HMAS AE2, in dock in Sydney, circa 1914 |
|
| Career (Australia) | |
|---|---|
| Builder: | Vickers Armstrong |
| Laid down: | 10 February 1912 |
| Launched: | 18 June 1913 |
| Commissioned: | 28 February 1914 |
| Honours and awards: |
Battle honours: Rabaul 1914 Dardanelles 1915 |
| Fate: | Scuttled 30 April 1915 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | British E-class submarine |
| Displacement: | 725 tons surfaced |
| Length: | 181 ft (55 m) |
| Beam: | 22 ft 6 in (6.86 m) |
| Draught: | 12 ft 6 in (3.81 m) |
| Propulsion: | 2 x 8 cylinder diesels, 1,750 hp surfaced, battery-driven electric motors, 550 hp submerged |
| Speed: | 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) surfaced 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) submerged |
| Range: | 3,225 nmi (5,973 km; 3,711 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) surfaced 25 nmi (46 km; 29 mi) at 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph) submerged |
| Complement: | 35 |
| Armament: | 4 x 18-inch (457 mm) torpedo tubes |
HMAS AE2 (originally known as AE2) was an E class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). She was commissioned into the RAN at Portsmouth on 28 February 1914 and was scuttled little more than a year later in the Sea of Marmara after being hit by enemy shellfire during the Battle of Gallipoli.
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AE2 had a displacement of 750 tons when on the surface.[1] Electricity for the propulsion system was generated by two 8-cylinder diesels.[1]
AE2 was laid down on 10 February 1912 by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, England, and launched on 18 June 1913. She was commissioned into the RAN at Portsmouth, England, on 28 February 1914 under the command of Lieutenant Commander Henry H.G.D. Stoker, RN.[2]
Accompanied by AE1, her sister boat and the other of the RAN's first two submarines, AE2 reached Sydney from England on 24 May 1914, manned by Royal Navy (RN) officers with a mixed crew of sailors drawn from the RN and RAN.[2] According to naval historian Tom Frame, the delivery voyage was at the time "the longest submarine transit in history".[1]
On the outbreak of World War I in September 1914, AE2 proceeded with AE1 to capture German New Guinea as part of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force.[3] During the capture of New Guinea, sister boat AE1 disappeared.[3] After the German surrender, AE2 spent time patrolling around Fiji with the battlecruiser Australia, then returned to Sydney in November for maintenance and repairs.[4]
As AE2 was the only submarine in the region, her commander, Royal Navy Lieutenant Henry Hugh Gordon Stoker, suggested that the boat be transferred to Europe.[4] Both the RAN and the British Admiralty agreed, and on 31 December, AE2 (under the tow of SS Berrima) left Albany with AIF Convoy 2.[4] The submarine was the only warship assigned to the sixteen-ship convoy, as after the Battle of Cocos, the Admiralty felt no need to protect shipping in the Indian Ocean.[5] AE2 arrived in Port Said, Egypt, on 28 January 1915, and was ordered to join the British 2nd Submarine Flotilla, and proceeded to take part in patrols in support of the Dardanelles Campaign.[4][6]
On 10 March, the submarine ran aground off Mudros when returning from a patrol, as the harbour navigtion lights had been switched off in AE2's absence, which Stoker was not prepared for.[6] The submarine was towed to Malta for repairs.[7] AE2 returned to operations in April.[8]
The aim of the Dardanelles Campaign was to knock German ally Turkey out of the war and open up supply lines to Russia via the Black Sea.[4] An attempt to force the Dardanelles open with warships on 18 March failed, with the loss of three Allied battleships.[4] Plans were made to capture the Turkish defences by a land invasion.[4] In the meantime, two attempts were made by submarines to traverse the Dardanelles, but mines and strong currents resulted in the loss of both boats.[9] Stoker planned his own attempt, which was approved by the Allied fleet's commander, Vice Admiral John de Robeck.[10]
