Posted on 11/18/2021 3:28:19 PM PST by naturalman1975
One of Australia's greatest mysteries has finally been solved thanks to advances in DNA technology, with the 'Unknown Sailor' finally identified exactly 80 years after he died.
Thomas Welsby Clark was just 21 years old and an able seaman on HMAS Sydney when it was sunk on November 19, 1941, about 200km off Western Australia.
He had trained as an accountant in Brisbane, then served in the army before finding a berth on HMAS Sydney.
His remains washed up on Christmas Island, 2,600km north-west of Perth, 11 weeks after the HMAS Sydney was lost, and it was all that was ever found of the crew.
But who he was would remain a mystery for another 80 years.
His name would probably still be unknown were it not for the tenacity of a woman determined to find out who he was.
Glenys MacDonald has spent more than 20 years trying to give the Unknown Sailor the dignity of having a name.
That she finally succeeded is down to her hard work, Chief of Navy Michael Noonan and advances in DNA technology.
Mr Clark's unidentified body was buried on Christmas Island before the Australian outpost was evacuated and the Japanese took it over.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Brave Australian sailors fighting for a country that is now a COVID fascist dictatorship.
Do not believe the propaganda you are being fed about Australia. Australia is not a dictatorship.
Personally I think this crap is coming out of China to try and split America from Australia and it’s bloody disturbing how many Americans are swallowing it.
Everyone is watching clips of Aussie news not Chinese news…. Is the Aussie news pro-Chinese propaganda ?
The UK was incredibly reliant on the Commonwealth for all sorts of resources - the Germans wanted to cut them off and it was a lot easier to find the merchantmen near their origins or destinations than it was in open ocean. So there were German commerce raiders operating off the coast of Australia in both World Wars.
The Japanese were a growing concern but this was still just a little before Pearl Harbour and the start of the war with Japan.
The loss of HMAS Sydney has been one of those events in history that always haunted me. They fought an engagement with a German commerce raider, and the surviving Germans say they saw the Australian cruiser, ablaze with fires, drift over the horizon. And none of its crew survived.
I had not known of the one dead sailor washing ashore. But I always wondered what happened to that crew and how they perished.
Some, Australian news is pro-Chinese propaganda, unfortunately at this point. But there have been some genuine issues in Australia.
These have not, however, come close to the level of Australia being some sort of fascist dictatorship.
And news clips can and have been taken out of context, and in some cases, deliberately altered to mislead people.
If I judged America by what I see shown on American news, I’d conclude America was the most racist and violent culture on Earth and that American conservatives are fascists. I know, though, that large sections of the media has an agenda and to look beyond just what I’m being spoon fed.
Ummmm... you need to review your history. The Germans had colonies in Africa and in the Pacific. The Germans fought in the Pacific in WW1 and WW2, and there were of course numerous global merchant raiding missions conducted by the Germans on Allied shipping. The only reason the Japanese didn’t do that is because they didn’t have the fuel and their navy was more optimized for shorter ranged missions involving heavy combat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire
Drachinifel video on the circumstances of HMAS Sydney’s last fight against the German merchant raider Komoran:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cObwTdbeAY
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