The wreckage of a German ship believed to have sunk the HMAS Sydney during World War II has been found off the Western Australian coast, raising hopes that an enduring wartime mystery will soon be solved.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the German merchant raider Kormoran was found on Saturday about 150km west of Shark Bay, which is near the state's westernmost point.
He said the discovery was an important clue to concluding the search for the cruiser HMAS Sydney, which went down in November 1941 with the loss of all 645 on board after a fierce battle.
"We are one step closer as a nation to hopefully finding Sydney," Rudd told journalists at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
The Sydney was sunk in battle with the Kormoran while sailing home to Australia from Sumatra in November 1941, but the exact location of the wreck in the vast Indian Ocean was uncertain.
"All of us concerned about this great ship and those of us who are concerned about what happened to the 645 brave souls who went down with her, have all these years been wondering where she lay and what in the end actually happened," Rudd said.
The Kormoran was also sunk but most of the German vessel's crew of 397 survived and were able to give accounts of what had occurred.
Intrigue has sparked several major hunts, the latest being the Finding Sydney Foundation's largely government-funded search using sonar equipment which began early this month.
The foundation said the Kormoran wreck was several pieces of hull amid a large and dense field of debris lying some 2,560m underwater.
"The wreckage fits perfectly with what we know and expected to see for Kormoran from testimony of the German survivors," search director David Mearns said in a statement.
Searchers believe the site of the battle is about 4 nautical miles (2.4km) south of the Kormoran wreck site because this is where more scattered debris -- likely to have come from the Sydney after she was gravely damaged by a torpedo hit and being heavily shelled -- has been found.
The team will now narrow the area they are searching to within 300 nautical miles of the Kormoran and this week will use a remote-operated vehicle to search the Kormoran and the battlefield.
Chairman of the foundation Ted Graham said finding the Kormoran put searchers "halfway to solving where the Sydney is."
"Without finding the Kormoran, our job would've been much harder," Graham said.
"It's a fantastic step forward," he said.
Navy chief Vice Admiral Russ Shalders said the find would "allow us to proceed towards finishing something that has been a mystery -- Australia's major maritime mystery."
"The navy looks forward to the day that we can find the Sydney and perhaps more importantly find out why the battle turned out the way it did," he said.
Germany has been told that the HSK Kormoran had been found and that authorities were working to ensure the site was protected.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS