Latest / The Front / The Flood - Episode 1: Explosion
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Hi, It's Claire from the Front. For the next four
- 0:07Speaker 1: weeks on Sundays, we're bringing you a new mini series
- 0:10Speaker 1: from The Australian called The Flood, and this is episode one.
- 0:14Speaker 1: The series is hosted by Chief International Correspondent Cameron Stewart
- 0:18Speaker 1: and created by Kam with me and our audio lead
- 0:21Speaker 1: Jasper Leik, plus all of us here at The Australian.
- 0:24Speaker 1: It tells the incredible true story of how sixty Australian
- 0:28Speaker 1: sub mariners saved their own lives and their boat. The
- 0:32Speaker 1: Flood is a truly inspirational story of human courage, resilience,
- 0:36Speaker 1: teamwork and ingenuity. You can follow the show by searching
- 0:40Speaker 1: The Flood wherever you listen and going to the floodpodcast
- 0:44Speaker 1: dot com, where you can also watch it as a video.
- 0:56Speaker 1: The Flood is brought to you by the Australian War Memorial.
- 1:00Speaker 1: Some stories define a nation, others reveal what it means
- 1:04Speaker 1: to be human. Through Their Eyes is a new podcast
- 1:07Speaker 1: from the Australian War Memorial that uncovers powerful human stories,
- 1:11Speaker 1: revealing war through unexpected perspectives and immersive storytelling Through Their Eyes.
- 1:17Speaker 2: Coming in June, there was a sharp hiss, and then
- 1:29Speaker 2: a l mighty explosion.
- 1:31Speaker 3: Bang, we heard a flood, flood, flood in the lower motto.
- 1:40Speaker 4: The flood the closest astray has ever come in peacetime
- 1:43Speaker 4: to losing a submarine and its entire crew.
- 1:47Speaker 3: So we are attep diving depth.
- 1:50Speaker 5: That was fearfully cold and there was a lot of
- 1:53Speaker 5: water coming.
- 1:54Speaker 6: In twenty seconds. That's all we had.
- 2:00Speaker 5: Only we're in trouble.
- 2:01Speaker 3: You have a flood like that and you just got
- 2:03Speaker 3: to get my Sunnotice.
- 2:05Speaker 5: I can remember screaming out at the top of my voice.
- 2:07Speaker 3: The tullo seawater is the same as one hundred crates
- 2:10Speaker 3: of your favorite laga coming into your submarine every second
- 2:14Speaker 3: through a hole.
- 2:15Speaker 5: About that beer.
- 2:16Speaker 7: Yeah, it was like being stuck in a washing machine.
- 2:18Speaker 7: It was just round and round and round.
- 2:21Speaker 3: I didn't want to be the guy who took that
- 2:24Speaker 3: crew to the bottom.
- 2:32Speaker 4: I'm Cameron Stuart and this is the flood episode one explosion.
- 2:45Speaker 4: One of the most remarkable but least known stories in
- 2:48Speaker 4: recent Australian history is the near loss of sixty Australian
- 2:51Speaker 4: submariners when seawater flooded their submarine HMAS to Shino deep
- 2:56Speaker 4: under the Indian Ocean in two thousand and three for
- 2:59Speaker 4: sixty men and women. They had twenty seconds left before
- 3:02Speaker 4: they would have sunk to the ocean floor. The submarine
- 3:05Speaker 4: would never have made it intact. It would have been
- 3:07Speaker 4: crushed like an empty coat can by the ocean's pressure
- 3:10Speaker 4: as it went down. It's a story of the Navy
- 3:13Speaker 4: glossed over at the time, fearing further damage to the
- 3:16Speaker 4: already tarnished reputation of its new Colins class fleet. But
- 3:20Speaker 4: for those who were board the submarine that day, their
- 3:22Speaker 4: lives were never the same again. It haunted the Navy,
- 3:26Speaker 4: It haunted everyone who heard about it. It changed the
- 3:29Speaker 4: way the Navy operated its submarine fleet. Its impact can
- 3:33Speaker 4: still be felt across families and across generations. For the
- 3:37Speaker 4: first time we reveal the full story of the incident
- 3:40Speaker 4: they call the flood, the closest Australia has ever come
- 3:44Speaker 4: in peacetime to losing a submarine and its entire crew.
