Shipwreck Databases Western Australian Museum

HSK Kormoran related documents in the Military Archive Freiburg, Germany. A brief look at the German perspective of the sinking of HMAS Sydney

Author/s J. Franke

Year of publication 1998

Report Number: 143

Introduction
This paper is the result of a first step research into authentic German documents stored at the Bundesarchiv / Militararchiv. and related to the German WW II raider Korrnoran. which sank the Australian cruiser HMAS  Sydney on 19th / 20th of November 1941 . Due to time restrictions, it is rather likely to be incomplete. but It may give English speaking experts withinsights into this matter - who on the other hand lack knowledge of the German language a chance to take a glance at the German view and documentation of HMAS Sydney related issues, in most cases originating from the German Naval Command as opposed to interrogations of survivors of HSK Kormoron by Australian authorities. The tables in Appendix B give an overview of such documents. and English translations of selected documents are attached in Appendix C. Where appropriate, original German terms are included in square brackets, own comments are included in {}. German quotation marks start in lower and end in upper case. Photocopies of the German original documents including the translated ones under Appendix B are not to be reproduced and are therefore kept in the authors files. They can of course be viewed on request.