The Collins Class Submarine Story

by Peter Yule

  suddenly they see a Whitehead torpedo miss their stern by a

  few feet! And how fired? From a submarine [which] followed

  that battleship for a solid two hours under water.3

  He concluded: ‘In all seriousness I don’t think it is even

  faintly realised – The immense impending revolution which the

  submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war’ [original

  emphasis]. Fisher’s enthusiasm for submarines was reflected in

  the original vessels ordered for the Royal Australian Navy.

  When Prime Minister Alfred Deakin announced his plan for

  an Australian navy after discussions with the British Admiralty

  in 1907, it was based on a flotilla of nine submarines and six

  destroyers. Deakin met strong opposition from Captain William

  Creswell, Australia’s senior naval officer, who argued that sub-

  marines would ‘be useless for Australia under present conditions

  or against any attacks possible to occur’ and they were expensive

  to maintain and difficult to crew.4

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  However, Deakin had the endorsement of Admiral Fisher, had

  seen a demonstration of submarines in England and remained

  committed. This was not to be the last time that Australian politi-

  cians were more enthusiastic about acquiring submarines than the

  navy itself was.

  In the decade before 1914 Britain became increasingly fearful

  of Germany’s rapid naval expansion and this led Admiral Fisher to

  advise Australia to create a ‘fleet unit’ of one battle cruiser, three

  cruisers, six destroyers and three submarines. This proposal was

  endorsed by Deakin’s government in September 1909 and formed

  the basis for Australian naval planning until the First World

  War, although the three C class submarines originally proposed

  were replaced by two of the more modern and more expensive

  E class.

  While most of the fleet was ordered from British shipyards,

  there was great political enthusiasm for building some vessels in

  Australia, and a destroyer ordered under the 1907 scheme was

  reassembled at Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney. This took six

  months longer than planned and ‘was not without its problems’

  but the government and the navy were satisfied that Cockatoo

  Island could attempt more substantial projects. Orders were

  placed in August 1912 for a cruiser and three more destroyers and

  all were delivered during 1916. The construction of the 5400-ton

  cruiser HMAS Brisbane has been cited as ‘the most complex indus-

  trial project undertaken in Australia to that time’ and, while there

  might be arguments that the BHP steel works at Newcastle has

  stronger claims, there is no doubting that Brisbane was a sig-

  nificant achievement.5 At her launch the Minister for the Navy,

  Mr J. A. Jensen, said: ‘There is no reason why the Australian work-

  man should not be able to produce practically everything required

  on a destroyer, a cruiser, a battleship or a submarine.’6

  In reality, Cockatoo Island, the only Australian yard able to

  build large naval ships, had numerous drawbacks. Together with

  the higher wages of Australian workers, these meant that Cocka-

  too’s ships cost roughly double that of British vessels.7 In response

  to an Australian query, Vickers argued that reassembling prefab-

  ricated submarine parts and machinery was impractical but that

  submarine hulls could be built in Australia with British fittings,

  machinery and skilled workers. Vickers was clear this would be

  an extremely expensive operation.8

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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  Consequently there was no opposition to the government’s

  decision in late 1910 to order two E class submarines from

  Britain. Delayed by Vickers’ high workloads and shortage of

  skilled labour, AE1 and AE2 arrived in Sydney in May 1914.

  They needed maintenance and repair after a 12 000-mile voyage,

  but support arrangements were incomplete: the submarine depot

  ship, HMAS Platypus, was not ready, and even their base was

  undecided. Reflecting both unfamiliarity with, and in some quar-

  ters disdain for, the requirements of submarine operations, the

  purchase of AE1 and AE2 also demonstrated a continual feature of Australian defence procurement – the failure to appreciate both

  the full costs of supporting equipment and the opportunities for

  integrating local industry support.

  With the outbreak of war in August 1914 the new submarines

  joined the fleet for the attack on the German wireless station

  at Rabaul, but AE1 failed to return from patrol on 14 Septem-

  ber and was never seen again. AE1 was the first vessel lost by

  the Australian navy and its sailors were among Australia’s first

  casualties of the First World War.

  AE2 sailed to the Mediterranean where she played a dramatic

  but little-known role in the Gallipoli landings. On 25 April 1915

  AE2 was the first allied vessel to penetrate the Dardanelles and

  her radio message giving notification of her success helped sway

  General Ian Hamilton against withdrawing land forces from the

  peninsula. Over the next few days AE2 torpedoed a Turkish

  gunboat and caused great disruption to Turkish shipping, but

  she did not return from her mission. Hit by Turkish gunfire,

  AE2 was scuttled by her crew, who spent the rest of the war as

  prisoners.9

  In spite of these losses the Australian government remained

  committed to an Australian submarine arm and made sev-

  eral approaches to the British Admiralty for new submarines.