- 3:51Speaker 3: Cam Commodore Peter Scott retired from full time service in
- 3:55Speaker 3: the ro All Australian Navy half a dozen years ago
- 3:58Speaker 3: after a career of four years, vast majority of which
- 4:02Speaker 3: was either in or around submarines in one way or
- 4:05Speaker 3: Another absolute highlight of that career was my command of
- 4:09Speaker 3: first H MASK Colins and then h MAS Shana.
- 4:13Speaker 4: On a dark evening in late two thousand and two,
- 4:16Speaker 4: I jumped into a Zodiac inflatable boat which had come
- 4:18Speaker 4: to pit me up from the beach in Fremantle, Western Australia.
- 4:21Speaker 4: I was a thirty nine year old investigative reporter and
- 4:24Speaker 4: I'd written plenty of stories about the problems facing the
- 4:27Speaker 4: Navy's new Colins class submarines, but I'd never been on one.
- 4:31Speaker 4: We headed out to the ocean. We were supposed to
- 4:33Speaker 4: rendezvous with hgmas D'shano, the fourth of the Royal Australian
- 4:38Speaker 4: Navy's six new Colins class submarines. As we raced out
- 4:42Speaker 4: to see, my eyes scanned the dark horizon, seeing nothing.
- 4:47Speaker 4: Then suddenly, a huge, dark outline of a submarine appeared
- 4:50Speaker 4: out of nowhere. We pulled up alongside, and before I
- 4:53Speaker 4: knew it, I was whisting to the submarine and down
- 4:56Speaker 4: the hatch. The commanding officer of the Dashano, Peter Scott,
- 5:00Speaker 4: there waiting for me. He wore a strange agrill on
- 5:03Speaker 4: his face. I was the last person that he and
- 5:05Speaker 4: his crew of sixty men and women wanted to see
- 5:08Speaker 4: a journalist the bane of their profession.
- 5:12Speaker 5: On Mike Digs.
- 5:13Speaker 8: I was in a navy for thirty two years, from
- 5:15Speaker 8: the age of fifteen to forty seven. My years as
- 5:18Speaker 8: a submarine force commander was two thousand and one to
- 5:21Speaker 8: two thousand and five, and so if you recall that
- 5:24Speaker 8: was the time of HMAS lemon dud subs, A lot
- 5:27Speaker 8: of bad press.
- 5:29Speaker 9: Leaky propellers, noisy engines and combat systems that had to
- 5:33Speaker 9: be replaced because they were out of date are just
- 5:35Speaker 9: some of the missteps on the way to launching the
- 5:37Speaker 9: much maligned Colin's Fleet.
- 5:40Speaker 8: So I spent a lot of time making presentations to
- 5:42Speaker 8: all and sundry about dispelling the myths of the Clons
- 5:45Speaker 8: class submarines because I had a submarine force that was
- 5:49Speaker 8: in somewhat of a quandary. They were loving these new
- 5:51Speaker 8: submarines and all that they brought, but we were getting
- 5:54Speaker 8: a lot of bad press at the same time.
- 5:57Speaker 4: It was eventually agreed I could spend forty eight hours
- 6:00Speaker 4: on board the Duschano while it was conducting war games
- 6:03Speaker 4: against Australian naval ships in the Indian Ocean.
- 6:06Speaker 5: I'm one hundred and ninety.
- 6:06Speaker 4: Four centimeters or six foot four inches tall, so I
- 6:09Speaker 4: don't love small spaces. And the Collins class boats, although
- 6:13Speaker 4: bigger than the old Oberon boats, are still a warrant
- 6:16Speaker 4: of narrow passageways, guaranteed to bring out the inner claustrophobia
- 6:20Speaker 4: in anyone. I recall feeling queasy when the submarine first
- 6:24Speaker 4: dived beneath the surface. I kept bumping my head on things,
- 6:27Speaker 4: but I did my best to join in. I ate
- 6:30Speaker 4: with the crew and the mess. I slept under the
- 6:32Speaker 4: torpedoes and I watched them as they listened to the
- 6:35Speaker 4: whales and the warships in the ocean around them. The
- 6:39Speaker 4: crew quickly got over the fact that there was an
- 6:40Speaker 4: outsider in their midst. They were relaxed, friendly, and surprisingly eccentric.
