Hilfskreuzer

However, despite their elegance, speed and power as raiders, these eight large ships failed. In view of their enormous cost, awesome power, mighty armament and colossal crews, the few ships they sank or captured were a very poor return. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had absolutely no affect on Britain's vital supply lines; Deutschland and Admiral Hipper fared little better, and the remaining four, while achieving better results, did nothing outstanding, nothing that could not have been achieved by one single Type VII U-Boat.

But these weren't the only German surface raiders of World War Two.

There were nine other warships, that between them, accounted for 142 ships, sunk or captured, grossing more than 870.000 tons of standard weight, in a total of 3.769 days at sea. That's an average of more than 230 tons of enemy ships sunk or captured per day. If this operational record is impressive, in economical terms the figures are even more so.                       This outstanding performance was achieved by little more than 3000 officers and men, in nine second-hand freighters, armed with third-hand weapons, whose total cost, both in terms of purchase price and fitting out expenses, represented barely 1% of the cost of the Bismarck .

They were Die Hilfskreuzer, the Auxiliary Cruisers, the commerce raiders. They may have been built as freighters, but they went to sea and fought as true warships. They were manned by fighting men and led by fighting men, by Commanders and Captains no less capable than those who commanded Gneisenau or Admiral Scheer. Freighters they were, and indeed some of them returned to being freighters after the war, but on the high seas between 1939 and 1945 they were real warships, real fighting machines. Men-of-War, that number among the most gallant in all the annals of naval history.

So why are they so relatively unknown, their exploits so obscure, their names so forgotten?

Because they were not glamourous.
They were very unglamorous.
They were ugly, dirty, German freighters disguised as ugly, dirty non-German freighters. There is nothing beautiful to be seen in the few existing photographs of these ships; their silhouettes have nothing in common with the delicate yet aggressive, beautifully proportioned fighting lines of Gneisenau or Tirpitz; their colour schemes do not match those of Admiral Hipper or Prinz Eugen; their overall appearance could never be compared with those of Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Deutschland or Admiral Graf Spee; but, for all that, they were simply perfect.

Their characteristics were precisely what was most required of them: to be so unglamourous, ugly, and dirty, that in not attracting too much attention, they could go about their deadly and stealthy business, undisturbed.

Perhaps this is what makes them so fascinating.

They were true old-fashioned blue-blooded high sea corsairs.

In World War I , Germany armed several auxiliary cruisers to harass the British and French sea-lanes, and some of these, such as Wolf and Seeadler, were so successful, that their names echo in history.

These ships represented the second wave of auxiliary cruisers and were not the initially improvised ones; the first wave being made up of the large passenger ships already at sea or at neutral ports when the war began. Some of these succeeded in reaching German colonies, where they received some light armament, as their commanders considered that safely reaching Germany would be almost impossible.

These ships were not freighters, but large, well-known passenger liners, and so very coal-consuming, and their commanders decided to engage in commerce raiding up to the point where it was no longer possible to continue and to then sink their ships. Although some achieved success despite the weather, there was no way to continue with ships of such limited endurance restricted to so few days without replenishing coal and water, and so the strategic planners of the Der Kaiserliche Marine, The Imperial Navy, soon realized that a much more elaborate concept was required, based on the use of small oil-fuelled freighters, and not sailing ships, as was Seeadler, well-armed and capable of remaining several months at sea. They could provide for their most immediate necessities such as oil, food and drinking water by prize-capture, but for armament and spares some extra help would be needed. This was provided by the "Etappendienst" - the Secret Naval Supply Department, a service born in 1911 to get information about the commercial activities of potential enemies and also to attend to the German war units spread throughout the world. It must be remembered that at this time Germany was a colonial power with a strong presence in Africa , the Far East and the Pacific.

Through Etappendienst, the second wave of German auxiliary cruisers, or commerce raiders, could stay at sea for years.      The system worked extremely well, even following the loss of the colonies, both in terms of effectiveness and secrecy.
The Etappendienst was so secret that the Allies didn't know about it until the end of WWII. It's Commander-in-Chief during WWI was the later head of the WWII Abwehr, Admiral Canaris. He restored it in 1927, quickly recruiting most German maritime commercial companies and creating stations worldwide. The most important were those in Spain , South-America, The United States and the Far East . The Etappendienst remained "dormant" until 10 August 1939 , when it was re-activated

Etappendienst was the key for commerce war, for regular naval units, auxiliary cruisers, blockade runners that brought strategic goods to Germany from Japan and other countries, and for the replenishment of fuel, drinking water, food, spares and torpedoes for U-Boats at sea. It was more critical for the auxiliary cruisers than for the capital ships, as the latter were never at sea for so many months, and so their replenishment needs were correspondingly less urgent. The auxiliaries were often at sea for more than a year.

