accepted the German interpretation of events (that Burnett was deceived by Kormorans disguise and placed his ship in a tactically unsound position) and assigned Burnett various levels of blame for his role in the cruiser's demise.Olson, Bitter Victory, p. 112 Gill claimed that because Burnett had taken command of Sydney after a shore posting and was assigned to relatively calm operational areas, he was incautious when approaching Kormoran. He also believed that Burnett was not suspicious of Straat Malakka; had he been, he would have used the Walrus to identify the ship or broken wireless silence and enquired about the ship.Olson, Bitter Victory, p. 183 Olson (among others) believes that Burnett was placed under conflicting orders: raiders were to be destroyed (preferably at range to avoid retaliation), but merchantmen and raider supply ships were to be captured to replace Allied freighters sunk in the tonnage war.JCFADT, Report on the loss of HMAS Sydney, p. 41 The suggested method of capture was to quickly manoeuvre in close and deploy a boarding party before the ship could scuttle. Olson thinks that Kormorans actions (turning away from the coast upon seeing an unknown vessel, delays in replying to signals, the distress call transmitted long after Sydney appeared) made Burnett suspicious, and he was trying to position Sydney so he could identify the merchantman's physical features and to facilitate capture. Following the loss of Sydney, Admiralty's instructions on capturing merchant ships changed to only encourage attempts if there was no risk of the vessel being a raider or accompanied by a U-boat; no such attempts were made for the rest of the war. In March 1941, the heavy cruiser had encountered a tanker supplying a possible raider, which split up and fled when ordered to stop. Canberra pursued the suspected raider and fired from maximum range to avoid retaliatory fire, while her Walrus amphibian attempted to stop the tanker with bombs. The cruiser fired 215 shells, with most missing, while all of the Walrus' bombs were used. However, both ships (the raider supply ship Coburg and the captured Norwegian tanker Ketty Brovig) had commenced scuttling once Canberra started firing. Post-action analysis found that if Canberra had moved closer, the same damage could have been achieved for less ammunition, and one or both ships might have been captured—factors that Burnett had commented on during his previous posting as Deputy Chief of Naval Staff and which