- 6:47Speaker 4: Commander Scott was a submarine commander from Central Casting, a
- 6:51Speaker 4: tall ranger character who was hugely popular with his crew,
- 6:55Speaker 4: not least because of his reputation for calmness under pressure.
- 6:59Speaker 3: If I tell us story about life on submarines, I'm
- 7:02Speaker 3: often asked why would you do that? And my antswer
- 7:05Speaker 3: comes down to three really simple things. Purpose and challenge
- 7:08Speaker 3: and people. The people are phenomenal. They tend to be
- 7:14Speaker 3: the sort of characters who are driven by purpose and
- 7:18Speaker 3: look for challenge. You cannot survive in a submarine if
- 7:22Speaker 3: you don't know your stuff and if you can't work
- 7:24Speaker 3: with other people. But that doesn't mean that you can't
- 7:27Speaker 3: be eccentric. It doesn't mean that you can't be quite
- 7:29Speaker 3: a different character.
- 7:31Speaker 4: One female Submarana was a heavy smoker who chose to
- 7:35Speaker 4: work in a sealed, non smoking capsule, and you harbored
- 7:38Speaker 4: the peculiar ambition of one day sinking her fiance. In wargames,
- 7:43Speaker 4: he was a sailor on the Anzac frigate war Amonger,
- 7:47Speaker 4: and even the sonar operator Melanie Ellerton, would spend the
- 7:51Speaker 4: day imitating the whale noises she heard on her headphones.
- 7:55Speaker 4: When I asked her one day what noise sharks made,
- 7:57Speaker 4: she looked at me in the eye and chanted the
- 7:59Speaker 4: theme music from the movie Jaws.
- 8:02Speaker 6: We have a very secretive lot and very tight crew.
- 8:06Speaker 6: What I really really really loved about the command on
- 8:09Speaker 6: the Chanea at that time was very much like a
- 8:12Speaker 6: you work hard, you play hard, so you put the
- 8:15Speaker 6: yards in, you put your hard work in, and you're
- 8:17Speaker 6: awarded for it. The morale was amazing on that boat.
- 8:22Speaker 6: I love just relive it again.
- 8:27Speaker 4: The crew even had a peculiar habit of watching submarine
- 8:29Speaker 4: thrillers while underwater, with Sean Connery in the Hunter read
- 8:33Speaker 4: October being played seemingly on a loop.
- 8:36Speaker 10: Our strategy depends on your answer.
- 8:39Speaker 5: The entire fleet will know where we are.
- 8:42Speaker 10: So we've just been overflown by a loyaltitude multi engine turboprop.
- 8:47Speaker 4: I had no idea that just a few months later,
- 8:50Speaker 4: these men and women would be fighting for their lives
- 8:52Speaker 4: in the very same submarine as it flooded deep under
- 8:55Speaker 4: the Indian Oceans. But even while I was on board
- 8:58Speaker 4: there was a major incident. But a China was gliding
- 9:03Speaker 4: silently beneath the ocean's surface towards its planned skirmish with
- 9:07Speaker 4: three Australian Navy ships about eighty Nordick miles off the
- 9:10Speaker 4: West Australian coast, and I suddenly heard footsteps and yelling
- 9:14Speaker 4: in the narrow corridors. Get down the back, let's go,
- 9:18Speaker 4: yelled a petty officer they called Mango. He took one
- 9:21Speaker 4: look at myself and my photographer and bellowed, look after
- 9:25Speaker 4: the civilians. Let's go We're not effing around here. There
- 9:29Speaker 4: was an unnerving urgency in his voice as he hustled
- 9:31Speaker 4: us towards the back of the boat, and alarm sounded
- 9:35Speaker 4: throughout the submarine. Crew Members who had been sleeping seconds
- 9:39Speaker 4: earlier jumped out of their bunks and ran to their
- 9:41Speaker 4: emergency stations. Some were donning fireproof clothing and oxygen masks
- 9:46Speaker 4: and tanks. No one was joking. Clearly, this was not
- 9:50Speaker 4: a drill. We were shuffled through watertight doors that sealed
- 9:54Speaker 4: the front half of the submarine from the rear. The
- 9:57Speaker 4: doors are designed to prevent a fire or flood from
- 9:59Speaker 4: in gold in the entire boat, ensuring that at least
- 10:02Speaker 4: some of the crew can initially survive a disaster. Commander
- 10:06Speaker 4: Scott announced over to speakers that there have been a
- 10:09Speaker 4: hydraulic burst in the weapons storage compartment. Two crew members
- 10:13Speaker 4: dressed in full fire fighting kit charged into the compartment,
- 10:16Speaker 4: where torpedoes and hardpurn missiles were suspended. They discovered oil
- 10:21Speaker 4: spraying out at high pressure from a broken connection in
- 10:24Speaker 4: the piping. I was standing with a group of crew
- 10:27Speaker 4: in the sealed back half of the submarine, listening to
- 10:29Speaker 4: the emergency siren.
