Speaker 1: Hi, It's Claire from the Front. For the next four
Speaker 1: weeks on Sundays, we're bringing you a new mini series
Speaker 1: from The Australian called The Flood, and this is episode one.
Speaker 1: The series is hosted by Chief International Correspondent Cameron Stewart
Speaker 1: and created by Kam with me and our audio lead
Speaker 1: Jasper Leik, plus all of us here at The Australian.
Speaker 1: It tells the incredible true story of how sixty Australian
Speaker 1: sub mariners saved their own lives and their boat. The
Speaker 1: Flood is a truly inspirational story of human courage, resilience,
Speaker 1: teamwork and ingenuity. You can follow the show by searching
Speaker 1: The Flood wherever you listen and going to the floodpodcast
Speaker 1: dot com, where you can also watch it as a video.
Speaker 1: The Flood is brought to you by the Australian War Memorial.
Speaker 1: Some stories define a nation, others reveal what it means
Speaker 1: to be human. Through Their Eyes is a new podcast
Speaker 1: from the Australian War Memorial that uncovers powerful human stories,
Speaker 1: revealing war through unexpected perspectives and immersive storytelling Through Their Eyes.
Speaker 2: Coming in June, there was a sharp hiss, and then
Speaker 2: a l mighty explosion.
Speaker 3: Bang, we heard a flood, flood, flood in the lower motto.
Speaker 4: The flood the closest astray has ever come in peacetime
Speaker 4: to losing a submarine and its entire crew.
Speaker 3: So we are attep diving depth.
Speaker 5: That was fearfully cold and there was a lot of
Speaker 5: water coming.
Speaker 6: In twenty seconds. That's all we had.
Speaker 5: Only we're in trouble.
Speaker 3: You have a flood like that and you just got
Speaker 3: to get my Sunnotice.
Speaker 5: I can remember screaming out at the top of my voice.
Speaker 3: The tullo seawater is the same as one hundred crates
Speaker 3: of your favorite laga coming into your submarine every second
Speaker 3: through a hole.
Speaker 5: About that beer.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was like being stuck in a washing machine.
Speaker 7: It was just round and round and round.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to be the guy who took that
Speaker 3: crew to the bottom.
Speaker 4: I'm Cameron Stuart and this is the flood episode one explosion.
Speaker 4: One of the most remarkable but least known stories in
Speaker 4: recent Australian history is the near loss of sixty Australian
Speaker 4: submariners when seawater flooded their submarine HMAS to Shino deep
Speaker 4: under the Indian Ocean in two thousand and three for
Speaker 4: sixty men and women. They had twenty seconds left before
Speaker 4: they would have sunk to the ocean floor. The submarine
Speaker 4: would never have made it intact. It would have been
Speaker 4: crushed like an empty coat can by the ocean's pressure
Speaker 4: as it went down. It's a story of the Navy
Speaker 4: glossed over at the time, fearing further damage to the
Speaker 4: already tarnished reputation of its new Colins class fleet. But
Speaker 4: for those who were board the submarine that day, their
Speaker 4: lives were never the same again. It haunted the Navy,
Speaker 4: It haunted everyone who heard about it. It changed the
Speaker 4: way the Navy operated its submarine fleet. Its impact can
Speaker 4: still be felt across families and across generations. For the
Speaker 4: first time we reveal the full story of the incident
Speaker 4: they call the flood, the closest Australia has ever come
Speaker 4: in peacetime to losing a submarine and its entire crew.
Speaker 3: Cam Commodore Peter Scott retired from full time service in
Speaker 3: the ro All Australian Navy half a dozen years ago
Speaker 3: after a career of four years, vast majority of which
Speaker 3: was either in or around submarines in one way or
Speaker 3: Another absolute highlight of that career was my command of
Speaker 3: first H MASK Colins and then h MAS Shana.
Speaker 4: On a dark evening in late two thousand and two,
Speaker 4: I jumped into a Zodiac inflatable boat which had come
Speaker 4: to pit me up from the beach in Fremantle, Western Australia.