The "Hilfskreuzer" (HK) concept was not entirely supported by the high command of The Kriegsmarine; only months before the outbreak of WWII many high-ranking staff officers expressed their lack of confidence in this strategy; they maintained that “the sea would be much smaller" in WWII than in WWI.

There would be better communication systems, long-range reconnaissance aircraft, and no "safe-haven" German colonies; the entire Hilkreuzer fleet would have to rely on non-tested, non-guaranteed supply systems; and to reach the open sea from Germany under the ever vigilant eyes of the UK and France was considered next to impossible.                                          Behind all this lies the fact that at this time, the strategic thinking of The Kriegsmarine for surface warfare, was anything but audacious.

The high-ranking "old style" officers were notoriously overcautious. The Nazi principle of blind obedience to Der Führer, The Leader “who was never wrong", that single-minded way of thinking so typical of all dictatorial systems, deeply contaminated the Kriegsmarine. Traditional Prussian war principles – the independence of the commander in the field, open strategy, general directives and proprietary development of each officers' capacity to think for himself and to make decisions in the field, in the face of the enemy - were not embraced. The final compromise reached by the professionals, the old-style thinkers and the Nazi-influenced Admirals and high-ranking officers was as follows: Hilfskreuzern? By all means, but not as a top priority; Only five ships, not fifty, and later on, maybe some more depending on results; Only general-service freighters, and not particularly the best ones; Obselete 5.9 inch secondary batteries from the 40 year old pre-dreadnought battleships; Volunteer crews, not required by other ships; Officers taken mostly from the reserve force; Commanders not considered to be the most brilliant, in other words, those not qualified to serve on the magnificent, and very expensive, regular units, and, on top of all this, absolute secrecy - Total Gekados. "GeKaDoS" - GEheime KommAnDOSache was used by the OKW (The High Command) to classify top secrets. In other words, the more or less unavoidable loss of the five HK's must not be allowed to affect the German people's morale or their faith in final victory.

Apart from this, the strategy was simple. To stay at sea as long as possible, to disturb the sea lanes as much as they could, to avoid any fight with enemy units of equal strength - AMC's or Armed Merchant Cruisers, as the British called their auxiliary cruisers, were very different from the German ones - and to try, where possible, to send the prize ships back to Germany, when their cargoes justified the risk. For this reason the HK's would carry a rather large "prize crew" - to man the captured ships. Some of the HK's were loaded with magnetic mines so that they could act as minelayers in the vicinity of ports that under normal conditions would not have been considered to be at war, such as those in South-Africa , Australia and New Zealand .

At the beginning of the campaign, between April and June 1940, when the first wave of HK's - Orion, Atlantis, Widder, Thor and Pinguin - departed from German ports, the very few Kriegsmarine officers who were even aware of their existence, would not have bet any money on the possibility of their staying afloat for more than a week.                                                                Only the old style officers, the "Prussians", had any confidence in them. Proof of this was to be found in the rather surprising right given to the HK commanders to "Christianize" their ships. This was consistent with the purest of corsair traditions.

The other two - Orion and Widder - were ten year old second-hand boiler-turbine freighters, very thirsty and unreliable.         None of them - Atlantis, Orion, Widder, Thor nor Pinguin, had any bulkheads, and remained unmodified from the point of view of buoyancy. The basic fitting out they received was concentrated on armament, and the capacity to disguise the ship. The crews were large by normal freighter standards, but small for a raider cruiser, and one of the main problems faced by the commanders was how to maintain the morale of 300 young conscript sailors during months, or sometimes years, of continuous war at sea, and among the often very numerous prisoners taken on board

Operational experience at sea soon showed that diesel engines were essential for HK's. Orion and Widder, formerly twin sisters Kurmark and Neumark, suffered from continuous problems, lost many prizes that simply outran them, and suffered almost unmanageable oil replenishment problems. So much so that Widder was forced to abort her cruise seven months short of the intended one-year operation. This fiasco was just one of the bitter consequences of the lack of vision demonstrated by the high command at the time of their strategically defining the ship-as-a-weapon.