- 10:32Speaker 3: The failure of a system like that can be really serious,
- 10:36Speaker 3: but there's a lot of risk associated with how it
- 10:38Speaker 3: fails as well. So if you have a hydraulic burst,
- 10:41Speaker 3: what you have is hydraulic oil being sprayed at extremely
- 10:46Speaker 3: high pressure into the atmosphere and it just becomes explosive.
- 10:51Speaker 3: So the risk of explosion and fire, neither of which
- 10:55Speaker 3: are healthy on board and enclosed submarine, can be really high.
- 11:00Speaker 4: Minutes later, a voice came over the PA It said
- 11:03Speaker 4: there is no risk of fire, the system is safe.
- 11:06Speaker 4: No casualties throughout the submarine. The petty officer Mango later
- 11:09Speaker 4: apologized for his language, but he said afar in the
- 11:13Speaker 4: weapons room was one of the most dangerous things that
- 11:15Speaker 4: could occur. That's what happened on the Cursk, he told me.
- 11:23Speaker 3: The crew of the course are now entombed as the
- 11:26Speaker 3: Navy races to attempt to rescue.
- 11:29Speaker 4: Every sub mariner at that time was haunted by the
- 11:32Speaker 4: story of the Cursk, the Russian submarine that sank to
- 11:35Speaker 4: the bottom of the Barren Sea with one hundred and
- 11:37Speaker 4: eighteen crew in August two thousand after a torpedo stowed
- 11:41Speaker 4: on board exploded.
- 11:43Speaker 6: Western military analysts had been suggesting earlier on in the
- 11:46Speaker 6: day that if no breakthrough came within forty eight hours,
- 11:48Speaker 6: that the crew would be in a very grave situation.
- 11:50Speaker 2: Indeed, there's still no foreign indications.
- 11:53Speaker 4: Those crew who survived the initial explosion wrote notes to
- 11:57Speaker 4: the loved ones for days as their submarine sat in
- 11:59Speaker 4: the seabed, awaiting or rescue that never came. When I
- 12:04Speaker 4: went to Seekamada Scott in his cabin after the hydraulic burst,
- 12:08Speaker 4: my eyes started to a book on his shelf, A
- 12:11Speaker 4: Time to Die, the Cursed Disaster.
- 12:14Speaker 3: We were in Hawaii at the time, during the maintenance period. Importantly,
- 12:20Speaker 3: we also had a lot of our family over in Hawaii,
- 12:23Speaker 3: you know, just taking some leave with the crew, So
- 12:28Speaker 3: my wife and daughter were with me as the news
- 12:31Speaker 3: was breaking each day. It was hard to watch that unfold.
- 12:39Speaker 3: It was pretty brutal on the families because they can
- 12:42Speaker 3: just place themselves in a very similar situation. There's absolutely
- 12:47Speaker 3: this might be the wrong term these days, but there's
- 12:49Speaker 3: absolutely a brotherhood amongst submarinas. There's not a lot of
- 12:53Speaker 3: people in the world who understand what it is to
- 12:55Speaker 3: take a naval submarine to see, so you definitely feel
- 12:58Speaker 3: a sense of kinship politics aside with another Navy's submarine
- 13:04Speaker 3: force that suffers a disaster like that.
