The whereabouts of the The Australian press, believing they were being kept in the dark, called for the whole story.In the same month, and despite staff urgings, the director of Naval Intelligence refused to publish an account by local Navy staff on the basis that the Australian press and public would still not accept the absolute confirmation of the loss of all the crew.There was continuing disquiet in Parliament, but the matter ended there as far as the authorities were concerned.German-speaking Jonathon Robotham, a prisoner of war in World War I, was a guard to the His beliefs were shared by a number of researchers and former servicemen who claimed they had seen records of signals from HMASOne hoax during World War II involved a message in a bottle, but the most sophisticated was ‘discovered’ by ex-Army serviceman WP Evans, who found an HMASIt contained a wooden box containing wartime memorabilia [but] was an elaborate fraud with the bag being washed in fluorescing soap powder not invented until the 1960s…In it was a wooden box containing wartime memorabilia, including a letter of proceedings, which read that the The Australian War Memorial established expert teams to examine the box, and ultimately it was proved that it was an elaborate fraud with the bag being washed in fluorescing soap powder not invented until the 1960s. Waller, believed that the ship's single director control tower was a weak point in the design.That same day, Germany and Vichy France signed the Contact with the Italian fleet was lost during the night, but regained in the morning of 9 July.The Australian cruiser spent five days in Alexandria for resupply and maintenance, before departing for Crete with the British destroyer The entire Mediterranean fleet sailed from Alexandria on 8 October to provide cover for several Malta Convoys, and attempt to draw the Italian fleet into battle.Before leaving, 100 of the ship's company were removed on 11 January, so they could be sent to England to help man the new As well as the battle honours for the battles at Calabria and Cape Spada, On her return to Sydney at the end of August, the cruiser joined the troopships The merchant ship hoisted her callsign, but as she was ahead and just port of The Australian cruiser continued on a south-south-east heading at low speed; observers aboard The main claims made by supporters of an alternative view of the engagement include: that the Germans fired on These claims have been proven false by historians and researchers; the 1998 inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade concluded that the German accounts were a "feasible" interpretation of the battle, but there was no reliable evidence to support any of the alternative claims, while the 2009 report for the In addition, most researchers have speculated as to Multiple searches were carried out by the RAN between 1974 and 1997 (using the survey ship Mearns' plan was to inspect a 52-by-34-nautical-mile (96 by 63 km; 60 by 39 mi) search box around the German location with a deep-water, towed The memorial (minus the stele, which had not been completed in time) was dedicated on 18 November 2001, and was used the next evening for a commemoration ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the ship's loss.The "HMAS Sydney Replacement Fund" was established to help finance the acquisition of a replacement ship.The "HMAS Sydney II Cup" was introduced in 2010 as a commemorative trophy competed for by two Australian historic shipwrecks with a protected zoneNote: Number in brackets refers to the year when the vessel was lost or deliberately sunk.Several sources give the cruiser's overall length as 555 feet (169 m): this value is for the unmodified Australian Associated Press & Australian Geographic Staff, The most grievous loss suffered by the Royal Australian Navy occurred on 19 November 1941, when the cruiser HMAS Sydney was lost in action with the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran off the Western Australian coast.None of the Sydney's complement of 645 men survived.The Kormoran was also sunk in the action. HMAS Sydney was one of three Modified Leander- or Perth-class light cruisers of the RAN. HMAS Sydney, named after the Australian city of Sydney, was one of three modified Leander-class light cruisers operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). The cruiser was 562 feet 4 inches (171.40 m) long, and displaced 8,940 long tons (9,080 t). Following the announcement that Australia was purchasing a British-built cruiser, there was criticism, primarily from the Each space had its own uptake, giving the modified ships a different profile to the single-funnelled early One of the cruiser's early commanding officers, Royal Navy Captain J.W.A. In the intervening years conspiracy theories included a claim HMAS Sydney was sunk by the Japanese, as a precursor to Pearl Harbor. Those calling for objectivity, including the Western Australian Museum, were labelled as part of a whole government cover-up.With the growth of the Internet and self-publishing, further theories have been expressed, often quite startling and sometimes involving concerned relatives.