HMAS AE1

Last updated

AE1 (AWM P01075041).jpg
HMAS AE1 underway in 1914
History
Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom.svgAustralia
Builder Vickers Limited
Laid down14 November 1911
Launched22 May 1913
Commissioned28 February 1914
Nickname(s)AE1
Honours and
awards
  • Battle honours:
  • Rabaul 1914
FateLost at sea, 14 September 1914
NotesWreck located at a depth of 300 metres off the Duke of York Islands
General characteristics
Class and type E-class submarine
Displacement750 long tons (762 t) surfaced
Length181 ft (55 m)
Beam22 ft 6 in (6.86 m)
Draught12 ft 6 in (3.81 m)
Installed power
  • 2 × 8-cylinder diesels, 1,600 hp (1,200 kW) surfaced,
  • battery-driven electric motors, 840 hp (630 kW) submerged
Propulsion2 × propeller shafts
Speed
  • 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) surfaced
  • 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) submerged
Range
  • 3,000 nmi (5,600 km; 3,500 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) surfaced
  • 65 nmi (120 km; 75 mi) at 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph) submerged
Test depth200 feet (61.0 m)
Complement34
Armament4 × 18-inch torpedo tubes

HMAS AE1 was an E-class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). She was the first submarine to serve in the RAN, [1] and sank with all hands near what is now East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, on 14 September 1914, after less than seven months in service. Search missions attempting to locate the wreck began in 1976. The submarine was found during the 13th search mission near the Duke of York Islands in December 2017.

Contents

Design and construction

The E class was a version of the preceding D-class submarine enlarged to accommodate an additional pair of broadside torpedo tubes. [2] AE1 was 181 feet (55.2 m) long overall, with a beam of 22 feet 6 inches (6.9 m) and a draught of 12 feet 6 inches (3.8 m). [3] She displaced 750 long tons (762 t) on the surface [4] and 810 long tons (823 t) submerged. The E-class boats had a designed diving depth of 100 feet (30.5 m), but the addition of watertight bulkheads strengthened the hull and increased the actual diving depth to 200 feet (61.0 m). [2] The complement consisted of 34 men: officers and ratings. [3]

The boat had two propellers, each of which was driven by an eight-cylinder, [4] 800- brake-horsepower (600 kW) diesel engine as well as a 420-brake-horsepower (313 kW) electric motor. This arrangement gave the E-class submarines a maximum speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) while surfaced and 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) when submerged. [3] They carried approximately 40 long tons (41 t) [2] of fuel oil, which provided a range of 3,000 nautical miles (5,600 km; 3,500 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) while on the surface [3] and 65 nmi (120 km; 75 mi) at 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph) while submerged. [2] AE1 had four 18-inch torpedo tubes, one each in the bow and stern, plus two on the broadside, one firing to port and the other to starboard. The boat carried one spare torpedo for each tube. No guns were fitted. [3]

In February 1911, defence minister George Pearce announced that orders had been placed with Vickers Limited for two submarines. [5] AE1 was built at Barrow-in-Furness, England, having been laid down on 14 November 1911 and launched on 22 May 1913 and commissioned into the RAN on 28 February 1914. [6] After commissioning, AE1, accompanied by AE2, the other of the RAN's first two submarines, reached Sydney from England on 24 May 1914. Officers for the submarines were Royal Navy (RN) personnel, while the ratings were a mix of sailors drawn from the RN and RAN. [7]

Deployment and loss

AE1 with other Australian vessels off Rabaul on 9 September 1914 AE1 off Rabaul.jpg
AE1 with other Australian vessels off Rabaul on 9 September 1914

At the outbreak of World War I, AE1, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Besant, was part of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force sent to attack German New Guinea. Along with AE2, she took part in the operations leading to the occupation of the German territory, including the surrender of Rabaul on 13 September 1914. The submarine's involvement was recognised in 2010, following an overhaul of the RAN battle honours system, with the retroactive award of the honour "Rabaul 1914". [8] [9]

At 07:00 on 14 September, AE1 departed Blanche Bay, Rabaul, to patrol off Cape Gazelle with HMAS Parramatta. When she had not returned by 20:00, several ships were dispatched to search for her. No trace of the submarine was found, and she was listed as lost with all hands. The disappearance was Australia's first major loss of World War I. [7]

After the discovery of the submarine in December 2017, Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, retired, said the likely cause of its loss was a diving accident. [10] He added:

The submarine appears to have struck the bottom with sufficient force to dislodge the fin from its footing, forcing it to hinge forward on its leading edge, impacting the casing. [10]