- 13:10Speaker 4: On that day in late two thousand and two, as
- 13:12Speaker 4: we glided under the Indian Ocean, I recall sitting with
- 13:16Speaker 4: Commander Scott in his cabin talking about the curse and
- 13:19Speaker 4: about the risks which submaraners face. He had his own
- 13:22Speaker 4: stories to tell. At just thirty seven years old, he
- 13:25Speaker 4: once helped steer home a crippled British Navy submarine in
- 13:29Speaker 4: the North Sea when it was swamped by a wave
- 13:32Speaker 4: with its hatch still open, causing seawater to surge in
- 13:35Speaker 4: short circuiting computers and sonar equipment. I had no idea
- 13:39Speaker 4: that just a few months later, when I was safely
- 13:42Speaker 4: back on dry land, the Commander Scott and this same
- 13:45Speaker 4: crew of lovable eccentrics would go perilously close to suffering
- 13:48Speaker 4: the same fate as the crew of the Cursk.
- 14:01Speaker 1: The flood is brought to you by the Australian War Memorial.
- 14:05Speaker 1: What Does War Look Like Through the Eyes of the
- 14:08Speaker 1: People Who lived It? Through Their Eyes is a new
- 14:11Speaker 1: podcast from the Australian War Memorial that uncovers deeply human
- 14:15Speaker 1: stories drawn from the AWMS, vast collections, galleries and expert insights.
- 14:21Speaker 1: Through unexpected perspectives and immersive storytelling, each episode brings history
- 14:26Speaker 1: to life in a way that's personal, moving and relevant today.
- 14:30Speaker 1: Discover the stories behind our history through their eyes.
- 14:34Speaker 11: Coming in June, so we were preparing for deployment which
- 14:44Speaker 11: would probably be three to four months long up into
- 14:47Speaker 11: Southeast Asia to conduct a series.
- 14:49Speaker 3: Of top secretmissions, and we were pretty well through most
- 14:54Speaker 3: of that work up Alanta.
- 14:58Speaker 4: Scott chose to test the submarine system a deep diving depth,
- 15:01Speaker 4: the deepest depth which the submarine is designed to operate at.
- 15:05Speaker 4: The actual deep diving debts itself is classified because to
- 15:08Speaker 4: reveal it we'd give an enemy and advantage in any conflict.
- 15:11Speaker 3: It's the deepest depth which would be authorized to operate
- 15:15Speaker 3: in any sort of normal circumstances. Even in a wartime scenario.
- 15:21Speaker 3: You'd think really, really carefully about pushing the boat deeper
- 15:25Speaker 3: than deep diving depth.
- 15:29Speaker 4: I'm climbing down the main hatch of the HM ass Onslow,
- 15:32Speaker 4: one of the old Oberon class submarines. They are the
- 15:35Speaker 4: predecessors of the Commons class submarines. This submarine was decommissioned
- 15:39Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety nine, just two years before the Deshana
- 15:41Speaker 4: was commissioned. It is a rabbit warren of pipes, wires,
- 15:46Speaker 4: equipment of all types, crammed into narrow passageways where sailors
- 15:51Speaker 4: and submarines have to walk through for weeks and months
- 15:55Speaker 4: on end, gliding silently under the ocean on top secret missions.
- 16:00Speaker 4: As the submarine glided ever deeper, the crew responsible for
- 16:03Speaker 4: the submariness technical systems were at their stations, vigilant and
- 16:06Speaker 4: silent watching the depth gauge, their eyes scanning every instrument
- 16:10Speaker 4: and piece of equipment, knowing that the water pressure outside
- 16:14Speaker 4: was rising with every meter of depth.
- 16:17Speaker 7: Lower motorom is a space right down the bottom at
- 16:20Speaker 7: the rear of the or aft in the submarine that
- 16:24Speaker 7: houses a fair amount of seawater, cooling apparatus, pumps, and pipework.
- 16:31Speaker 4: I'm going down to the lower motor Room, a tiny
- 16:34Speaker 4: room crammed with equipment. This is where Petty Officer Jordie
- 16:37Speaker 4: Bunting was stationed to keep a watch on flexible hoses
- 16:41Speaker 4: on the day of the flood.
- 16:43Speaker 7: Now it was myself and two other guyers who were
- 16:45Speaker 7: in the engineering space and the engine room and for
- 16:49Speaker 7: some reason we'd played paper ocky as who was going
- 16:51Speaker 7: down the hole, and somehow I come up worse off
- 16:55Speaker 7: than the other two. So we were just looking for
- 16:58Speaker 7: leaks and just hoping that everything held together as it.