Speaker 4: I was a thirty nine year old investigative reporter and
Speaker 4: I'd written plenty of stories about the problems facing the
Speaker 4: Navy's new Colins class submarines, but I'd never been on one.
Speaker 4: We headed out to the ocean. We were supposed to
Speaker 4: rendezvous with hgmas D'shano, the fourth of the Royal Australian
Speaker 4: Navy's six new Colins class submarines. As we raced out
Speaker 4: to see, my eyes scanned the dark horizon, seeing nothing.
Speaker 4: Then suddenly, a huge, dark outline of a submarine appeared
Speaker 4: out of nowhere. We pulled up alongside, and before I
Speaker 4: knew it, I was whisting to the submarine and down
Speaker 4: the hatch. The commanding officer of the Dashano, Peter Scott,
Speaker 4: there waiting for me. He wore a strange agrill on
Speaker 4: his face. I was the last person that he and
Speaker 4: his crew of sixty men and women wanted to see
Speaker 4: a journalist the bane of their profession.
Speaker 5: On Mike Digs.
Speaker 8: I was in a navy for thirty two years, from
Speaker 8: the age of fifteen to forty seven. My years as
Speaker 8: a submarine force commander was two thousand and one to
Speaker 8: two thousand and five, and so if you recall that
Speaker 8: was the time of HMAS lemon dud subs, A lot
Speaker 8: of bad press.
Speaker 9: Leaky propellers, noisy engines and combat systems that had to
Speaker 9: be replaced because they were out of date are just
Speaker 9: some of the missteps on the way to launching the
Speaker 9: much maligned Colin's Fleet.
Speaker 8: So I spent a lot of time making presentations to
Speaker 8: all and sundry about dispelling the myths of the Clons
Speaker 8: class submarines because I had a submarine force that was
Speaker 8: in somewhat of a quandary. They were loving these new
Speaker 8: submarines and all that they brought, but we were getting
Speaker 8: a lot of bad press at the same time.
Speaker 4: It was eventually agreed I could spend forty eight hours
Speaker 4: on board the Duschano while it was conducting war games
Speaker 4: against Australian naval ships in the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 5: I'm one hundred and ninety.
Speaker 4: Four centimeters or six foot four inches tall, so I
Speaker 4: don't love small spaces. And the Collins class boats, although
Speaker 4: bigger than the old Oberon boats, are still a warrant
Speaker 4: of narrow passageways, guaranteed to bring out the inner claustrophobia
Speaker 4: in anyone. I recall feeling queasy when the submarine first
Speaker 4: dived beneath the surface. I kept bumping my head on things,
Speaker 4: but I did my best to join in. I ate
Speaker 4: with the crew and the mess. I slept under the
Speaker 4: torpedoes and I watched them as they listened to the
Speaker 4: whales and the warships in the ocean around them. The
Speaker 4: crew quickly got over the fact that there was an
Speaker 4: outsider in their midst. They were relaxed, friendly, and surprisingly eccentric.
Speaker 4: Commander Scott was a submarine commander from Central Casting, a
Speaker 4: tall ranger character who was hugely popular with his crew,
Speaker 4: not least because of his reputation for calmness under pressure.
Speaker 3: If I tell us story about life on submarines, I'm
Speaker 3: often asked why would you do that? And my antswer
Speaker 3: comes down to three really simple things. Purpose and challenge
Speaker 3: and people. The people are phenomenal. They tend to be
Speaker 3: the sort of characters who are driven by purpose and
Speaker 3: look for challenge. You cannot survive in a submarine if
Speaker 3: you don't know your stuff and if you can't work
Speaker 3: with other people. But that doesn't mean that you can't
Speaker 3: be eccentric. It doesn't mean that you can't be quite
Speaker 3: a different character.
Speaker 4: One female Submarana was a heavy smoker who chose to
Speaker 4: work in a sealed, non smoking capsule, and you harbored
Speaker 4: the peculiar ambition of one day sinking her fiance. In wargames,
Speaker 4: he was a sailor on the Anzac frigate war Amonger,
Speaker 4: and even the sonar operator Melanie Ellerton, would spend the
Speaker 4: day imitating the whale noises she heard on her headphones.
