Sinking of HMAS Sydney 1941
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 19 November 1941 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1941 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | World War II era (1939–1945) | derived from year |
| Nearest landmass | At sea (nearest continent: Oceania) | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Oceania | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | World War II | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Australia, Nazi Germany | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | -26.1639, 111.0736 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
On 19 November 1941, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran engaged each other in a battle off the coast of Western Australia. Sydney, with Captain Joseph Burnett commanding, and Kormoran, under Fregattenkapitän (lit. 'Frigate captain') Theodor Detmers, encountered each other approximately 106 nautical miles (196 km; 122 mi) off Dirk Hartog Island. The single-ship action lasted half an hour, and both ships were destroyed.
From 24 November, after Sydney failed to return to port, air and sea searches were conducted. Boats and rafts carrying survivors from Kormoran were recovered at sea, while others made landfall at Quobba Station, 60 kilometres (37 mi) north of Carnarvon; 318 of the 399 personnel on Kormoran survived. While debris from Sydney was found, there were no survivors from the 645-strong complement. It was the largest loss of life in the history of the Royal Australian Navy, the largest Allied warship lost with all hands during World War II, and a major blow to Australian wartime morale. Australian authorities learned of Sydney's fate from the surviving Kormoran personnel, who were held in prisoner of war camps until almost two years after the war with Germany had ended.
Controversy has often surrounded the battle, especially in the years before the two wrecks were located in 2008.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Sinking of HMAS Sydney (revision 1378730532), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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- Siege of Calais (1940) 1940
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- Åndalsnes landings 1940
- Action of 4 April 1941 1941
- Battle of 42nd Street 1941
- Battle of Amba Alagi (1941) 1941
- Battle of Bardia 1941
- Battle of Brody (1941) 1941
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