- 17:03Speaker 5: Should to put the boat through its paces.
- 17:05Speaker 4: The lower motor Room, a crammed space measuring no more
- 17:09Speaker 4: than two or three meters, sat underneath the submarine's main
- 17:12Speaker 4: motor room. The crew entered and left this small room
- 17:15Speaker 4: via a hatch on the deck. Petty Officer Jordie Bunting,
- 17:19Speaker 4: universally known as Rocker, stood in that small compartment at
- 17:22Speaker 4: the back of the submarine. His gaze fixed on a
- 17:25Speaker 4: newly replaced hose, which was part of the auxilliary seawater
- 17:28Speaker 4: system that provides cooling waters for the motors and which
- 17:32Speaker 4: is exposed to sea pressure at all times. Then, in
- 17:36Speaker 4: an instant, his world changed.
- 17:39Speaker 7: There was a sharp hiss and then all mighty explosion fang,
- 17:46Speaker 7: and the next thing I remember was shit, it's getting
- 17:47Speaker 7: pretty cold. It was fearfully cold, and there was a
- 17:52Speaker 7: lot of water coming in. I can remember screaming out
- 17:56Speaker 7: at the top of my voice, not that I thought
- 17:57Speaker 7: it was heard, that we were flooding and then yeah,
- 18:04Speaker 7: it was like being stuck in a washing machine. It
- 18:06Speaker 7: was just round and round and round.
- 18:08Speaker 4: Luckily for Bunting abel seamen Greg Sullivan were standing not
- 18:12Speaker 4: far away in another compartment.
- 18:14Speaker 5: On the day of the flood. My role was to be.
- 18:17Speaker 12: In the engine room builge and check the area for leaks.
- 18:22Speaker 12: I heard a loud noise and then continue noise that
- 18:26Speaker 12: wasn't normal. It's normally pretty quiet, so I could tell
- 18:30Speaker 12: straight away it wasn't good. Started heading back there and
- 18:35Speaker 12: ran into another sailor who was sounding the alarm. When
- 18:39Speaker 12: he finished, I said, where's Rocker?
- 18:42Speaker 4: Near the front of the submarine, Commander Scott was standing
- 18:45Speaker 4: just outside the control room under the main hatch with
- 18:48Speaker 4: two of his most senior engineers, Johnny Ryan and Mango,
- 18:52Speaker 4: to see if a repair job on a recent small
- 18:54Speaker 4: leak in the hatch had been fixed.
- 18:57Speaker 3: For a couple of months, we'd had a slight weeper
- 19:00Speaker 3: a leak on the main access hatch and we'd been
- 19:05Speaker 3: back alongside worked on that hatch, gone back out to
- 19:08Speaker 3: seat to try to prove it and it would still leak.
- 19:10Speaker 3: So anyway, the Chief Tiff, Johnny Ryan, was pretty darn
- 19:14Speaker 3: confident that he had a crack this time. So as
- 19:18Speaker 3: we arrived at deep diving depth, the chief tiff, myself
- 19:23Speaker 3: and the chief electrical sailor, we're all underneath that main
- 19:27Speaker 3: access hatch just to check that it was actually home dry,
- 19:31Speaker 3: and it was. It was fantastic, So we're happy about that,
- 19:35Speaker 3: but not for long. And we're very happy about that
- 19:40Speaker 3: until the moment we heard a main broadcast pipe which
- 19:44Speaker 3: said flood, flood, flood, flood in the lower motument. So
- 19:49Speaker 3: we are at deep diving depth, the submarine is under
- 19:52Speaker 3: as much pressure as you would design the submarine to
- 19:57Speaker 3: operate out and we've got a mate flood somewhere back
- 20:01Speaker 3: after in the submarine.
- 20:04Speaker 4: The words flood, flood, flood on the intercom were enough
- 20:08Speaker 4: to freeze the blood of the entire crew. At deep
- 20:11Speaker 4: diving depth, a major flood was the most dangerous misshap
- 20:14Speaker 4: the submarine could suffer.
- 20:19Speaker 10: John Ryan joined the Navy in nineteen eighty four as
- 20:23Speaker 10: an apprentice out at H. Mason Remember at Quakers Hill
- 20:27Speaker 10: on dashane O. I was the chief tiff for the
- 20:30Speaker 10: head of the engineering team.