Speaker 4: When I asked her one day what noise sharks made,
Speaker 4: she looked at me in the eye and chanted the
Speaker 4: theme music from the movie Jaws.
Speaker 6: We have a very secretive lot and very tight crew.
Speaker 6: What I really really really loved about the command on
Speaker 6: the Chanea at that time was very much like a
Speaker 6: you work hard, you play hard, so you put the
Speaker 6: yards in, you put your hard work in, and you're
Speaker 6: awarded for it. The morale was amazing on that boat.
Speaker 6: I love just relive it again.
Speaker 4: The crew even had a peculiar habit of watching submarine
Speaker 4: thrillers while underwater, with Sean Connery in the Hunter read
Speaker 4: October being played seemingly on a loop.
Speaker 10: Our strategy depends on your answer.
Speaker 5: The entire fleet will know where we are.
Speaker 10: So we've just been overflown by a loyaltitude multi engine turboprop.
Speaker 4: I had no idea that just a few months later,
Speaker 4: these men and women would be fighting for their lives
Speaker 4: in the very same submarine as it flooded deep under
Speaker 4: the Indian Oceans. But even while I was on board
Speaker 4: there was a major incident. But a China was gliding
Speaker 4: silently beneath the ocean's surface towards its planned skirmish with
Speaker 4: three Australian Navy ships about eighty Nordick miles off the
Speaker 4: West Australian coast, and I suddenly heard footsteps and yelling
Speaker 4: in the narrow corridors. Get down the back, let's go,
Speaker 4: yelled a petty officer they called Mango. He took one
Speaker 4: look at myself and my photographer and bellowed, look after
Speaker 4: the civilians. Let's go We're not effing around here. There
Speaker 4: was an unnerving urgency in his voice as he hustled
Speaker 4: us towards the back of the boat, and alarm sounded
Speaker 4: throughout the submarine. Crew Members who had been sleeping seconds
Speaker 4: earlier jumped out of their bunks and ran to their
Speaker 4: emergency stations. Some were donning fireproof clothing and oxygen masks
Speaker 4: and tanks. No one was joking. Clearly, this was not
Speaker 4: a drill. We were shuffled through watertight doors that sealed
Speaker 4: the front half of the submarine from the rear. The
Speaker 4: doors are designed to prevent a fire or flood from
Speaker 4: in gold in the entire boat, ensuring that at least
Speaker 4: some of the crew can initially survive a disaster. Commander
Speaker 4: Scott announced over to speakers that there have been a
Speaker 4: hydraulic burst in the weapons storage compartment. Two crew members
Speaker 4: dressed in full fire fighting kit charged into the compartment,
Speaker 4: where torpedoes and hardpurn missiles were suspended. They discovered oil
Speaker 4: spraying out at high pressure from a broken connection in
Speaker 4: the piping. I was standing with a group of crew
Speaker 4: in the sealed back half of the submarine, listening to
Speaker 4: the emergency siren.
Speaker 3: The failure of a system like that can be really serious,
Speaker 3: but there's a lot of risk associated with how it
Speaker 3: fails as well. So if you have a hydraulic burst,
Speaker 3: what you have is hydraulic oil being sprayed at extremely
Speaker 3: high pressure into the atmosphere and it just becomes explosive.
Speaker 3: So the risk of explosion and fire, neither of which
Speaker 3: are healthy on board and enclosed submarine, can be really high.
Speaker 4: Minutes later, a voice came over the PA It said
Speaker 4: there is no risk of fire, the system is safe.
Speaker 4: No casualties throughout the submarine. The petty officer Mango later
Speaker 4: apologized for his language, but he said afar in the
Speaker 4: weapons room was one of the most dangerous things that
Speaker 4: could occur. That's what happened on the Cursk, he told me.
Speaker 3: The crew of the course are now entombed as the
Speaker 3: Navy races to attempt to rescue.
Speaker 4: Every sub mariner at that time was haunted by the
Speaker 4: story of the Cursk, the Russian submarine that sank to
Speaker 4: the bottom of the Barren Sea with one hundred and
Speaker 4: eighteen crew in August two thousand after a torpedo stowed
Speaker 4: on board exploded.
