Captain Peter Hore is a naval historian and former officer in the Royal Navy. He is editor or author of several articles and books including HMAS Sydney II: The Cruiser and the Controversy (2001).
Public lecture at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra
27 July 2007
In this talk, Peter Hore describes his efforts in decoding and translating accounts of the battle between the HMAS Sydney and the HSK Kormoran. While imprisoned in Australia, Theodor Detmers, the Commander of the Kormoran, wrote two reports on the battle. One was encoded in a notebook that was confiscated by Australian authorities after Detmers' attempted escape. The other was carefully concealed in a dictionary that Detmers took with him back to Germany at war's end. Peter Hore decoded and translated both accounts and compared them with a 1945 decoding of the notebook, as well as another report written by Detmers' during his return voyage to Germany. His comparison of the four versions solved a number of mysteries surrounding the details of the battle and pointed to the probable location of the Kormoran.
Peter Hore's research was used in the successful discovery of the HMAS Sydney in March 2008.
Download the audio of Peter Hore's presentation. This audio is also part of the National Archives podcast service.
| Description | Duration | Size | Download | Transcript |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Hore – Cracking the code | 38 minutes | 17.96mb |  |
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