  However, British shipyards were too busy and Australia would

  have to wait upon the Admiralty’s priorities for access to

  submarines.10

  This raised the question: why not build submarines in Aus-

  tralia? The opening of BHP’s steel plant at Newcastle, the wartime

  need to replace imports with local production, and the enor-

  mous military demand led to a rapid increase in industrial capac-

  ity during the war years. Cockatoo Island successfully built two

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  cruisers, three destroyers and several large auxiliaries for the

  navy between 1913 and 1919, with the destroyers being the first

  steel ships wholly built in Australia.11 During the war, Canada,

  whose economic and industrial development was at a similar

  level to Australia’s, built 18 complete H class submarines for

  the British and Italian navies and a further 17 in kit form for

  Russia.12

  The matter of replacements for AE1 and AE2 was raised in

  parliament on 27 May 1915. Jens Jensen, the assistant minister

  representing the Minister for Defence in the House of Representa-

  tives, said, ‘I hope we shall soon have more than two submarines’,

  to which Joseph Cook, always a passionate advocate of Australian

  self-reliance, responded: ‘And I should like them all to be built in

  Australia if possible.’ To which Jensen replied: ‘The submarine is

  the one class of
vessel that it is impossible to build in Australia.’13

  This statement was not contested. Naval experts and politicians

  agreed that building submarines required specialised skills and

  materials that were unavailable in Australia.

  After the First World War the problem of excess demand for

  military equipment quickly became a problem of excess supply. In

  January 1919 the Australian government accepted a British offer

  of six surplus J class submarines, which arrived in Sydney Harbour

  on 15 July 1919. They were in poor condition and required exten-

  sive refits. Although the management of Cockatoo Island had had

  many months notice, the yard was quite unprepared for the work.

  The repairs were slow and had scant regard for quality, primarily

  because of shortages of skilled workers and delayed British spare

  parts,14 and were not completed until the J boats were no longer

  wanted. The navy’s budget had been slashed due to post-war hopes

  for disarmament and an increasingly stagnant economy and, des-

  perate to keep its surface ships, the service chose to sacrifice the

  obsolete and expensive J boats. Laid up in 1921, they were sold

  for scrap the following year.15

  Yet government policy and Admiralty advice continued to sup-

  port the development of an Australia submarine force. Even before

  the J class boats were paid off, the navy was again looking at the

  possibility of building submarines in Australia. On 23 November

  1920 the chief of the naval staff wrote to Vice-Admiral Sir William

  Clarkson, the member of the Naval Board in charge of engineering

  and shipbuilding:

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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  I shall be glad if you will investigate the possibility of

  building submarines in Australia . . .

  The following information is what is particularly

  required:

  a Can Submarines be built at the present time and if so

  where

  b Is the necessary skilled labour available locally

  c What additional plant if any is required in order to

  commence such construction and a rough estimate of the

  cost of such plant and all it involves.16

  The blunt reply came in just two days:

  With reference to your enquiry, the following information is

  appended . . .

  a No

  b Sufficient skilled labour is not available locally. A few

  men have been trained in establishments where

  submarines are built, but they are not sufficient.

  c Will be investigated.17

  The general manager of Cockatoo Island Dockyard was asked to

  give an answer to the third question. He replied with a detailed

  report on 16 December listing and pricing the equipment that

  would be required to build submarines, and concluded that con-

  struction in Australia would be feasible but certain raw mate-

  rials and the batteries and electrical equipment would have to

  be imported.18 However, in early 1923 Clarkson concluded that

  ‘the marine engineering development of Australia was at present

  emphatically incapable of constructing submarines’. A submarine

  built at Cockatoo Island would cost more than double the British

  price and ‘ran the gravest risk of ultimate failure’.19 Consequently,

  in late 1924 when the government agreed to buy two new O class

  submarines, no voices urged construction in Australia.

  The ill fate that had dogged the Australian submarine service

  since the loss of AE1 in September 1914 continued with the O

  boats, Oxley and Otway. Lengthy delays, mechanical failures

  and public furore turned both political and naval opinion against

  them. By mid-1929, when they were finally ready for service,

  the economy was spiralling into depression, and it had already

  been decided not to complete the planned flotilla of six. As in the

  early 1920s, the navy leadership was determined to maintain its

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  surface ships and quickly agreed to sacrifice the submarines. In

  May 1930 Oxley and Otway were paid off and a year later they were returned to the Royal Navy.20

  An important lesson from the failures of the J and O class

  submarines in the Australian navy was the importance of a mod-

  ern and growing economy to the possession of modern weapons.

