A fresh search for missing Australian submarine AE1 starts next week with searchers believing this is the best shot yet at solving a century old mystery.
Patrolling off East New Britain on September 14, 1914, AE1, Australia's first submarine, vanished with all 35 Australian and British crewmen.
Like many submarine losses from the two world wars, AE1 sailed out on patrol and simply never returned. There was no distress call and no witnesses and all who might have shed any light on events sank with her.
Chairman of the Find AE1 group, retired submariner and navy Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, said the search would start next Friday, using a leased multi-beam sonar carried aboard a chartered mining survey boat.
"If the submarine is there and intact we have a 95 per cent chance of spotting it," he told AAP.
Over the years there have been a number of searches for AE1, most recently last year when a navy minehunter found no trace of the missing vessel.
Admiral Briggs said minehunter technology was better suited to locating seamines in the shallow water of harbour entrances.
The Find AE1 group has refined the search to an area east of Duke of York Island, off the New Britain capital Rabaul.
AE1's final contact with destroyer HMAS Parramatta at 2.30pm that afternoon placed her in this area. Native legends speak of a of a "devil fish" sighted in the water at this time.
Admiral Briggs said it was unlikely AE1 was lost through enemy action - the only German vessel anywhere near at that time was a small survey ship.
Because no wreckage, oil or bodies were found, it's thought that AE1 sank intact, most likely after striking a reef, which holed the pressure hull.
"The primary search area is down to 400 metres. That is defined by the probability that it will have ended up on the bottom inside this area. We will cover about a third to a half of the primary area with a high degree of probability," he said.
The secondary search area is water deeper than 400 metres and the route back to Rabaul, on the basis that AE1 may have sought to reach port while taking on water.
If AE1 isn't found, this effort will have further refined the search area to this deeper water. That will require even more sophisticated towed side-scan sonar of the type used in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
This week-long search is costing around $250,000 and that doesn't include a camera-equipped remotely operated vehicle to eyeball promising contacts.
"We could well find ourselves with a high probability contact that we are unable to look at. There may well be a second phase to this," he said.
AE1 was one of two E-class submarines constructed in Britain for the new Australian navy.
AE2 achieved fame when she penetrated the Dardanelles waterway at the same time Australian troops landed on Gallipoli. After attacking Turkish shipping in the Sea of Marmara, AE2 came under fire from a Turkish gunboat and was scuttled so she would not fall into Turkish hands.
Her wreckage was discovered in 1998.
AE1, commanded by Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Thomas Besant, had accompanied the Australian expeditionary forces dispatched at the start of WWI to capture then German-occupied New Britain.
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