Past and Present

Submarines, as we understand them today were developed in the late 19th Century. The first submarine in the US Navy was launched on 11 April 1900. Afred Deakin, then Prime Minister of Australia began advocating for submarines in Australia's fledgling Navy in 1905. HMAS AE1 aand AE2 were commissioned into the RAN in February 1914.

Australian governments have, since Federation, mostly sought to have a presence in the depths of the seas. In this task, the Royal Australian Navy Submarine Service has been its instrument. Yet, it could be argued, this famously ‘silent service’ has never fully gained the place that it deserves in the wider historical sun. Although one of the very first nations to operate submarines, this capability ended in 1931.

Reintroduced in the mid-1960s after more than a three-decade hiatus, Australia is today, again, a competent submarine nation.

There is little doubt in these uncertain times that this will remain so for the foreseeable future as Australia contemplates a power shift to nuclear propelled submarines.

The nation will therefore still need carefully selected and trained young people to go silently and deeply into the cold wastes of the sea, their lives shaped equally by intimacy and solitariness, in one of the strangest and most singular warfighting professions that an Australian can pursue.

The ANSM site tells their remarkable story, and that of the submarines in which they have and continue to serve. The Past & Present research team seeks to inform and illuminate the political and strategic contexts in which Australian submarines have, and continue to, operate and exist.