By the second half of 1940 Hitler himself had joined the "pro-HK" lobby because of the amazing successes of the five ships. One of the few positive aspects of dictatorship is that when the dictator is in favour of something, everything is in its favour. Most of the former restrictions were lifted, and a second wave, comprising six ships, was quickly fitted out for sea. The first one, Komet, reached the Pacific border on the coast of Siberia in an outstanding demonstration of seamanship that earned for her commander Robert Eyssen, the first Rear-Admirals flag of all the HK's. Three more, Stier, Kormoran and Michel, were also able to reach the open sea. The last two however, Coronel, the former freighter Togo , and Hansa, the former Danish freighter Glengarry, one of the best fitted out for the task, were unable to break through the lines of the ever-vigilant British

Komet was a tiny diesel freighter unsuitable for laying mines; Stier and Michel were slightly bigger diesel freighters, big enough to even carry an E-Boat! And Kormoran was the biggest of all the nine Hilfskreuzers, and also had diesel engines. All of them, especially Michel, which had been seized before launching, and rebuilt in according with war requirements, had improved bulkheads, which gave them a high buoyancy level. They were by far superior to the first five, but when they reached the open sea the conditions of war were much worse for the HK's than a year earlier. Despite this their operations continued to be fairly successful.

All of the nine HK's carried the same main armament: six 40 year-old 150 mm guns on single mountings, well camouflaged behind false partitions on the upper hull, two to six deck level torpedo tubes - in the case of Kormoran two underwater torpedo tubes - four to six 37 mm dual-purpose guns and a 75 mm gun, sometimes disguised as a 105 mm gun like the ones mounted on the stern of most British and American freighters from early 1942. All of them carried two Arado Ar196 seaplanes, one unassembled in reserve, several 20 mm and seven 92 mm AA automatic guns. Both Orion and Stier captured a Nakajima 90-11 at sea. Finally, Stier and Michel each carried a tiny Schnellboot, what the Allied forces called an E-Boat, capable of 40 knots and carrying two torpedoes, to be used as an auxiliary when a faster target tried to outrun them.

This armament, in principle, could be compared to that of an HMS Arethusa class light cruiser, but there the comparison ended. The six 6 inch guns of an Arethusa were capable of firing broadsides, while only two of the HK's six could be trained to port or starboard, while the secondary armament of an Arethusa was much more powerful. The HK's were entirely unprotected by armour while the Arethusa's had reasonable protection, and, most importantly, Arethusa could do more than 33 knots, while Kormoran, the fastest of the nine HK's, was barely capable of 18 knots.

The HK's, in short, were ill equipped to face light or heavy cruisers, and only just capable of fighting an AMC, which were usually armed with eight 6 inch guns in single mountings. While the HK's were not designed to engage in battle, some were forced to face AMC's, light cruisers and even heavy cruisers, and unbelievable as it might seem, the commander of one of them actively sought to do battle with AMC's and light cruisers.

If the captain obeyed, a "prize crew" was sent to board the ship.

This was always carried out with great caution as the Germans still had vivid memories of the British Q-Ships. If the prize was neutral, it was, according to the rules of war, permitted to continue on its way. If it was not, flew an enemy flag, or was found to be carrying war materials to or from an enemy port, the commander had two options: (1) to confiscate all valuable supplies, equipment and cargo, such as oil, water, food, documents, spares and arms, take the crew on board and sink the ship, usually by opening keel valves or using small explosive charges; (the less noise, and the less smoke, the better) or (2) if the cargo was of benefit to Germany, or if the ship was of such a quality as to be useful, to put a prize crew aboard and send her to Bordeaux, or in some cases to convert her into an auxiliary or replenishing ship.

If the captain did not obey, opened fire, or started sending radio signals, three or four broadsides were generally sufficient to convince him to co-operate. From there, the procedure proceeded as described above.

At the beginning, the German raiders kept all such captured crews on board until the continuous disappearance of ships in a particular sea area attracted the attention of the British.                                                                                                     At this point the usual procedure was to send the captured crews ashore, minus captains and officers, in the prize's own boats, after the ship was taken, or to transfer them to an auxiliary prize ship. The raider commanders, in general, had no interest in sending the captured crews or passengers to Germany . For obvious security reasons they wished to avoid information about their locations and appearance being made known.

By late 1940 war conditions for the Hilfskreuzer had become even harder. British Admiralty orders now demanded avoidance of all ships at sea and immediate use of the radio, regardless of risk. Tough but necessary in order to locate the raiders. As a consequence prize capturing techniques had to change. The Arado seaplanes became infinitely more important, and not only for reconnaissance purposes.                                                                                                                                         

When a prize was identified, the plane flew over her mastheads, grabbing her radio wires with a trailing hook, and then strafing her decks with machine-gun fire. In some cases the pilot set down close to the ship and kept station in front of her, engine on and machine guns trained; a thoroughly convincing display in the case of fully loaded tankers, and waited for the arrival of the corsair.