AE2's first attempt was made early on 24 April, but the boat only made it 6 nautical miles (11 km; 6.9 mi) in before she had to withdraw after the forward hydroplane coupling failed, making the submarine impossible to control unterwater.[8][10] At 02:30 on 25 April 1915, Stoker made a second attempt.[10] The submarine was spotted by shore artillery and fired on from about 04:30; Stoker ordered the boat to dive to avoid the shells and to traverse the first minefield.[10] AE2 spent the next hour picking her way through the mines' mooring cables: defensive wires that had been welded to the submarine in Malta prevented the mooring cables from catching.[8][10] By 06:00, AE2 reached Chanak, and proceeded to torpedo the Turkish gunboat Peyk I Sevket while simultaneously taking evasive actions to avoid an enemy destroyer.[10] The submarine ran aground beneath a Turkish fort, but the fort's guns' could not be positioned to fire, and AE2 was able to free herself within four minutes.[10] Shortly after, the submarine's periscope was sighted by a Turkish battleship firing over the peninsula at the Allied landing sites; this prompted the ship to stop firing and withdraw.[10] AE2 advanced toward the Sea of Marmara, and at 08:30, Stoker decided to rest the boat on the ocean bottom and wait until nightfall before continuing.[10]
At around 21:00, AE2 surfaced to recharge her electric batteries, and sent word of his success back to the fleet.[10][11] Although the landing at Cape Helles was going well, the landing at Anzac Cove was not as successful, and the commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir William Birdwood was pushing for reembarkation of his troops.[10] The news of the Australian submarine's success was one of the factors that led to Birdwood's reconsideration, and was spread to the soldiers ashore to improve morale.[12] Stoker was ordered to "generally run amok", and with no enemies in sight, he ordered the boat to enter the Sea of Marmara.[10] The submarine made appearances across the Sea of Marmara over the following five days to give the impression of multiple boats, and several attacks against Turkish ships were made, although all failed because of increasing mechanical problems.[12]
On 30 April, AE2 began to rise uncontrollably and surfaced near the torpedo boat Sultanhisar.[12] While attempting to avoid the torpedo boat, AE2 dived below her safe diving depth; frantic attempts to correct this caused the submarine's stern to break the surface.[12] Sultanhisar immediately fired on the submarine, puncturing the pressure hull.[8][12] Stoker ordered the boat's company to evacuate, and scuttled AE2.[12] All personnel survived the attack, although three died during the three and a half years in captivity.[12] AE2's achievements showed others that the task was possible, and within months the Turkish communications line had been badly disrupted.[12] AE2 was the only RAN vessel to be lost as a result of enemy action during World War I, and the two E-class submarines were the total of the RAN's operational losses in the war.[13]
Since 1995, Selçuk Kolay, director of the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in Istanbul, had searched for the remains of AE2.[14] In 1996, he discovered what he believed to be the wreck lying in 86 metres (282 ft) of water. With the assistance of an Australian diving team, it was determined in October 1997 that the wreck was that of an old steamer.[2]
After a further thorough side-scan sonar and magnetometric survey of the reported scuttling site of the AE2, Kolay located the submarine in June 1998, lying in 72 metres (236 ft) of water, and was first dived upon the following month. An Australian dive team again visited Turkey in October 1998, with further dives confirming the identification of AE2.[2]
On 9 September 2007, Australian and Turkish naval authorities began an undersea investigation to determine if AE2 could be raised and restored.[15] The survey team identified that significant damage to the wreck had occurred since the 1998 inspection dives.[16]
In March 2010, following an overhaul of the RAN battle honours system, AE2 was retroactively awarded the honours "Rabaul 1914" and "Dardanelles 1915".[17][18]
In 2009, Edith Cowan University was commissioned by the National Archives of Australia to research and produce a computer game/simulation called AE2 Commander, funded under the $15,000 Ian Maclean Award. As well as being a realistic WWI submarine simulation, it is investigating how original archival sources can be used as part of computer simulation and serious gaming. An initial version of the AE2 Commander game and website went live on 17 April 2011. The game presents a combination of digitized documents from the collections of the National Archives of Australia and Australian War Memorial along with the embodiment of various archival sources in the setting and narrative of the game.[19][20][21]
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