Australian Submarine AE-1 missing since 1914 (Photo:Ahoy.tk)
With the recent finding of AHS Centaur off Brisbane, the location of HMAS Sydney in Western Australia and the return of the last two Vietnam MIAs,
Australia’s military sleuthing seems on a roll. Yet, the tiny 55m
(181ft) submarine AE1, the Royal Australian Navy’s first submarine,
lies somewhere in Papua New Guinean waters.
Commissioned in the UK in
early 1914, the British E Class submarine sailed to Australia with her
sister ship, AE2, arriving in Sydney on 24 May 1914, just in time for
the outbreak of WW1. The pair sailed north to the then German New
Guinea in the company of other RAN vessels to secure the surrender of
the small German contingent in Rabaul, New Britain.
On 14 September 1914, she failed to return from routine patrol and
after a search involving several vessels, no trace of her was ever
found. It was presumed she had either struck a reef or suffered one of
several mechanical failures common in early submarines.
Either way, she
was listed as lost with her entire crew of 35.
Since that fateful day, the mystery of AE1 has never faded for the family and friends of the missing. An association
was formed and is headed by Commander John Foster RAN (rtd) with
patrons and members among Australia’s most distinguished naval men.
Despite several ‘red
herrings’, improved technology and a renewed interest by the RAN, AE1’s
final resting place remains a mystery.
The persistent evidence
supplied by former salvage diver, George Tyers, 82, keeps the team’s
hopes alive. Tyers is adamant that he located the wreck of AE1 in 1971
when clearing a fouled anchor while salvaging another wreck, a Japanese
transport, Keifuku Maru,
nearby in the mouth of Simpson Harbour, Rabaul’s port. Rabaul was
occupied by the Japanese in WWII and was a major military base and
hence bombing target.
Tyers’s evidence has always
conflicted with Foster’s research, which suggests AE1 lies near Kokopo
(to the SE) where her support vessel, HMAS Encounter, was waiting for her. But the recent acquisition of Encounter’s
logs shows she had indeed moved to Simpson Harbour on the morning of
AE1’s loss, thus adding weight to Tyers’s claim he had sighted the AE1
in about 60m of water inside the harbour.
Since 1971, the dormant
volcano awoke in 1994 with such ferocity the entire town was evacuated.
Vast amounts of volcanic debris were spread over the town and inside
the harbour, covering many wrecks and relics and altering the shoreline
radically.
Wreck diver and filmmaker, Mark Spencer, dived on the Keifuku Maru
in October 2009 and subsequently found it to be buried under about 30m
of volcanic ash. Presumably AE1 would also be similarly buried and
Spencer’s team were not able to prove or disprove the existence of
wrecks in the area with their existing sensing equipment.
The area now requires further investigation with more powerful and
sophisticated magnetometer equipment able to penetrate the sea floor.
(Source:digitaljournal)
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