Even that tactic was to become obsolete during 1941. Ships escaped at full speed, quickly sending warning radio messages.   So the German procedures had to change again. Some of the raider's commanders stopped attacking by day and attacked only at night. When they detected a potential prize, they tried, first of all, to remain undetected. They then analysed the bearing and speed of the prize to calculate the best bearing and speed that would allow them to get into an attack position at night. The best time was just before moonrise while approaching from the darker horizon. This tactic was to prove very efficient. The prizes, taken completely by surprise, rarely used their radios and surrendered quickly. It was more costly in terms of lives lost, but the hardening of war conditions made it almost unavoidable.

The raider's commanders were not encouraged to look for battle, but one of them, Hellmuth von Ruckteschell in HK Michel, was an exception. His tactic, which was very risky, was to attack an enemy ship at night, allow her to use the radio, and then sinking her, leaving the survivors adrift in their boats. Afterwards, he would withdraw and hide below the horizon. Some hours later, in daylight, he would appear again, approaching at full speed. Provided that during the attack the previous night the survivors had been unable to identify the raider, he could approach as a friendly ship, coming at full speed to help the shipwrecked, but in reality to attack at close quarters which ever ship might be helping them at the time. The risk lay in that the ship could be an armed freighter, an AMC, or even a cruiser. The von Ruckteschell way of thinking was that nobody would suspect anything until it was too late, as the "friendly ship" rushed to the scene closing the distance to one thousand meters and then, showing the German combat flag, firing a full salvo of three torpedoes and several broadsides at point blank range. The one time von Ruckteschell came closest to carrying out this daring and controversial tactic, the potential prize, HMS Alcantara, an AMC with some experience of Hilfskreuzern, had left the scene less than one hour earlier.

Another tactic of Helmuth von Ruckteschell was to use a Schnellboot. The procedure was simple. If the prize was too fast to be caught during the night, the Schnellboot was sent. At the right moment she fired one or two torpedoes and then awaited the arrival of the raider. For the prize the effect was the same as to have been torpedoed by a submarine. The fault with this tactic was that the prize ships could not be sent to Germany after being torpedoed. At that time of the war returning to Germany was almost impossible, even for the most experienced captains or blockade runners. For this reason HK Michel never captured a prize ship. It only sank ships, regardless of their value or their cargoes. Sometimes this represented a painful loss of badly needed raw materials, but it was necessary to ensure the raider's safety.

Each Hilfskreuzer operated alone and well away from the others, not only to cover as large an area as possible, but also to avoid mutual attacks. There were only two exceptions, Komet and Orion, which operated jointly in the Pacific, during three weeks in November/December 1940, with moderate success, and Michel and Stier, which did the same in the summer of 1942 in the South Atlantic , with no results. There were some joint operations between HKs and blockade runners, such as Stier with Tannenfels, and between HKs and prize ships converted to auxiliary ships – providing replenishment and prisoner accomodation for one or more raiders, but nothing to the same extent of that between Komet and Orion.

A good example of this was the campaign of the Admiral Scheer in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean . She made use of some HK's during this operation. In one case even offering protection against the 8" shells of the British high seas scouting cruisers. The HK commander in question declined the offer, not just for operational reasons, such as the difference in speed, but because of his concept of defence. The main defence of Admiral Scheer was her main armament. The corsair's was her disguise.

A HK commander had to be a very special man with very special personal qualities. Firstly, independent, and this for many, many months. No Group West or equivalent telling him what to do, or where to go. Secondly, resilient. Nobody to give him advice, nobody to consult. His word was the last word. No tiredness; no depression; no mood swings; no illnesses; no human frailties. A HK commander was effectively God on his ship. Thirdly, reliable. Never listless; never cowardly; never temperamental; always cold, sharp, and confident. Never openly thinking of home or family; never nostalgic; never indulging in solitude or lowering himself to his officers. The HK commander had to be the role model for all on board. He had to be absolutely perfect, at least in front of others. In short, totally unlike any ordinary warship commander at sea, because an HK was almost defenceless before enemy warships, unable to escape, and all of this for months and months on end.

The biggest challenge for any HK commander was the maintenance of company morale. How to keep morale high through long months of no success, monotonous weeks of searching the oceans, often in very high temperatures or extremely heavy seas, not too much good food, no alcohol, no entertainment apart from some movies, books and deck sports. A daunting task for any leader of men. The lives of U-Boat crews were worse of course, but usually only for a matter of weeks, rarely more than ten, and they were always secure in their being able to fight or escape from danger.

