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"CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's greatest military mystery was solved on Monday with the discovery of a World War Two warship which went down with all 645 crew in a fierce battle with a German vessel more than 66 years ago.
A day after searchers located the wreck of the German merchant raider HSK Kormoran off the West Australian coast, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said they had also found the Australian battlecruiser HMAS Sydney, sunk by the German ship.
Rudd, flanked by top military commanders, said it was "a historic day for all Australians, and a sad day for all Australians".
"It's very important to understand that this is a tomb and there are 645 Australian sailors entombed there," he said, adding both ships would be declared war graves.
The sinking of the HMAS Sydney II is Australia's greatest naval tragedy, with all hands lost after a 30-minute battle with the German ship on November 19, 1941.
The cruiser was also the biggest ship lost with no survivors from any World War Two nation, historians said, vanishing after sailing ablaze over the horizon at the end of the encounter.
News of the sinking devastated Australians, plunging the nation into a deep wartime gloom, and the mystery of its disappearance had remained a national obsession. Several false discoveries of the ship's wreck have occurred before.
"It's so many emotions that all I can do is cry," said Debra Malycha-Coombs, whose uncle Walter Leslie Curwood was a 23-year-old wire operator on the Sydney. "My mother died over 20 years ago not knowing where he was," she said.
The only witnesses to the battle were the 317 survivors on the Kormoran, which was disguised as a Dutch freighter, the Straat Malakka, when it encountered the Australian ship.
The Sydney was found by a government-funded research ship at a depth of 2,470 metres (8100 feet), about 240 km (150 miles) west of Shark Bay, off the coast of Western Australia, Rudd said.
While a photographic survey would not be carried out until next week, high-resolution sonar images showed the wreck was near intact and a protection order was placed over the ship.
The Sydney was found 22 km (14 miles) from the Kormoran by American wreck hunter David Mearns, who located the British cruiser HMS Hood and Germany's battleship Bismarck in their North Atlantic graves.
Germany's government had also been informed of Kormoran's discovery and the resting place of 80 German crew, Rudd said.
The navy's official version of the battle (
www.navy.gov.au), based on incomplete accounts from Kormoran survivors, says the German ship lured the more heavily-armed Sydney in close and then opened fire with torpedoes and six-inch guns.
Before the wreck's discovery, the only trace of the Sydney came from last year's discovery of the remains of an unknown sailor buried on remote Christmas Island after his body washed up in a bullet-riddled life raft in February 1942.
Australia's navy chief Vice-Admiral Russ Shalders said there was no doubt the wreck belonged to Sydney as sonar images perfectly matched the 6,800 tonne cruiser, which had previously distinguished itself in the Mediterranean.
"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," Shalders said."