Speaker 6: Western military analysts had been suggesting earlier on in the
Speaker 6: day that if no breakthrough came within forty eight hours,
Speaker 6: that the crew would be in a very grave situation.
Speaker 2: Indeed, there's still no foreign indications.
Speaker 4: Those crew who survived the initial explosion wrote notes to
Speaker 4: the loved ones for days as their submarine sat in
Speaker 4: the seabed, awaiting or rescue that never came. When I
Speaker 4: went to Seekamada Scott in his cabin after the hydraulic burst,
Speaker 4: my eyes started to a book on his shelf, A
Speaker 4: Time to Die, the Cursed Disaster.
Speaker 3: We were in Hawaii at the time, during the maintenance period. Importantly,
Speaker 3: we also had a lot of our family over in Hawaii,
Speaker 3: you know, just taking some leave with the crew, So
Speaker 3: my wife and daughter were with me as the news
Speaker 3: was breaking each day. It was hard to watch that unfold.
Speaker 3: It was pretty brutal on the families because they can
Speaker 3: just place themselves in a very similar situation. There's absolutely
Speaker 3: this might be the wrong term these days, but there's
Speaker 3: absolutely a brotherhood amongst submarinas. There's not a lot of
Speaker 3: people in the world who understand what it is to
Speaker 3: take a naval submarine to see, so you definitely feel
Speaker 3: a sense of kinship politics aside with another Navy's submarine
Speaker 3: force that suffers a disaster like that.
Speaker 4: On that day in late two thousand and two, as
Speaker 4: we glided under the Indian Ocean, I recall sitting with
Speaker 4: Commander Scott in his cabin talking about the curse and
Speaker 4: about the risks which submaraners face. He had his own
Speaker 4: stories to tell. At just thirty seven years old, he
Speaker 4: once helped steer home a crippled British Navy submarine in
Speaker 4: the North Sea when it was swamped by a wave
Speaker 4: with its hatch still open, causing seawater to surge in
Speaker 4: short circuiting computers and sonar equipment. I had no idea
Speaker 4: that just a few months later, when I was safely
Speaker 4: back on dry land, the Commander Scott and this same
Speaker 4: crew of lovable eccentrics would go perilously close to suffering
Speaker 4: the same fate as the crew of the Cursk.
Speaker 1: The flood is brought to you by the Australian War Memorial.
Speaker 1: What Does War Look Like Through the Eyes of the
Speaker 1: People Who lived It? Through Their Eyes is a new
Speaker 1: podcast from the Australian War Memorial that uncovers deeply human
Speaker 1: stories drawn from the AWMS, vast collections, galleries and expert insights.
Speaker 1: Through unexpected perspectives and immersive storytelling, each episode brings history
Speaker 1: to life in a way that's personal, moving and relevant today.
Speaker 1: Discover the stories behind our history through their eyes.
Speaker 11: Coming in June, so we were preparing for deployment which
Speaker 11: would probably be three to four months long up into
Speaker 11: Southeast Asia to conduct a series.
Speaker 3: Of top secretmissions, and we were pretty well through most
Speaker 3: of that work up Alanta.
Speaker 4: Scott chose to test the submarine system a deep diving depth,
Speaker 4: the deepest depth which the submarine is designed to operate at.
Speaker 4: The actual deep diving debts itself is classified because to
Speaker 4: reveal it we'd give an enemy and advantage in any conflict.
Speaker 3: It's the deepest depth which would be authorized to operate
Speaker 3: in any sort of normal circumstances. Even in a wartime scenario.
Speaker 3: You'd think really, really carefully about pushing the boat deeper
Speaker 3: than deep diving depth.
Speaker 4: I'm climbing down the main hatch of the HM ass Onslow,
Speaker 4: one of the old Oberon class submarines. They are the
Speaker 4: predecessors of the Commons class submarines. This submarine was decommissioned
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety nine, just two years before the Deshana
Speaker 4: was commissioned. It is a rabbit warren of pipes, wires,
Speaker 4: equipment of all types, crammed into narrow passageways where sailors
Speaker 4: and submarines have to walk through for weeks and months
Speaker 4: on end, gliding silently under the ocean on top secret missions.
