Monday, June 18, 2012

British World War I Sub Found

From the Telegraph "Firsrt World War British submarine found  94 years after being abandoned."

The HMS E14 executed a daring raid, slipping past the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli campaign and sinking Turkish warships and a transport.  It was found intact on the ocean bed of the Dardanelles by a Turkish documentary group.

In 1915, Lt. Cmdr. Edward Courtney Boyle received the Victoria Cross after steering the E14 throughthe heavily fortified Dardanelle Straits, under monefields and later avoiding Turkish searchlights and guns at the Narrows and then reaching open waters of the Sea of Marmura April 27, 1915. 

During the next three weeks it sank two Turkish warships and a former White Star cruise liner carrying 6,000 Turkish troops heading for Gallipoli before escaping back through the strait.

Along with the commander's Victoria Cross, the entire crew of thirty received Distinguished Service medals.  Boyle was 27 at the time and much later died in 1967 when he was run over by a lorry.

Later, Lt.-Cmdr. Geoffrey Saxon White also won a VictoriaCross posthumously in the E14 in an operation in which the submarine was abandoned and sank in January 1918.

The E14 was discovered earlier this month, the first British "E" Class submarine discovered intact.  The vessel is 20 meters deep near Kum Kayle.

A Little-Known Story.  --Cooter

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