  The Australian economy in the 1920s and 1930s had a narrow

  industrial base, relying heavily on the export of primary prod-

  ucts to Britain, itself with a steeply declining economy. The pitiful

  state of Australia’s military preparedness in the late 1930s was not

  entirely due to myopia – an empty federal treasury was unable to

  fund rearmament and a tiny industrial base was unable to supply

  more than a trickle of modern weapons and equipment.

  The Australian shipbuilding industry expanded enormously

  during the Second World War, building over 100 naval ves-

  sels between 1939 and 1946, including 60 Australian-designed

  Bathurst class minesweepers and 12 River class frigates.21 To keep

  Cockatoo Island and Williamstown dockyards in work a post-

  war program began to build 12 destroyers every 10 years. The

  first were begun in 1949 but only three had been completed by

  1959, with the cost between order and completion rising from

  £2.6 million to more than £7 million each. This experience typ-

  ified Australian post-war naval shipbuilding. Local construction

  cost more and took longer than planned. While the quality of

  the work of the local shipyards was good, productivity was low,

  labour relations were a nightmare and many projects were never

  completed.22

  In May 1964 two Type 12 frigates, Swan and Torrens, were

  ordered from Cockatoo Island and Williamstown. Although based

  on the earlier River class, the designs were radically altered, con-

  stituting a virtual re-design. Political pressure led to the ships being

  laid down prematurely and ‘construction was hampered by design

  delays, late equipment deliveries and constant design changes’.23

  When Torrens was finally completed at massive expense in

  January 1971, ‘it was to be the last major combat ship completed

  in an Australian shipyard for 21 years’.

  Naval shipbuilding reflected deeper problems in the Australian

  economy. While manufacturing expanded rapidly in the 1940s

  and 1950s, stimulated first by the war and later by a rapidly

  rising population, it was dependent on high tariffs on imports.

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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  Australian manufacturers were small-scale, technologically back-

  ward and focused solely on the domestic market. Industrial rela-

  tions were poor, labour costs high and productivity low. These

  factors lay behind the malaise of the Australian economy in the

  1970s and early 1980s when high inflation and unemployment

  accompanied a rapid decline in the country’s manufacturing base.

  C H A P T E R 2

  Australia’s Oberon class submarines

  Although Allied submarines based in Fremantle and Brisbane

  wreaked
havoc on Japanese shipping during the Second World

  War, Australian naval authorities showed no interest in acquir-

  ing submarines afterwards. Yet submarines were needed for anti-

  submarine warfare training and in 1949 it was arranged that the

  Royal Navy’s fourth submarine flotilla (normally consisting of

  two or three submarines) would be based in Sydney. This forced

  Cockatoo Island Dockyard to develop expertise for maintaining

  and refitting submarines – complex tasks requiring advanced tech-

  nical skills lacking in Australia during its brief periods of subma-

  rine ownership. Until 1960 the British submarines were refitted in

  Singapore but between 1961 and 1966 five refits were successfully

  carried out at Cockatoo Island.1

  In the late 1950s Australia again began to debate the ownership

  of a submarine force, led by John Gorton, whose term as Minister

  for the Navy was noted for his questioning of many of the

  navy’s dogmas. In 1959 the Chiefs of Staff considered the issue

  and decided that ‘the institution of a submarine service would

  be a valuable addition to balanced Australian Defence Forces’.

  Their report argued that the main role of Australian submarines

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  T H E C O L L I N S C L A S S S U B M A R I N E S T O R Y

  would be to train anti-submarine forces and, in wartime, to ‘hunt

  and kill’ enemy submarines. By now they had recognised that

  Australian anti-submarine training could not rely indefinitely on

  Britain maintaining its squadron in Sydney. They saw little poten-

  tial for the use of submarines for offensive action.2

  The Chiefs of Staff considered the possibility of acquiring

  nuclear submarines but decided against it until either:

  1 The Indonesians or Chinese Communists have attained a

  high degree of A/S efficiency, or have themselves

  introduced nuclear submarines: or

  2 The cost of nuclear submarines approaches twice that of a

  conventional submarine, when, for a similar capital

  expenditure the same effective number of submarines on

  patrol could be obtained.

  The report asserted that ‘one nuclear submarine can do the effec-

  tive patrol work of two conventional submarines’ but, at one-

  sixth the cost, conventional submarines were more efficient. The

  report did not consider whether Australia could maintain nuclear

  submarines without a nuclear industry.