As of April 2018, the best-supported theory for the submarine's loss was that it went below its crush depth due to a mechanical failure. [11] Later that year, a team of researchers headed by the National Maritime Museum director Kevin Sumption concluded their investigation into the sinking of AE1. They concluded that a ventilation valve, which was likely open to make the tropical conditions a little more bearable while the submarine was cruising on the surface near the Duke of York Islands, was insecure when the submarine dived, causing a flood of the submarine's engine room and total loss of control of the AE1. The submarine subsequently sank below 100 metres and imploded, killing everyone on board instantly. [12]

Searches for wreck

Beyond the search immediately after the submarine's disappearance, there were no concentrated efforts to locate the wreck of AE1 until the 1970s, when John Foster, a RAN officer working in Port Moresby, became interested in the story. After researching wartime records, Foster persuaded the RAN to deploy the survey ship HMAS Flinders in 1976. Flinders found one potential sonar contact, but did not have a sophisticated enough side-scan sonar to make a determination either way. During a deployment to Papua New Guinea in 1978, Flinders conducted several ad-hoc searches, again with no useful result. In 1990, while sailing between New Britain and New Ireland, Jacques Cousteau diverted his ship, Calypso, to investigate the potential contact found in 1976. His original plan was to investigate up close with a submersible, but mechanical issues prevented it, and Calypso instead performed a magnetometer search of the area, finding no wrecks. [13]

Map of the region where AE1 was lost in September 1914 Papua New Guinea map.png
Map of the region where AE1 was lost in September 1914

Foster had continued archive research into AE1's disappearance, supplemented with visits to Rabaul and nearby islands to see if references to the submarine appeared in any community's oral histories. By 2002, he was focused on the waters off Mioko Island in the Duke of York Islands group: a priest from a Catholic mission had stated that members of the community had spotted a wrecked submarine on Wirian Reef while diving for shells. Attempts to dive the reported site of the wreck in 2002 and early 2003 were unsuccessful: the former was called off due to high shark presence, the latter expedition also was hampered by shark activity and found no wreck at the reported location. A third expedition in November 2003, supported by the Maritime Museum of Western Australia and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, conducted searches off Mioko and nearby islands, again with no success. [13] [14] Further oral evidence supporting the wreck of AE1 being off Mioko was learned during one of the 2003 expeditions: Foster discovered that the Tolai people had a legend of a "devil fish" appearing offshore on the day that AE1 disappeared. [13]

In February 2007, a new effort to locate the submarine was mounted by the RAN, when the survey ships Benalla and Shepparton attempted to locate the submarine off East New Britain. [7] Benalla located an object on Wirian Reef of the appropriate dimensions using sonar on 1 March, but was unable to verify the nature of the object due to a damaged magnetometer. [13] [1] The minehunter HMAS Yarra was sent to investigate the object further in late 2007. [13] Sonar and remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) imagery of the object revealed shape and dimensions similar to the submarine, but subsequent analysis by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation identified the object as a rock formation. [13] [15]

Foster organised another search in May 2009, partially funded by Channel Seven's Sunday Night, based on claims by a Rabaul-based salvage diver that he had seen the wreck in Simpson Harbour back in 1971, in proximity to the wreck of the Japanese merchant ship Keifuku Maru. Diver searches of the site specified by the salvager failed to find either wreck. A follow-up search later that year by the Western Australian Maritime Museum found that Keifuku Maru had been buried under 30 metres (98 ft) of rock during the 1994 Rabaul caldera eruption, but found no evidence of AE1, buried or otherwise. [13] John Foster died in 2010 with the search for AE1 continued by others. [13] [16] During early 2012, the minehunter HMAS Gascoyne and the survey ship HMNZS Resolution detected a potential wrecked submarine in Simpson Harbour. Although initially suspected to be AE1, the wreck was determined to be a World War II-era Japanese midget submarine. [13] [17] Resolution later conducted sonar surveys of areas in which AE1 may have been lost, with no wrecks found. [13]

Between 6 and 9 September 2014, Yarra conducted searches around the Duke of York Islands, prior to a memorial service for the centenary of the submarine's disappearance. [18] Although numerous sonar "contacts of interest" were made during the search, including one which was singled out for further investigation, all were found to be natural terrain. [13] [19] [18]

In September 2015, plans for a new search were announced by Find AE1 Limited. The search off Mioko Island was carried out in November, and was conducted by a mining survey ship towing a multibeam echosounder array. At the time of the search, Find AE1 stated that if the attempt was unsuccessful, they planned to petition the Australian government to bring in the search equipment used during the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The 2015 search was ultimately unsuccessful. [20] [21]

Papua New Guinea location map.svg
Green pog.svg
Duke of York Islands
class=notpageimage|
In December 2017, AE1 was located off the Duke of York Islands, which lie in the channel between New Britain and New Ireland.