Eight out of the ten Hilfskreuzer commanders were truly exceptional men.                                                                           The unfortunate Ulrich Brocksien had little opportunity to demonstrate his abilities as his ship was sunk after only six days at sea, and Horst Gerlach too was unlucky, sunk by a prize after only five months of raiding; Ernst Thienemann, the appointed captain of HK Coronel, would probably have been another exceptional commander; he was the soul of the HK's, and the man responsible for the fitting out of all of the ships, but his own ship was attacked and very badly damaged by British bombers and destroyers in the English Channel, and so he was unable make the open sea. All eight commanders were highly decorated. All eight received the Ritterkreuz, or Knights Cross, and four the Eichenlaubs, or oak leaves; an impressive achievement given that only 890 Eichenlaubs were awarded during the war. In fact the HK commanders were the most decorated group of all the Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and Waffen-SS forces.  The four that returned to Germany during the war, with the exception of Gerlach, were promoted to Konteradmiral (Rear-Admiral) and one of them attained that rank some years later, in the Bundesmarine, The Federal German Navy. All deserved recognition for their wartime abilities and exceptional performances; but five of them really exceeded the limits of what could fairly be expected of a HK commander.

Bernhard Rogge (04-11-1899 – 29-06-1982) Hilfskreuzer Atlantis remained at sea longer than any other - 601 days. Rogge's war record was comparable to the top performers; 22 ships, totalling almost 146.000 tons, sunk by his tiny 7,900 ton freighter; approximately the same tonnage as that sunk by the two 32.000 ton battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in Operation "Berlin". Rogge, on top of his military capabilities, and his prodigious instinct for survival, was a true gentleman, appreciated by both his crew and his prisoners. His ice cool nerve was legendary. Even during the difficult times he remained calm and sharp. Instead of opening fire on HMS Devonshire, which was well out of the maximum range of his guns, he preferred to sink his ship so as not to give the British cruiser the opportunity of knowing whether he was a raider or a blockade runner, and so kept the enemy guessing as to whether or not they had sunk a raider and the very costly British ocean surveillance forces busy. By the end of WWII he had attained the rank of Vizeadmiral (Vice-Admiral) and in 1955 joined the newly formed Bundesmarine, with the rank of Konteradmiral (Rear-Admiral)

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Otto Kähler (03-03-1894 – 02-11-1967) In Thor's first campaign, she was forced to engage in combat three times, always with British AMC's armed with 6" guns, all of them bigger, stronger and faster ships than his tiny former banana freighter Hilfskreuzer. The first one was HMS Alcantara, a 22.200 ton Atlantic runner with a top speed of 19 knots. The battle was particularly violent and only finished when the AMC, on fire, listing and almost sinking, broke contact and fled into Rio de Janeiro , for badly needed repairs. The second one was HMS Caernarfon Castle, another 20.000 ton, 19 knot Atlantic runner. The battle lasted 75 minutes. Thor suffered no hits, but the British ship took 26 150 mm (5,9") direct hits, six of them near the waterline, and finally on fire, she broke off contact, and escaped to Montevideo at full speed. The third AMC, HMS Voltaire, a 14.5 knot, 13.245 ton ship, didn't break contact or escape. She was sunk after 80 minutes of hard combat. The HK suffered only one hit that broke the radio wires with no other effects. Three battles, three victories, one adversary sunk, and all of this with a ship not specifically  designed to fight. While Kähler's fighting abilities were widely recognized, luck can sometimes explain a victory over a superior enemy, but these three in a row cannot be put down to luck. It was ability and training. Otto Kähler became a Konteradmiral, Rear-Admiral, and was responsible for the naval defences of Brest , and was later a POW in the United States , but during his entire life he always said that the high point of his career was the command of the HK Thor. On his grave is written "Otto Kähler, Kommandant von Hilfskreuzer Thor".

