‘Lost’ sub discovered

IT LAY hidden for more than 100 years, but it took just two hours to find Australia’s “lost” submarine, solving one of the world’s greatest maritime mysteries.

There have been a dozen formal attempts to find HMAS AE1 that vanished on September 14, 1914, somewhere off the coast of Rabaul in PNG at the onset of World War I.

But modern technology and decades of research by a dedicated few found the submarine and its 35-man crew in record time, on the sea floor 300m below the surface between Rabaul and Duke of York Islands.

The find will go some way to debunking the many theories as to how the 55m submarine could have disappeared with no debris ever found.