Michael Montgomery's 1981 book, "Who Sank The Sydney?", was the first published work to focus solely on "Sydney" and the events surrounding her loss, and the first to comprehensively challenge the accepted view of the battle. The son of "Sydney"s Royal Navy navigator, Montgomery could not accept the ship's loss as described by Gill, and claimed that the true events were being covered up. According to his book, "Kormoran" had fired on "Sydney" while flying the flag of a neutral nation, a Japanese submarine was involved in the battle, and any Australian survivors were killed to hide the involvement of the Japanese. Montgomery also suggests that the British government had foreknowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred three weeks later, and ordered the Australian government to cover-up the truth of "Sydney"s loss so the United States would be drawn into the war. However, "Who Sank the Sydney?" is reliant on assertions that had been proved false, unreliable sources (including a 'sailor's report' found to be a translation of an inaccurate Australian newspaper article), and selective use of German accounts that fit the hypothesis, and Montgomery is generally credited with igniting the controversy surrounding the battle.