the battleship were sunk in separate incidents during the same two-week period — and was quickly eclipsed by Japan's attacks on Pearl Harbor and Singapore in early December. Sydney was the largest Allied ship to be lost with all hands during the war. In Germany, news of the battle was assembled from communications intercepts during the search for survivors, which was combined with Allied news articles to assemble an account of the battle and published in early 1943 for internal consumption by German officials. The events were made public in December 1943, after the early accounts were confirmed by a sailor from Kormoran sent home in a prisoner exchange. Interrogation of survivors Interrogation of the German survivors to discover the fate of Sydney began on 25 November. This was initially hampered, as the sailors had been ordered to obfuscate the enemy by falsely answering all questions. Many did not follow this instruction, but their accounts included second-hand information of varying reliability. Several groups were quickly combined and had the opportunity to standardise any falsification. Those who made landfall in two separate groups were combined, then placed aboard Centaur with the men from Detmers' lifeboat. However, some efforts were made to keep officers separated from the sailors; Detmers and his executive officer were initially held aboard HMAS Yandra, then transported overland to Fremantle, and while all of the sailors were interned at a camp near Harvey, the officers were imprisoned at Campbell Barracks. Not all groups had this opportunity; the survivors rescued by Aquitania were delivered to Sydney, and interrogations of these men showed the same commonalities and inconsistencies as the main body of interviews. In addition, some of the Germans were interviewed, formally or informally, prior to their group reuniting with others; the independent accounts provided the same common elements. Based on this, it was concluded that the true story was being given and that there were no widespread attempts to falsify accounts.Cole, The Loss of HMAS Sydney II, vol. 1, p. 393 After the main interrogations were completed, the Germans were moved from Fremantle to Murchison, Victoria during late December and early January, the officers aboard the liner Duntroon and the sailors overland on two trains. The sailors were placed in No. 13 Prisoner of War Camp, which already hosted 1,200 soldiers of the Afrika Korps and their shipmates rescued by Aquitania, while officers were sent to the nearby