Aust. Submarine In Realistic Exercise

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32395, 7 September 1970, Page 14

Aust. Submarine In Realistic Exercise

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, September 6

About 1000 naval staff and dockyard workers converged, on Devonport Naval Base yesterday morning in response to emergency messages broadcast recalling them for a submarine alert.

They were ordered to begin a hunt for the Australian submarine H.M.A.S. Ovens, presumed sunk in the Hauraki Gulf.

Eight Navy ships, including the frigate H.M.N.Z.S. Waikato, put to sea, and the Air Force sent an Orion aircraft to investigate. But it was all a realistic exercise. Almost the only people who knew were the commander of the Ovens (Lieutenant-Com-mander B. Nobes), and the officer organising the exercise.

The public did not realise there was no real emergency until the broadcast messages were rescinded at 10.20 a.m. Before then, worried Aucklanders rang radio stations, and the Navy received calls from sailors as far away as Hamilton Asking if they were needed.

The Auckland Search and Rescue Organisation had advance knowledge of the exercise, but apparently Coastguard, police and fire authorities were not told. The police launch Deodar and two Coastguard launches were dispatched to investigate smoke, which later proved to be naval smoke flares used in the exercise.

Contact was made with the Ovens at 11 a.m. at a point about nine miles south-east of Kawau Island, where the submarine had been sitting on the sea floor.

For the exercise, it was assumed that the vessel’s forward compartments had flooded.

By noon the exercise was

over, and the Waikato escorted the Australian submarine to Devonport. The Ovens, an Oberon-class submarine, will be in New Zealand waters for six weeks. It will take part in training exercises with New Zealand ships, and in larger manoeuvres for exercises code-named Orcex and Longex. The Australian Navy’s five Oberon-class submarines are all named after Australian explorers. Ovens explored parts of New South Wales and named the Snowy Mountains.