Silent Anzac's secrets sought
10 September 2007 By John Martin
They're talking a lot of Australian lingo in the only hotel in the Turkish fishing village of Karabiga at the moment. And most of the talk is centred on HMAS AE2, the heroic RAN submarine scuttled at Gallipoli in 1915.
A party of Australians has taken over the hotel as a base for a detailed archeological survey of the submarine.
The team, led by the Submarine Institute of Australia, is exploring a range of options to put to the Australian and Turkish governments. At one end of the scale is the option of bringing the submarine to the surface to feature in the 100th anniversary of Anzac Day on April 25, 2015.
At the other end is the possibility that they'll recommend the submarine remain where she is, in 73 metres of water at the bottom of the Sea of Marmora. Perhaps there would be an underwater camera, beaming pictures back to a museum as part of the overall plan to tell the exciting story of the submarine.
HMAS AE2, fondly remembered as the Silent Anzac, was the second of two submarines operated by the RAN in World War I. She was the first RAN warship to conduct a torpedo attack against an enemy warship.
She was also the first Allied submarine to penetrate the Dardanelles in 1915 as part of the Gallipoli Campaign, on the morning the ANZAC soldiers landed at Anzac Cove.
After five days causing grief for the enemy, she finally fell to Turkish gunfire and was scuttled by her crew. These men were subsequently captured and spent the rest of the war as Turkish POWs, four dying in captivity. HMAS AE2 lay unseen in the Sea of Marmora until she was discovered intact in 1998.
The AE2 Project was established by the SIA to develop options for the future protection and preservation of AE2, and to ensure that her remarkable contribution to the Gallipoli campaign is duly recognised by telling the story of her crew.
Following Government support, the SIA established the AE2 Commemorative Foundation Ltd (AE2CF) to implement the Project AE2 strategy.
In February this year, a party from the group conducted a mission rehearsal and training exercise off Port Phillip Heads.
This allowed testing of the hi-tech equipment that is being used for the real thing between September 4 and 21.
The wreck site is about ten miles from Karabiga in the Gulf of Erdek on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmora.
It's a mammoth operation.
CDRE Terry Roach (rtd), the SIA's director of operations, was the first to arrive to take delivery of all the equipment and finalise arrangements.
Then followed the rest of the party, including 12 volunteer civilian divers who are working in two teams, morning and afternoon, to conduct the Marine Archeological Assessment.
CDRE Roach said the project had hired a salvage tug which will be moored near the dive site for the duration. The divers and crew would be ferried to shore by a fast boat, to the town's only hotel which they've rented out.
The tug has a hyperbaric chamber and a recompression chamber.
The divers also have the use of a remotely operated vehicle provided by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.