Speaker 4: As the submarine glided ever deeper, the crew responsible for
Speaker 4: the submariness technical systems were at their stations, vigilant and
Speaker 4: silent watching the depth gauge, their eyes scanning every instrument
Speaker 4: and piece of equipment, knowing that the water pressure outside
Speaker 4: was rising with every meter of depth.
Speaker 7: Lower motorom is a space right down the bottom at
Speaker 7: the rear of the or aft in the submarine that
Speaker 7: houses a fair amount of seawater, cooling apparatus, pumps, and pipework.
Speaker 4: I'm going down to the lower motor Room, a tiny
Speaker 4: room crammed with equipment. This is where Petty Officer Jordie
Speaker 4: Bunting was stationed to keep a watch on flexible hoses
Speaker 4: on the day of the flood.
Speaker 7: Now it was myself and two other guyers who were
Speaker 7: in the engineering space and the engine room and for
Speaker 7: some reason we'd played paper ocky as who was going
Speaker 7: down the hole, and somehow I come up worse off
Speaker 7: than the other two. So we were just looking for
Speaker 7: leaks and just hoping that everything held together as it.
Speaker 5: Should to put the boat through its paces.
Speaker 4: The lower motor Room, a crammed space measuring no more
Speaker 4: than two or three meters, sat underneath the submarine's main
Speaker 4: motor room. The crew entered and left this small room
Speaker 4: via a hatch on the deck. Petty Officer Jordie Bunting,
Speaker 4: universally known as Rocker, stood in that small compartment at
Speaker 4: the back of the submarine. His gaze fixed on a
Speaker 4: newly replaced hose, which was part of the auxilliary seawater
Speaker 4: system that provides cooling waters for the motors and which
Speaker 4: is exposed to sea pressure at all times. Then, in
Speaker 4: an instant, his world changed.
Speaker 7: There was a sharp hiss and then all mighty explosion fang,
Speaker 7: and the next thing I remember was shit, it's getting
Speaker 7: pretty cold. It was fearfully cold, and there was a
Speaker 7: lot of water coming in. I can remember screaming out
Speaker 7: at the top of my voice, not that I thought
Speaker 7: it was heard, that we were flooding and then yeah,
Speaker 7: it was like being stuck in a washing machine. It
Speaker 7: was just round and round and round.
Speaker 4: Luckily for Bunting abel seamen Greg Sullivan were standing not
Speaker 4: far away in another compartment.
Speaker 5: On the day of the flood. My role was to be.
Speaker 12: In the engine room builge and check the area for leaks.
Speaker 12: I heard a loud noise and then continue noise that
Speaker 12: wasn't normal. It's normally pretty quiet, so I could tell
Speaker 12: straight away it wasn't good. Started heading back there and
Speaker 12: ran into another sailor who was sounding the alarm. When
Speaker 12: he finished, I said, where's Rocker?
Speaker 4: Near the front of the submarine, Commander Scott was standing
Speaker 4: just outside the control room under the main hatch with
Speaker 4: two of his most senior engineers, Johnny Ryan and Mango,
Speaker 4: to see if a repair job on a recent small
Speaker 4: leak in the hatch had been fixed.
Speaker 3: For a couple of months, we'd had a slight weeper
Speaker 3: a leak on the main access hatch and we'd been
Speaker 3: back alongside worked on that hatch, gone back out to
Speaker 3: seat to try to prove it and it would still leak.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the Chief Tiff, Johnny Ryan, was pretty darn
Speaker 3: confident that he had a crack this time. So as
Speaker 3: we arrived at deep diving depth, the chief tiff, myself
Speaker 3: and the chief electrical sailor, we're all underneath that main
Speaker 3: access hatch just to check that it was actually home dry,
Speaker 3: and it was. It was fantastic, So we're happy about that,
Speaker 3: but not for long. And we're very happy about that
Speaker 3: until the moment we heard a main broadcast pipe which
Speaker 3: said flood, flood, flood, flood in the lower motument. So
Speaker 3: we are at deep diving depth, the submarine is under
Speaker 3: as much pressure as you would design the submarine to
Speaker 3: operate out and we've got a mate flood somewhere back
Speaker 3: after in the submarine.
