the outside she remained a freighter but behind the peaceful façade there were now six 15-cm sea canons from old ships from the First World War, three torpedo tubes with multiple flak guns and even two Arado-reconnaissance airplanes.  The weapons lay behind the camouflaged plates that using counterweights can be manouvered and allow the freighter within a few moments to transform into a warship of sorts.

Late in 1940 the ?Steiermark? disembarked on a caper voyage.  She is now named the Kormoran.  The Greek steamer the ?Antonis? became her first victim in the Atlantic.  The disappointing plunder: seven live sheep, three machine guns, ammunition and the 28 men captured.  ?As a matter of principle we took everyone on board that we could save,? said Buttner.  Off the coast of Freetown in West Africa the Kormoran crew harassed meat and oil ships that were sailing towards England.  More and more new ships and new prisoners.  In only three months eight ships were captured.  Except for one that was sent home as a prize all were sunk.  Often, U-Boats were supplied and the prisoners were transferred to the accommodation ship the ?Nordmark.?

Then the Kormoran itself became hunted.  Multiple British warships took pursuit and the German Hilfskreuzer took cover in the Indian Ocean.  Here there was less booty but fewer hunters.  Refreshment swims in a swimming pool the crew built enabled them to relax.  ?With strong seas the swimming pool became a wave pool? remembers Buttner.  The longer the German adventurers were at sea, the more applicable became the pirate clichés.  The ship?s mascot was a monkey named ?Tommy.?  A meerkat from Madagascar provided company.  Even the ship altered its appearance.  With plywood constructions, the Kormoran camoflaged itself as the Dutch freigher ?Straat Malakka.?

Anxious Cat and Mouse Game

Then they encountered the Sydney.  At first the German ship tries to distance itself but the Sydney is twice as fast, it gains on the Kormoran and approached the supposed freighter.  Now began an anxious cat-and-mouse game.  Captain Detmers tried to manouver his ship as close as possible to the enemy.  Only then would the Kormoran, in a firefight with the Sydney, have a hint of a chance if the Australians were able to see through their disguise.  Detmers was adept at slowing the enemy.  Flag signals were intentionally slowly and clumsily given.  The German wireless operator sent the signal ?QQQQ? for ?suspicious ship sighted? ? that irritated the Australians, a German Hilfskreuzer would hardly unmask itself. 

The communications went on while the Kormoran piece for piece drifted closer to the Sydney.  Suddenly the distance between them was reduced to only around 1500 meters, a fighting distance that was more common at the Battle of Trafalgar in Napoleon?s time, but not in modern sea warfare.  ?I could even see the white uniforms of their men while they were chatting to one another on the railing, that?s how unsuspecting they were,? says Buttner.

When the Australian Commander suddenly demanded a secret signal from the unknown ship, the hiding game was over.  On the Kormoran, the Imperial War Flag was raised, the camouflaged boarding fell and only six seconds later the first grenades were fired in the direction of the Sydney.  The first two salvos missed their target ? as did the response of the surprised Australians.  However, the command bridge of the Sydney came under constant fire from the 3,7 cm flak guns of the Germans which wreaked havoc.  Shortly after the start of the battle the most important officers of the Allied warship were dead.  Before the first salvos of the Kormoran even hit their target, both forward turrets of the Sydney were out of action.

Inferno of Flames in the Engine Room

However, the Kormoran was also hit.  An Australian shell was enough to turn the engine room into an inferno of flames.  Then a torpedo fired by the Kormoran hit the Australian ship.  Under the force of the explosion the bug of the cruiser rose and then dropped again.  After fifteen minutes the two ships were like wounded animals attacking another.  Both were destined to sink, however the Sydney turned and tried to escape.  A black cloud of smoke was left in her wake.  ?Around 18:30 we ceased fire?, remembers Buttner.  In total, the Kormoran fired 550 large grenades and Buttner estimates that of those, 150 hit the Sydney.

A last torpedo hit fired by the Australians also sealed the fate of the armed freighter.  ?The explosion almost ripped me from my feet? explained Buttner.  ?The ship bucked like an animal, shooting meters into the air.?  The engine room burned fiercely and even the aircraft fuel of the reconnaissance craft had ignited.  Heavily damaged the ship was unable to bring the fire under control.  Around 150 water mines on board now threatened to explode at any moment.

In four large wooden boats the large part of the crew were able to save themselves.  Buttner himself landed with 26 others in a rubber boat.  ?We sat as tight as sardines in a can,? he remembers.  ?If you wanted to shift your legs you needed to discuss it first with the guy next to you.?  There was nothing to eat.  The water supply was enough to wet one?s lips in the morning.  After six days with tropical temperatures and aggressive salt water the rubber boat began to slowly separate into its different components.  We had to continually pump air in and scoop water out of the boat with the sharks already circling us? said Buttner.  ?We had at best another night of survival.?  Suddenly one of the sunburnt and salt encrusted mates next to him cried out: ?Hey Edmund, out there there?s a factory with smoke stacks!?  It was the British passenger ship ?Aquitania? ? the rescue.

Two days prior, the expedition, that found the Sydney on the 18^th of March 2008 also discovered the wreck of the Kormoran.  Both ships now lie only 15 kilometres from one another on the bottom of the sea.

English-language resource, with narrative, of hilfskreuzer Kormoran and account versus Sydney:  h**p://www.bismarck-class.dk/hilfskreuzer/kormoran.html

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Beware the Great Southern Land. 

Given its mineral wealth and space, eventually Australia will be auctioned off on eBay.  Armenia will precede.  Mark these words ;>)  I hope not.

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