Yarra wants AE1 mission

7 May 2007 By Michael Brooke

HMAS Yarra (LCDR Sean Andrews) hopes history will repeat itself during their deployment to the north of Australia on Operation Resolute.

Yarra's crew are hoping to be called upon to confirm if the wreck found recently off the coast of New Britain is HMAS AE1, the RAN submarine that mysteriously disappeared in 1914.

LEUT Jace Hutchison said that the crew was very excited about the possibility of being tasked with identifying the wreck thought to be  AE1.

"It would be a case of history repeating itself because Yarra (I), along with Parramatta (I), were the RAN ships that conducted the search for AE1 when she disappeared in WWI."

He said as a fully-mission capable Huon class mine-hunter coastal, Yarra had the technology to determine if the wreck discovered by the RAN survey vessel HMAS Benalla was AE1.

As Navy News reported in the March 8 edition, HMAS Benalla (LCDR Richard Mortimer) may have shed some light on the Navy's most enduring mysteries - the disappearance of AE1 which was lost with all hands.

Benalla discovered what is believed to be a large man-made object on the sea floor during a search for the sub in the vicinity of New Britain from February 26-28.

At the time the Minister Assisting the Minister of Defence, Bruce Bilson, said a further investigation using a remotely operated vehicle with imaging capabilities would be necessary to make a positive identification.

Locating AE1 would provide a degree of closure to the descendants of the 35 crew members who perished when the submarine sank while on patrol duty off the coast of the Duke of York Island Group on September 14, 1914.

AE1, along with her sister ship AE12, was commissioned into the RAN at Portsmouth, UK, on February 28, 1914, under the command of LCDR Thomas Besant, RN. The two submarines sailed for Australia in March 1914 and arrived at Sydney on May 24, 1914.