Several factors have been identified as having hampered the efforts to find AE1. The volcanic nature of the region resulted in a rugged and highly variable underwater topography, with a high frequency of wreck-like acoustic anomalies. Much of the region is deep water, which limited the techniques and tools that could be used to locate and verify the wreck. Volcanic activity was also identified as a factor, due to the disruption it causes to local magnetic fields, affecting the operations of magnetometers. There were concerns that eruptions and underwater earthquakes may have caused the underwater landscape to change, or break up or bury the wreck. Additionally, the search areas contained large numbers of shipwrecks due to heavy military activity around New Guinea during World War II, along with the disposal of ships in later years. [13]

Discovery

In December 2017, another search—the 13th [22] —was conducted using the Dutch survey ship Fugro Equator, off the Duke of York Islands. This expedition was funded by the Commonwealth Government and the Silentworld Foundation with additional assistance from the Submarine Institute of Australia and the Australian National Maritime Museum. [23] [24] As a result of this effort, the submarine was found at a depth of 300 metres (980 ft) and was seen to be well preserved and in one piece. [23] RV Petrel was enlisted to survey the wreckage, where it was discovered that the submarine's rear torpedo tube was fully opened. The exact location of the wreck was not announced by the Australian government at the time of discovery, in order to protect it from "unauthorised salvage attempts". The government's stated position is that the wreck will be treated as a war grave. [25]

Memorials

In 1933, a stained-glass window commemorating the losses of AE1 and AE2 was added to the naval chapel at Garden Island in Sydney. In September 2015, a floating sculpture to commemorate AE1 was unveiled outside the Australian National Maritime Museum. [26] The sculpture takes the form of a stainless steel wreath, 6 metres (20 ft) in diameter, which projects patterns of light onto the water at night. [26] In 2008 a memorial plaque was dedicated to HMAS AE1 at the Tasmanian Seafarers' Memorial at Triabunna on the east coast of Tasmania, commemorating the loss of L.S. Cyril Lefroy Baker RAN, Telegraphist, the first Tasmanian killed in his country's service in World War I. [27]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Australian Navy</span> Naval warfare branch of the Australian Defence Force

The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the naval force of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (CN) Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AM, RAN. CN is also jointly responsible to the Minister of Defence (MINDEF) and the Chief of Defence Force (CDF). The Department of Defence as part of the Australian Public Service administers the ADF.

HMAS <i>Darwin</i> (FFG 04) Adelaide-class frigate

HMAS Darwin, named for the capital city of the Northern Territory, was an Adelaide-class guided-missile frigate, formerly in service with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). One of four ships ordered from the United States, Darwin entered service in 1984. During her career, she has operated in the Persian Gulf, as part of the INTERFET peacekeeping taskforce, and off the Solomon Islands. The frigate underwent a major upgrade during 2007 and 2008. She was decommissioned on 9 December 2017 and was supposed to be scuttled as a dive wreck in Tasmania, but the deal was pulled by the Tasmanian Government and her fate remains uncertain.

HMAS <i>AE2</i> E-class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy

HMAS AE2 was an E-class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). One of two submarines ordered for the fledgling navy, AE2 was built by Vickers Armstrong in England and was commissioned into the RAN in 1914. Together with her sister submarine, HMAS AE1, the boat then sailed to Australia in what was, at the time, the longest voyage ever undertaken by a submarine.

HMAS <i>Encounter</i> (1902) British and Australian naval cruiser

HMAS Encounter was a second-class protected cruiser of the Challenger class operated by the Royal Navy (RN) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN). She was built by HM Dockyard Devonport and completed at the end of 1905.

HMAS <i>Onslow</i> Royal Australian Navy submarine (1969–1999)

HMAS Onslow is one of six Oberon-class submarines, previously operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). The submarine was named after the town of Onslow, Western Australia, and Sir Alexander Onslow, with the boat's motto and badge derived from Onslow's family heritage. Ordered in 1963, Onslow was laid down at the end of 1967 by Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Scotland, launched almost a year later, and commissioned into the RAN at the end of 1969.

HMAS <i>Platypus</i> (1917)

HMAS Platypus was a submarine depot ship and base ship operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) between 1919 and 1946. Ordered prior to World War I to support the Australian submarines AE1 and AE2, Platypus was not completed until after both submarines had been lost, and she was commissioned into the Royal Navy from 1917 to 1919.

HMAS <i>Sydney</i> (1912) Town-class light cruiser

HMAS Sydney was a Chatham-class light cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Laid down in 1911 and launched in 1912, the cruiser was commissioned into the RAN in 1913.

