HMAS AE2
Marker: recorded wreck position (Date not recorded).
Key facts
| Name | HMAS AE2 | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Ship type | submarine | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | Scuttled | Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence |
| Nationality / flag | Australia | Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country |
| Operator | Royal Australian Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Conflict | World War I | Wikidata P607 conflict |
| Sea / ocean | Sea of Marmara | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | Turkey | Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 24 km from land |
| Position | 40.6724, 28.0752 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
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, HMAS AE1, 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 Sultanhisar. 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.
Diving & visiting
Since 1995, Selçuk Kolay, director of the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in Istanbul, had searched for the remains of AE2. 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. 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. The wreck was first dived in July, while subsequent dives by an Australian team in October were able to confirm the wreck as being AE2.
Location
- Recorded position: 40.6724, 28.0752 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Sea of Marmara
- Nearest coast: Turkey
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMAS AE2 (revision 1375839356), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Search and discovery”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
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