4
Navy Association of Australia – Brisbane Sub-Section May 2017
Featured book
By Grahame Wilson, 281 pages, illustrated, resources in print and resources on the web listed. Published by the author via Publications P/L, 2015, RRP from $30. You can read the first three chapters of the book on the author’s website www.grahamewilsonhotair.com. The paperback is available on Amazon as well as Booktopia and globally, an ebook is also available on Amazon and iTunes. It is for sale at the bookery Lane Cover, Contstant Reader Crows Nest, Book Review St Ives Shopping Village, Brays Books Balmain and Lindfield Bookshop Lindfield. This fact-based story deals with German U-boat warfare as told by their captains and crews. It is well-researched from sources in Australia and Germany. Under the Water Under the Wire and the men who sank the Sydney relates to the escape of German prisoners from a POW camp in Victoria Australia at the same time as a German long range U-boat was patrolling nearby off the Australian east coast. The author was a schoolboy in New Zealand during WWII, finally graduating from Sydney University as a science teacher. Later he went on to produce films at the university, mostly on sciencebased subjects. While underwater diving in Sydney Harbour, he discovered some wreckage that led him to become interested in Japanese submarines and subsequently, German submarines visiting Australia. Years after a hang-gliding accident in 1981 that left him a quadriplegic, he resumed his research that resulted in this fascinating account, as seen through the eyes of the German sailors. The story begins late in the war as U-boat 862 leaves Germany under the command of Lieutenant Heinrich Timm, a former officer in the Merchant Navy. Timm’s personality as an understanding well-liked captain comes through in all his actions. Other commanders operating with Timm from their base in Penang show the differing personalities of those who chose to live their lives largely under the water. When encountering the enemy and sinking their ships, commanders of U-boats have to be dispassionate. Helping survivors can be very challenging. Examples of such actions show the dilemma and the hard decisions that have to be made. Admiral Donetz was the well-respected head of the U-boat fleet and directed their operations in all theatres. After heavy losses in the Atlantic, he decided to send a force to the less patrolled Indian Ocean, where most of the action in this story takes place. With the Japanese takeover of South East Asia in 1942, Penang became a base for German U-boats and the Singapore dockyard facilities were available to them for ship repair and maintenance.
Under the Water Under the Wire and the men who sank the Sydney

5
Navy Association of Australia – Brisbane Sub-Section May 2017
On arrival at Penang, Timm along with German officers and U-boat crews were welcomed and lavishly feted by the occupying Japanese. Although cordial allies during this period of operations, the Germans had no love for the Japanese of their treatment of prisoners of war. At this stage of the war, many American submarines were based in Fremantle and causing heavy losses to Japanese shipping in the Pacific, denying much needed supplies. Timm and U-boat 862 subsequently moved south to latitudes below Australia to search for new targets. Finding none, he began patrolling off the east coast of Australia and then later New Zealand. The story then takes us to the encounter between HMAS Sydney and the German raider Kormoran in March 1941 off the west coast of Western Australia. HMAS Sydney had not suspected that the supposed Dutch merchant ship was in fact a camouflaged German raider under the control of Captain Detmers, much to Detmers’ surprise. As the story unfolds as told by Captain Detmers, the battle resulted in both being sunk. There were no survivors from the Sydney. The Kormoran lost about sixty crew and had been able to launch lifeboats before it sank. Survivors drifted eastward for several days. Captain Detmers’ lifeboat was rescued by the Centaur. All 300 or so survivors of the Kormoran were taken into custody and imprisoned in northern Victoria; the lower ranks in a large barbed wire compound, the officers nearby in Dhurringile, an old abandoned mansion. Three years later the officers dug a tunnel and twenty escaped – this great escape via a tunnel is known by very few people. All escapees were rounded up. Detmers and Bertram were heading for the east coast – at the very same time Timm and his U-boat were patrolling in nearby waters. Despite their efforts, Detmers and Bertram were the last to be recaptured. The epilogue follows the lives of the former prisoners after the war. During their time behind the wire, friendships had formed between prisoners and guards. Almost two hundred of those who had been in the Merchant Navy chose to remain in Australia, becoming Australian citizens. Those who returned to Germany organized annual reunions. In 1974 they visited Australia where they were greeted by an Australian Army band playing Old Comrades and with their boats, taken on a tour of their former prison camp. The book makes fascinating reading. The characters are depicted authentically and compassionately. It is a valuable contribution to a little-known aspect of Australia’s wartime history.
Reviewed by Gordon Hill, with the assistance of Coral Johnson