Speaker 4: The words flood, flood, flood on the intercom were enough
Speaker 4: to freeze the blood of the entire crew. At deep
Speaker 4: diving depth, a major flood was the most dangerous misshap
Speaker 4: the submarine could suffer.
Speaker 10: John Ryan joined the Navy in nineteen eighty four as
Speaker 10: an apprentice out at H. Mason Remember at Quakers Hill
Speaker 10: on dashane O. I was the chief tiff for the
Speaker 10: head of the engineering team.
Speaker 4: John Ryan was halfway up a ladder checking the main
Speaker 4: hatch for lecks with Commander Scott. When he heard the
Speaker 4: flood warning come over the speakers.
Speaker 10: You could hear the words flood, flood, flood, but in
Speaker 10: the background it was like a roar.
Speaker 4: Was anything going through your head at that point.
Speaker 10: A lot of things, I think, but nothing in particular.
Speaker 10: Just shit, shit, shit.
Speaker 4: John Ryan sprinted as fast as he could from the
Speaker 4: front of the submarine to the back to see what
Speaker 4: had happened. The crew would later dub him Johnny crazy
Speaker 4: because he ran towards a major flood and not away
Speaker 4: from it.
Speaker 6: So I remember sitting in the Genus Sala's mess when
Speaker 6: the flooding alarm came through the speakers. I saw Old
Speaker 6: Chief two for Johnny Ryan running back after, and I said, well,
Speaker 6: that's not normal. You know, Normally, when we're exercising or
Speaker 6: things happening, it's more of a disciplined exit towards the incident.
Speaker 6: But seeing that and then hearing the flooding alarm going
Speaker 6: off and then were very closely watching the depth gauge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just.
Speaker 5: Scary.
Speaker 3: It was several kilometers so pretty deep preservation, probably three
Speaker 3: kilometers beneath us, certainly too deep for the submarine to survive.
Speaker 3: So if we had gone down that depth of water,
Speaker 3: the submarine would have been crushed before we hit the bottom.
Speaker 4: Commander Scott had no way of knowing at that moment
Speaker 4: how much waterd Shano had taken on and whether or
Speaker 4: not he could get his crippled submarine back to the surface.
Speaker 3: When you have a flood like this, you go from
Speaker 3: knowing the state of your submarine in intimate detail, like
Speaker 3: you can know or pull out the state of every valve,
Speaker 3: every switch, the contents of every tank, every single detail
Speaker 3: about the submarine is known. You have a flood like
Speaker 3: that and you just go to endless unknowns.
Speaker 1: This is episode one of our four part series which
Speaker 1: the Australian subscribers here first at the floodpodcast dot com
Speaker 1: and Apple Podcasts. Next week On the Flood.
Speaker 7: Something flew past and my head and hit something and
Speaker 7: flew back. But it was all split second stuff that
Speaker 7: went on.
Speaker 5: Was your head under guy was under the wood most
Speaker 5: of the time. It was sort of it. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: was cold, it was vicious.
Speaker 1: The Flood is an audio and video investigation for The
Speaker 1: Australian by Cameron Stewart, executive producer Claire Harvey and editor Jasperliku.
Speaker 1: You can watch the video right now at the flood
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Our theme is composed by Jasperlik, cinematography
Speaker 1: is by Andy Taylor and video editing by Lachlan Clear.
Speaker 1: Additional footage was shot by Luke Geldard and Peter aqualina A,
Speaker 1: graphics of by Sean Callanan and animations by Franklin. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Kristin Amiot, Ryan Elfin, the Australian National Maritime
Speaker 1: Museum and the Australian War Memorial. Captured, Imprisoned, Determined to
Speaker 1: Survive through first hand accounts from the Australian War Memorial's archives.
Speaker 1: Through Their Eyes reveals what it meant to endure captivity,
Speaker 1: maintain hope and survive against the odds. Listen to Through
Speaker 1: Their Eyes wherever you get your podcasts