HMAS AE1

HMAS AE1 (originally known as just AE1) was an E-class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). She was the first submarine to serve in the RAN, and was lost at sea with all hands near East New Britain, Papua New Guinea, on 14 September 1914, after less than seven months in service. The wreck of the submarine has never been found, despite several searches.

Description
The E-class was an enlarged version of the preceding D-class submarine to accommodate an additional pair of broadside torpedo tubes. AE1 was 181 ft long overall, had a beam of 22 ft and a draught of 12 ft. She displaced 750 LT on the surface and 810 LT submerged. The E-class boats had a designed diving depth of 100 ft, but the addition of watertight bulkheads, strengthened the hull and increased the actual diving depth to 200 ft. The crew consisted of 34 officers and enlisted men.

The boat had two propellers, each of which was driven by an eight-cylinder 800 bhp diesel engine as well as a 420 bhp electric motor. This arrangement gave the E-class submarines a maximum speed of 15 kn while surfaced and 10 kn submerged. They carried approximately 40 LT of fuel that gave them a range of 3000 nmi at 10 kn while on the surface and 65 nmi at 5 kn while submerged.

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.

Construction
AE1 was laid down by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, England on 14 November 1911, launched on 22 May 1913 and commissioned into the RAN on 28 February 1914. After commissioning, AE1, accompanied by her sister ship AE2, the other of the Royal Australian Navy's first two submarines, reached Sydney from England on 24 May 1914. Both submarines were manned by Royal Navy (RN) officers with a mixed crew of sailors drawn from the RN and RAN.

Deployment and loss
At the outbreak of World War I, AE1, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Thomas Besant, RN, was sent to capture German New Guinea as part of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force. With her sister ship 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 following an overhaul of the RAN battle honours system in 2010: AE1 retroactively received the honour "Rabaul 1914".

At 07:00 on 14 September, AE1 departed Blanche Bay, Rabaul, to patrol off Cape Gazelle with HMAS Parramatta (D55). When she had not returned by 20:00, several ships were dispatched to search for her. No trace of the submarine was ever found, and she was listed as lost with all hands. It is probable that she was wrecked on a reef or other submerged object. As well as Lieutenant Commander Besant, 2 other officers and 32 sailors were lost in this disaster. The disappearance was Australia's first major loss of World War I.

Searches
The Maritime Museum of Western Australia, sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, launched an unsuccessful attempt to locate the submarine in November 2003. The search area was concentrated to the south-east of the Duke of York Islands.

In February 2007, a new effort to locate the submarine was mounted by the RAN, when the survey ships HMAS Benalla (A 04) and HMAS Shepparton (A 03) attempted to locate the submarine off East New Britain, based on data compiled over the previous 30 years. Benalla located an object of the appropriate dimensions using sonar on 1 March. Later identification conducted by HMAS Yarra (M 87) found the object to be a rock formation with similar shape and dimensions to the submarine.