Helmuth von Ruckteschell (22-03-1890 – 24-09-1948) The HKs Widder and Michel's first campaign was commanded by a very different type of man. Older than the others, coming from the naval reserve (Captain), he commanded a U-Boat in WWI, during which he torpedoed and sank a major British warship. In many ways he was more of a "corsair", although some people would say "pirate", than the other HK commanders. He wasn't the friendly gentleman type like Rogge. It was said he was very temperamental, even brutal, in his behaviour. He was always worried about his ships security, but not at basic levels. This was because the Widder was technically, the worst, of all the raiders. Slow and oil thirsty her unreliability forced von Ruckteschell to return to Germany after only 178 days at sea, with only 10 ships sunk or captured. With such a poor quality ship under his command, von Ruckteschell's hunting opportunities were very limited, with several possible prizes escaping from him due to their higher speeds, sending warning messages as they did so, thus forcing the raider to leave the area. These circumstances compelled him to develop tactics that were later considered "brutal". He always tried to attack at night and without warning. He simply continued firing until the opponent surrendered, seemingly indifferent to casualties. To him, the security of his ship and crew was the absolute priority. After leaving Widder he was put in command of the last of all the raiders, the last afloat, the Michel. She was a much better ship than Widder as all the previous war experience had been applied to her fitting out, but the sea war conditions of 1942 were much worse than those of 1940. There is a curious anecdote about von Ruckteschell that in a certain way reveals the thinking of this "true corsair". It is not widely known, but the name "Michel" was not fully accepted by the Kriegsmarine, being seen as too frivolous and a little "pro-Jewish" as the Archangel Saint Michel was a very important figure of the Old Testament. Given every commanders right to choose his ships' name, but knowing that to antagonise high-ranking Nazi officers was not healthy, he announced a new name for his command, "Götz von Berlinchingen", a famous warrior and traitor of the religious wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people. Despite the fact that he was also one of Goethe's less savoury characters, the Kriegsmarine finally and reluctantly accepted "Michel". As sea war conditions during Michel's time were much worse than during Widder's time, von Ruckteschell reinforced his tactics still further, complementing them with a tiny E-Boat armed with two torpedoes. However he was forced to leave Michel at Kobe , due to ill health, ceding command to Günther Gumprich. Von Ruckteschell's performance, in both Widder's and Michel's first campaigns was the best of all HK commanders, including Krüder, and totalled 25 ships, 158.065 tons, after 532 days at sea. He was captured and later convicted as a war criminal, having been found guilty of firing too long, by approx 10 minutes, against a surrendered prize, and imprisoned for ten years. In poor health, he died in prison. There are those, not all of them German, who think his imprisonment was not really justice, but simply revenge.

Theodor Detmers (22-08-1902 – 04-11-1976) As a Korvettenkapitän (Commander) Kormoran's skipper was the youngest and lowest ranked of all the HK commanders.          His performance was not particularly outstanding - 12 ships; 75.375 tons; 351 days at sea - but his last day afloat was the most glorious of all the HK commanders, if not of all German warship commanders in WWII. He was forced to fight a regular warship, the HMAS Sydney, an Australian Leander-class light-cruiser, sister ship of Ajax and Achilles, 7,100 tons, 8 6 inch guns and a top speed of 33 knots. Without doubt his fate should have been the same as that meted out to Pinguin six months earlier, but the Sydney's commander, Captain Joseph Burnett, did not seem to have been aware of that battle, because he closed the distance to Kormoran to around 1000 meters. Clearly Kormorans disguise was excellent, but the fatal question "give me your secret identification code" like all the dialogue, was by flag, with continuous repetition necessitated by the poor English of the supposed "Dutch" Straat Malaka's skipper (Detmers was a master in the art of time-wasting) forced him to open fire almost at point blank range. The Australian ship suffered a lot of heavy impacts even before the first broadside hit her. The automatic fire from all the 37 mm, 20 mm and 7-92 mm guns and machines guns on Kormoran was devastating. It killed everybody on the bridge and decks, set the Walrus hydro on fire - it was over the catapult, engine running, but not ready for launching because the catapult was not trained away from the ship - and destroyed all the boats and rafts. Seconds later a torpedo struck Sydney below the forecastle taking both A and B turrets out of action.  Sydney scored four hits on Kormoran with her X and Y turrets, setting her on fire, but in an apparent effort to ram Kormoran, Sydney crossed her wake, exposing her entire starboard side to the Germans. Again, the automatic fire from Kormoran destroyed everything on Sydney 's starboard superstructure, again including all the boats and rafts. It is believed that this was the reason for Sydney 's loss of all hands, 645 officers and enlisted men. Both ships broke contact, and some minutes later when it became clear to Detmers that the fire on his ship was uncontrollable, he gave the order to abandon ship. HMAS Sydney was never seen again. Months later, a damaged raft bearing her name was found thousands of miles away with nobody in it. The wrecks of both ships are believed to rest in swallow waters, a few miles off the Abrolhos Islands , on the west coast of Australia . The surviving members of Kormarans crew (about sixty died) were picked up and interned in an Australian camp. No charges were ever made against commander Detmers, despite some suspicion about possible dirty play against the Sydney , a controversy still open to this day, and the Australian Government released him and his crew 21 months after the war's end. Some people, again, not all of them Germans, think this prolonged internment was a form of revenge. Detmers' health never fully recovered from Australian hospitality, and having been declared unsuitable for service, he could not join the Bundesmarine. For some people, he must be credited with the most extraordinary sea action of WWII.

Life on board an HK was very boring. Dividing the number of days at sea between prizes, the mean time between actions was almost 27 days. For commanders it was very important to keep morale high. All the raiders were well equipped with movies, libraries, swimming pools and all kind of sports and entertainments. No girls, obviously, but it is said that some crews were more lucky than others! A standard custom was to allow "vacations" on board as a reward for something especially well done, a sailor could enjoy up to two weeks of simply doing nothing (obviously not on battle stations, or Auf Gefechtsstation!).

