Australian WWII Ship Finally Found

The wreck of an Australian navy battle cruiser has been found off the nation's western coast, the prime minister announced Monday, ending one of the country's most enduring maritime mysteries.

The HMAS Sydney sank on Nov. 19, 1941, in a battle with a German vessel, the DKM Kormoran. All 645 men aboard the battle cruiser were lost and the ship's resting place had eluded searchers for decades.

The ship was found upright in 8,100 feet of water on Sunday, a few days after search crews located the Kormoran, which was disguised as a Dutch merchant ship when it opened fire on the Sydney, kicking off a fierce battle.

Both ships were badly damaged and sank. Of the Kormoran's 397 crew, 317 survived and rowed to the Australian coast in life boats and were taken prisoner.

At a news conference in Canberra, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the Sydney had been found about 14 miles from the wreckage of the Kormoran, some 500 miles north of Perth, the capital of Western Australia state.

Chief of the Royal Australian Navy, Vice Admiral Russ Shalders, said the find would help determine exactly what happened to the Sydney.

''For 66 years, this nation has wondered where the Sydney was and what occurred to her, we've uncovered the first part of that mystery ... The next part of the mystery, of course, is what happened,'' said Shalders, speaking at the news conference with Rudd.

Ted Graham, chairman of the Finding Sydney Foundation, the group carrying out the search, said a remote-operated vehicle would be used to examine the wreckage for clues about the battle.

The $3.9 million search funded by the government began two weeks ago and was headed by U.S. shipwreck hunter David Mearns.

Mearns was involved in finding the wrecks of the British battle cruiser the HMS Hood and the DKM Bismarck, the German battle ship that sank it in the North Atlantic in 1941.

The Sydney weighed in at 7,300 tons, making it the largest vessel from any country to be lost with no survivors during the war.

The fate of the ship and its crew has remained a mystery, though a parliament inquiry into the tragedy in 1999 accepted accounts by Kormoran survivors that they last saw the ship in flames and heading toward Perth.

It was not immediately clear whether there are plans to raise the Sydney.

Rudd said he had instructed the Defense Department to contact relatives of the sailors who died aboard the Sydney about the find, and described the wreck as a tomb for Australian sailors that would be protected as a sacred site.

''This is over 65 years ago, but pain and family loss even at 65 years removed, is still pain, and very deep pain,'' Rudd said.

Relatives of sailors who died on the ship welcomed the find as helping to resolve pain cause by not knowing where their loved ones died.

Debra Malycha-Coombs, whose uncle Walter Leslie Curwood was 23 when he disappeared aboard the Sydney, said the mystery had caused enduring pain for the victims' families.

''My mother died over 20 years ago not knowing where he was,'' Malycha-Coombs told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. ''I can't tell you how I feel — it's so many emotions that all I can do is cry.''