HMAS AE2 (originally known as 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, , the boat then sailed to Australia in what was, at the time, the longest voyage ever undertaken by a submarine.
After the start of World War I, AE2 was sent to German New Guinea with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, then spent time patrolling around Fiji. With no need for submarines in the Pacific or Indian theatres, AE2 was towed to the Mediterranean, and arrived off Egypt in early 1915. The boat was assigned to the Dardanelles Campaign, and was the first submarine to successfully penetrate the waterway and enter the Sea of Marmara. With orders to "run amok" inside Turkish territory, AE2 operated for five days before mechanical faults forced her to the surface, where she was damaged by the torpedo boat . The submarine was scuttled by her crew, all of whom were captured.
AE2 was the only RAN vessel lost to enemy action during World War I. The Rahmi M. Koç Museum began searching for the wreck in 1995, and found it in 1998. After another expedition in 2008, the Australian and Turkish Governments decided to leave the boat in place.
Description
The E class was a version of the preceding D-class submarine enlarged to accommodate an additional pair of broadside torpedo tubes. AE2 was long overall, had a beam of and a draught of . She displaced on the surface and submerged. The E-class boats had a designed diving depth of , but the addition of watertight bulkheads strengthened the hull and increased the actual diving depth to . The crew consisted of 34 officers and ratings.
The boat had two propellers, each of which was driven by an eight-cylinder, diesel engine as well as a electric motor. This arrangement gave the E-class submarines a maximum speed of while surfaced and submerged. They carried approximately of fuel oil that gave them a range of at while on the surface and at while submerged.
AE2 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 and service
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 Henry H.G.D. Stoker, RN. Accompanied by her sister boat, , 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. The journey was, at the time, "the longest submarine transit in history", and 60 of the 83 days of the voyage were spent at sea.
Outbreak of World War I
On the outbreak of World War I in September 1914, the two submarines were assigned to the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force as it captured German New Guinea. During the capture of New Guinea, AE1 disappeared without a trace. After the German surrender, AE2 spent three weeks patrolling around Fiji with the battlecruiser , then returned to Sydney on 16 November for maintenance and repairs.
As AE2 was the only submarine in the region and the German threat to Australia had disappeared, Stoker suggested that the boat be transferred to Europe. Both the RAN and the British Admiralty agreed, and on 31 December, she left Albany with AIF Convoy 2 (under the tow of SS Berrima). The submarine was the only warship assigned to the sixteen-ship convoy, as after the Battle of Cocos resulted in the destruction of the last active German ship in the Indian or Pacific Oceans, the Admiralty felt no need to protect shipping in the Indian Ocean. 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.
Dardanelles Campaign
On 10 March, the submarine ran aground off Mudros when returning from a patrol, as the harbour lights used to aid navigation had been switched off in AE2s absence, which Stoker was not prepared for. The submarine was towed to Malta for repairs and returned to operation in April.