The attitude of Hilfskreuzer sailors toward the enemy was usually friendly. There were very few claims of brutality or cruelty, with the most being made against the two ships under von Ruckteschell's command. Life on board with "guests" was usually relaxed, but obviously not during action. The ships were not very comfortable, neither for the crews nor their prisoners, but the decks were wide and everybody had time to walk about, although clearly not under action conditions. The attitude among the crews of the supply/prison ships however, was not always quite so friendly. Their crews were smaller, and their commanders were not always gentlemen as most of the raider captains were. They lived in constant fear of mutiny on board, and so there were fewer facilities for physical exercise and rest space.

A special part of each raider's crew was the "Prize Group", a number of officers and men selected to man captured prize ships. Their task was a rather dangerous one, as they always needed the "co-operation" of at least  part of the captured crew. The task of the prize crew was to reach Bordeaux undetected by British naval forces and according to very specific timing, so as to avoid being torpedoed by German U-Boats. In one case when the Pinguin captured 15 ships in succession, there were insufficient prize crew numbers on board to man all the ships. Fortunately, the Panzerschiff Admiral Scheer was close by and assigned some junior ensigns (Leutnants zur See) to the task, and all but two of the ships succeeded in reaching Bordeaux .

Another highly specialised part of a Hilfskreuzer crew was the "disguising party". Every time an aircraft came close, a suspicious ship crossed their path, or an enemy warship appeared on the horizon, the "disguising party" appeared on the decks. These were often very skilfully simulated "women" (on occasion scantily clad for authenticity!) simulated "coloured" people (at the time it was difficult to imagine a freighter's deck without a really big coloured cook!) and miscellaneous "other" people such as the clergyman sitting in a deckchair, two or three large "ladies" beside him, and some "children" playing games nearby. Without doubt these disguising techniques saved the raiders and their crews on many occasions. In at least one case this very efficient use of disguise by the crew of Kormoran was enough to deceive an Australian light cruiser to the point that it came within 1000 meters to the raider, but it did not always work quite so well. The loss of Pinguin, it was later reported, was as a direct result of HMS Cornwall's sea plane pilot, having inspected the raider closely from the air, and being on the point of confirming that the suspicious ship was in fact the Norwegian Tamerlane, changed his mind when he observed that nobody on the ship's deck, bridge or galley was waving to him! Simply because of this, the British claimed, the Pinguin was attacked and sunk.

The "foul play" theory alleges that Kormoran's captain, Theodor Detmers, "surrendered" his ship to the Australians, stopped his engines and waited until the Sydney occupied the "safe" position around 135 degrees astern of the raider on the starboard side, at a distance of 1.000 meters. It goes on to suggest that, while still under the protection of the white flag, he ordered a torpedo to be fired from a tube below the waterline which was trained precisely 135 degrees astern. Having hit the Sydney , the raider is then said to have opened fire, crippling the Australian cruiser, but not before she fatally hit Kormoran several times setting her on fire. According to the theory, the cruiser's captain Burnett, had no way of knowing that the raider had hidden torpedo tubes, as this was a secret feature of some of the German raiders, and, apparently reinforcing this theory, is the fact that under interrogation, Detmers placed the battle 150 miles to the northwest of where it actually took place, in order, it is said, to prevent a rescue operation finding survivors who would relate the real facts.

It has been established that Kormoran had two hidden torpedo tubes, one aimed to port and one to starboard, but it has also it been established that torpedoes could only be fired from these at speeds less than three knots, or better still while stopped.   All the German survivors questioned were in agreement on one thing, that the Kormoran never reduced her speed, estimated to have been 14-15 knots. This is clearly incompatible with the "foul play" theory. During the war the Royal Australian Navy declined to press charges against Commander Detmers, releasing him and his crew early in 1947.                                    Some years later, and after some rekindling of the "foul play" theory, the Australian Government, after intensive research, declared that there was insufficient evidence against Detmers, placing full responsibility for the loss of HMAS Sydney and her crew of 645 officers and men, upon Captain Burnett.                    

Despite this, there are still those who wish to reopen the case, suggesting that a coordinated dive on the wrecks of both ships - located in moderately shallow waters some miles off Abrolhos Island – could produce vital physical evidence. To this day (March 2003) there are two highly detailed websites on the internet defending the "foul play" theory.

It has also been established that the reason Commander Detmers did not tell the truth about the location of the battle, was that this was simply normal procedure for all commanders in WWII. No commander would ever reveal anything that could jeopardise the security of other ships. To give details of the battle could have affected the security of other raiders and blockade runners, and because of that Detmers never gave any, at least in war time, about this action, or any other action during the Kormoran's campaign. After war he, with J.H. Brennecke, published a book, Hilfskreuzer Kormoran – Raider Kormoran - in which he gives a detailed account of the battle.

