Saturday, March 22, 2008

More on the HMAS Sydney

1. SV Geosounder found wreck-- ON March 20th due back in the Port of Geraldton where a civic reception is to be held. Premier Alan Carpenter is expected to attend.

2. David Mearns, the man who found the wreck-- The Geosounder is expected to spend three days in port before heading back to the site for further research.

Mearns says the break in the bow is now the most evident with large pieces of structure lying adjacent to the bow.

The Sydney evidently slid 50-100 meters after impact.

He was able to find it so fast after careful study of the weather conditions at sea Nov. 19, 1941 and also the leeway drift analysis before he left Geraldton. This analysis used the pick up position of the first life raft recovered after the Kormoran sank and an estimate of winds and ocean currents over the 82 hours it was floating. This enabled Mearns to determine the probably final resting place of the Kormoran.

3. Forgotten report led to locating the wrecks-- a long-forgotten encrypted report helped find the final resting places of the Kormoran and Sydney. David Merans and Peter Hore found a coded page account by the Kormoran's captain Theodor Detmers that was hidden until 2001.

This is one of three pieces of evidence that led to the discovery of the ships.

Quite a Good Bit of Detective Work Here. --Cooter

No comments: