In November 1941 the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney, with a crew of 645, disappeared off the coast of Western Australia. When German sailors picked up from lifeboats claimed that their ship, the Kormoran, a lightly merchant raider, had sunk the pride of the Australian navy theories sprang up to explain the loss. Had a second German warship been involved, or a Japanese submarine, even though Japan was not yet in the war? Based on the German coded accounts and interviews with German survivors, this book pieces together what really happened in the desperate fight between the two ships, whose wrecks were finally located 10,000 feet down on the floor of the Indian Ocean in March 2008.