Without wishing to give opinions either for or against Detmer's actions or the "foul play" theory, there are some important facts that must be considered, as follows:

• Six months earlier in August 1941, when HMS Cornwall sank HK Pinguin after a short battle at 5.000 meters. British captains learned that being too close to a German raider, within the range of her 150 mm (5.9") guns, was highly dangerous.

• Despite all that has been said about HMAS Sydney not using her radio, it has recently been established that there was in fact some communication between her and several radio stations, one of them in Singapore , supposedly giving details of the battle. The content of these communications has never been published.

• Only three days after the battle, HMS Devonshire sank HK Atlantis, firing at her from more than 10.000 meters, remaining at all times outside the range of the raider's main guns, and then left the area at full speed after Atlantis went down, without waiting around to worry about survivors, regardless of the fact that some of them could have been British. A somewhat different approach to that of HMAS Sydney?

Given all this, why did Captain Burnett put himself within 1.000 meters of an unidentified and suspicious ship?

Regardless of whether the HKs had hidden torpedo tubes or not, it is surely to be expected that an experienced captain would seek to establish all the possible armament of an unidentified, and possibly enemy warship. Neither was the commander of HMAS Sydney inexperienced. Only a few months before her sinking he sank the Italian light cruiser Bartollomeo Colleoni in the Mediterranean .

Why did HMAS Sydney, already badly damaged and on fire, cross Kormoran's wake, exposing her undamaged starboard side? This inexplicable action appears to have cost the lives of her entire crew.

Could it be that the wrecks of the two ships might throw new light on these or other unanswered questions?

The answer to that last question is "maybe". It could be possible to verify whether or not a torpedo hit HMAS Sydney's forecastle on the port side, and also the angle of the impact. It could also be possible to verify whether there may have been a massive internal explosion, and to establish the status of her superstructure, which, according to the German accounts, was totally destroyed by point blank range light calibre gunfire. It could also facilitate an analysis of the undersea Kormoran's tubes, to verify her capacity to fire at speed. Many possibilities, but it would involve a highly professional team examining both wrecks, and this would cost a lot of money. Too much to solve, or simply attempt to solve, a 63 year old mystery.

The surviving HK commanders were respected and highly decorated after their campaigns and also after the war was over.

They richly deserved it. They were the most successful German surface commanders of the entire war, with the possible exception of Admiral Marschall, who was truly Prussian in his thinking, extremely aggressive, never defeated, and with more enemy warships to his name than any other German flag officer.

What would have happened had they first sailed in September 1939 instead of in April 1940?

What would have happened if the first wave has been made up of 25 ships instead of just 5?

What would have happened if instead of being hastily improvised, poorly armed ships, they had been specifically built, high buoyancy, armoured, better-armed and faster ships?

In the hands of a commander such as Helmuth von Ruckteschell, what might have been expected from a true light cruiser, with diesel engines and a top speed of 30 knots, disguised as an ugly, dirty, unglamorous freighter?

It was clear to the German high command at the time of the naval treaty with Great Britain , that a sea war was not possible. Only a commerce war would be feasible. So why spend such huge amounts of money on the Bismarck Class, H Class and Admiral Hipper Class vessels? Why not put it into a true raider line of ships; to be built in quantity; capable of facing a light cruiser and outrunning a heavy one; capable of staying at sea for years? Capable, in short, of complementing the U-Boats, and winning the commerce war and at the cost of one and a half Bismarcks !

Again, we get the same answer. Unglamorous ships were not to the taste of the Nazi thinkers. The big capital ships were spectacular in many ways, the main one being their aesthetic qualities.                                                                                In a way, they were like the castles built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria , beautiful to see, but largely good for nothing.            The beauty of the Tirpitz is the beauty of Neuschwanstein; her practical capacity for service was the same as Neuschwanstein; very good for improving the view.

The big ships were built more for prestige than for battle; they were, in their respective categories, the most beautiful warships of their time, but probably not so good in practical terms; they were more instruments of propaganda than true men-of-war. Today, that is easy to see, and easy to say; but at the time they were built, this was obviously not the case. But some far-seeing, truly Prussian strategists realised it, and saw that single-purpose, true raiding warships would have been much better for Germany than those huge, magnificent, almost useless beauties, but, they kept their thoughts to themselves.

The capacity to think freely, the first characteristic of any Clausewitzian officer, was totally incompatible with the Nazi system. As Albert Einstein said, "To be an irreproachable member of a flock of sheep, it is mandatory, first of all, to be a sheep".