HMAS <i>Vampire</i> (D11) 1959-1986 Daring-class destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy

HMAS Vampire was the third of three Australian-built Daring-class destroyers serving in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). One of the first all-welded ships built in Australia, she was constructed at Cockatoo Island Dockyard between 1952 and 1959, and was commissioned into the RAN a day after completion.

J-class submarine 1915 class of British submarines

The J-class submarines were seven submarines developed by the Royal Navy prior to the First World War in response to claims that Germany was developing submarines that were fast enough to operate alongside surface fleets. Six were completed during mid-1916, while a seventh entered service at the end of 1917.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Royal Australian Navy</span>

The history of the Royal Australian Navy traces the development of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) from the colonisation of Australia by the British in 1788. Until 1859, vessels of the Royal Navy made frequent trips to the new colonies. In 1859, the Australia Squadron was formed as a separate squadron and remained in Australia until 1913. Until Federation, five of the six Australian colonies operated their own colonial naval force, which formed on 1 March 1901 the Australian Navy's (AN) Commonwealth Naval Force which received Royal patronage in July 1911 and was from that time referred to as Royal Australian Navy (RAN). On 4 October 1913 the new replacement fleet for the foundation fleet of 1901 steamed through Sydney Heads for the first time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duke of York Islands</span> Islands in Papua New Guinea

The Duke of York Islands are a group of islands located in East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. They are found in St George's Channel between New Britain and New Ireland islands and form part of the Bismarck Archipelago. The Duke of York Islands were named in 1767 by Philip Carteret to honour Prince Edward, son of Frederick, Prince of Wales and younger brother of George III of the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service</span> Submarine element of the Royal Australian Navy

The Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service is the submarine element of the Royal Australian Navy. The service currently forms the Navy's Submarine Force Element Group (FEG) and consists of six Collins class submarines.

Search for HMAS <i>Sydney</i> and German auxiliary cruiser <i>Kormoran</i>

Numerous attempts were made to find the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran, which were both lost in a sea battle in 1941. Efforts immediately after the battle focused on finding Sydney when she failed to return to port. While searchers located over 300 survivors from Kormoran, none of the 645 aboard the Australian warship were found. In March 2008, shipwreck hunter David Mearns commenced a search for the two wrecks. Kormoran was located on 12 March in close proximity to the sinking position given in German accounts. Using the survivor's information on Sydney's last known heading, Mearns and his search team located Sydney on 17 March.

HMAS <i>Yarra</i> (M 87) Australian warship

HMAS Yarra is the sixth Huon-class minehunter to have been built for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and the fourth warship to be named after the Yarra River in Victoria. Built by a joint partnership between Australian Defence Industries (ADI) and Intermarine SpA, Yarra was constructed at ADI's Newcastle shipyard, and entered service in 2003.

HMAS <i>Protector</i> (1884) Flat-iron gunboat of Royal Australian Navy

HMCSProtector was a large flat-iron gunboat commissioned and purchased by the South Australian government in 1884, for the purpose of defending the local coastline against possible attacks in the aftermath of the 'Russian scare', of the 1870s. She arrived in Adelaide in September 1884 and served in the Boxer Rebellion, World War I and World War II.

Captain Henry Hugh Gordon Dacre Stoker,, also known as Hew Stoker and commonly credited in films as H. G. Stoker or Dacre Stoker, was an Irish Royal Navy officer who commanded the Royal Australian Navy's submarine HMAS AE2 during the First World War. Stoker was captured in 1915 and he spent the remaining three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war of the Ottoman Empire. He retired from the navy in 1920 to pursue an acting career on the stage and film. As an amateur athlete, Stoker competed in the Wimbledon tennis championships throughout the 1920s. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he was recalled to service in the navy, where he helped with public relations. When the war finished, Stoker returned to his acting career. In 1962, at the age of 77, he became Irish Croquet Champion.

Samir Alhafith is an Australian technical diver, cave explorer and underwater filmmaker. He is the founder and team leader of the Sydney Project - an association of technical divers involved in researching and discovering important historical wrecks in depths between 75 and 135 metres on the south coast New South Wales.

HMAS Upolu was a submarine depot ship operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) during World War I. She was built by Fleming & Ferguson, Paisley, Scotland in 1891, for the Union Steam Ship Company. She was requisitioned by the RAN on 18 August 1914 and converted into a submarine depot ship and after a short commission, she was returned to her owners on 9 December 1914. She was sunk in a collision with the Lienhsing off the Shantung Promontory on 12 August 1930.

This is an order of battle listing the Australian and German Empire forces during the Australian occupation of German New Guinea between September and November 1914.

MV <i>Fugro Equator</i>

MV Fugro Equator is a survey vessel owned and operated by Dutch company Fugro to provide a range of offshore survey capabilities.

References

  1. 1 2 Australian Associated Press (1 March 2007). "Missing WWI sub may have been found". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved 1 March 2007.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Harrison, A. N. "Ch. 4: Pre-1914 Saddle Tank Types D & E Classes". BR 3043 The Development of HM Submarines from Holland No 1 (1901) to Porpoise (1930). Submariners Association: Barrow-in-Furness Branch. Archived from the original on 21 September 2013. Retrieved 20 September 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Gillett, Ross (1983). Australian & New Zealand Warships, 1914–1945. Sydney: Doubleday. p. 47. ISBN   0-868-24095-8.
  4. 1 2 Frame, Tom (2004). No Pleasure Cruise: the Story of the Royal Australian Navy. Crows Nest, New South Wales: Allen & Unwin. p. 97. ISBN   1-74114-233-4. OCLC   55980812.
  5. ↑ "Australian Navy: Submarines Ordered". The Sydney Morning Herald. 8 February 1911.
  6. ↑ HMAS AE1 www.navy.gov.au Retrieved 23 December 2017
  7. 1 2 3 "Navy to hunt for lost sub". The Sydney Morning Herald . 26 February 2007. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
  8. ↑ "Navy Marks 109th Birthday With Historic Changes To Battle Honours". Royal Australian Navy. 1 March 2010. Archived from the original on 13 June 2011. Retrieved 23 December 2012.
  9. ↑ "Royal Australian Navy Ship/Unit Battle Honours" (PDF). Royal Australian Navy. 1 March 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 23 December 2012.
  10. 1 2 Zhou, Naaman (21 December 2017). "Australian navy world war one AE1 submarine found 103 years after it vanished". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  11. ↑ "Paul Allen's Shipwreck Sleuths Help Aussies Document World War I Submarine's Remains". GeekWire. 23 April 2018.
  12. ↑ Morgan, Myles (14 September 2018). "Researchers discover what sunk Australia's first submarine". SBS World News Australia.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Hunter, James. "The Search for AE1 Continues". Submarine AE1. Australian National Maritime Museum. Archived from the original on 16 February 2016. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
  14. ↑ Green, Jeremy (2003). "The search for the AE1" (PDF). Department of Maritime Archaeology. Western Australian Maritime Museum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 September 2007. Retrieved 1 March 2007.
  15. ↑ "Resurface of mystery". Navy News. Australian Government, Department of Defence. 14 June 2007. Archived from the original on 11 December 2007. Retrieved 7 December 2008.
  16. ↑ Foster, Michael (11 November 2010). "Celebrated sailor searched the sea for our sub: John Foster, 1935–2010". The Sydney Morning Herald .
  17. ↑ Coutts, Geraldine (29 February 2012). "Submarine wreckage located in Rabaul harbour". Radio Australia. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
  18. 1 2 Barlass, Tim (10 September 2014). "A century on and a sonar blip: has navy found WWI submarine?". SMH.com.au. Retrieved 11 September 2014.
  19. ↑ Australian Associated Press (10 September 2014). "Possible clue found in hunt for AE1 sub". The Herald Sun . Retrieved 11 September 2014.
  20. ↑ McPhedran, Ian (12 September 2015). "Best shot at solving mystery of lost submarine AE1 with hi-tech search off Papua New Guinea". PerthNow. News Corp Australia. Archived from the original on 16 September 2015. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
  21. ↑ Briggs, Peter (22 December 2015). "What happened to HMAS AE1?". ASPI. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  22. ↑ "HMAS AE1 World War I submarine found after century-long search". ABC News. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  23. 1 2 "'Found': Australian Navy Submarine HMAS AE1 located after 103 years". Navy News . 21 December 2017. Archived from the original on 22 December 2017. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  24. ↑ Department of Defence (14 November 2017). "$500,000 grant to help find HMAS AE1". Navy Daily. Archived from the original on 21 January 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
  25. ↑ Fitzpatrick, Stephen (21 December 2017). "Missing WW1 submarine AE1 found with underwater camera". The Australian. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  26. 1 2 Fletcher, Daina. "Remembering AE1: '...the ocean bed their tomb'". Submarine AE1. Australian National Maritime Museum. Archived from the original on 13 October 2015. Retrieved 18 September 2015.
  27. ↑ "HMAS Submarine AE1 (1914)". seafarersmemorial.org.au. Tasmanian Seafarers Memorial. Retrieved 27 February 2017.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.