- 20:32Speaker 4: John Ryan was halfway up a ladder checking the main
- 20:35Speaker 4: hatch for lecks with Commander Scott. When he heard the
- 20:37Speaker 4: flood warning come over the speakers.
- 20:40Speaker 10: You could hear the words flood, flood, flood, but in
- 20:45Speaker 10: the background it was like a roar.
- 20:48Speaker 4: Was anything going through your head at that point.
- 20:52Speaker 10: A lot of things, I think, but nothing in particular.
- 20:55Speaker 10: Just shit, shit, shit.
- 20:58Speaker 4: John Ryan sprinted as fast as he could from the
- 21:00Speaker 4: front of the submarine to the back to see what
- 21:02Speaker 4: had happened. The crew would later dub him Johnny crazy
- 21:06Speaker 4: because he ran towards a major flood and not away
- 21:08Speaker 4: from it.
- 21:10Speaker 6: So I remember sitting in the Genus Sala's mess when
- 21:12Speaker 6: the flooding alarm came through the speakers. I saw Old
- 21:17Speaker 6: Chief two for Johnny Ryan running back after, and I said, well,
- 21:21Speaker 6: that's not normal. You know, Normally, when we're exercising or
- 21:24Speaker 6: things happening, it's more of a disciplined exit towards the incident.
- 21:30Speaker 6: But seeing that and then hearing the flooding alarm going
- 21:34Speaker 6: off and then were very closely watching the depth gauge.
- 21:39Speaker 4: Yeah, just.
- 21:41Speaker 5: Scary.
- 21:44Speaker 3: It was several kilometers so pretty deep preservation, probably three
- 21:49Speaker 3: kilometers beneath us, certainly too deep for the submarine to survive.
- 21:56Speaker 3: So if we had gone down that depth of water,
- 21:58Speaker 3: the submarine would have been crushed before we hit the bottom.
- 22:03Speaker 4: Commander Scott had no way of knowing at that moment
- 22:06Speaker 4: how much waterd Shano had taken on and whether or
- 22:09Speaker 4: not he could get his crippled submarine back to the surface.
- 22:12Speaker 3: When you have a flood like this, you go from
- 22:15Speaker 3: knowing the state of your submarine in intimate detail, like
- 22:18Speaker 3: you can know or pull out the state of every valve,
- 22:22Speaker 3: every switch, the contents of every tank, every single detail
- 22:28Speaker 3: about the submarine is known. You have a flood like
- 22:31Speaker 3: that and you just go to endless unknowns.
- 22:47Speaker 1: This is episode one of our four part series which
- 22:50Speaker 1: the Australian subscribers here first at the floodpodcast dot com
- 22:54Speaker 1: and Apple Podcasts. Next week On the Flood.
- 22:58Speaker 7: Something flew past and my head and hit something and
- 23:01Speaker 7: flew back. But it was all split second stuff that
- 23:04Speaker 7: went on.
- 23:05Speaker 5: Was your head under guy was under the wood most
- 23:07Speaker 5: of the time. It was sort of it. Yeah, it
- 23:10Speaker 5: was cold, it was vicious.
- 23:13Speaker 1: The Flood is an audio and video investigation for The
- 23:16Speaker 1: Australian by Cameron Stewart, executive producer Claire Harvey and editor Jasperliku.
- 23:22Speaker 1: You can watch the video right now at the flood
- 23:24Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Our theme is composed by Jasperlik, cinematography
- 23:30Speaker 1: is by Andy Taylor and video editing by Lachlan Clear.
- 23:33Speaker 1: Additional footage was shot by Luke Geldard and Peter aqualina A,
- 23:38Speaker 1: graphics of by Sean Callanan and animations by Franklin. Special
- 23:42Speaker 1: thanks to Kristin Amiot, Ryan Elfin, the Australian National Maritime
- 23:47Speaker 1: Museum and the Australian War Memorial. Captured, Imprisoned, Determined to
- 23:59Speaker 1: Survive through first hand accounts from the Australian War Memorial's archives.
- 24:04Speaker 1: Through Their Eyes reveals what it meant to endure captivity,
- 24:08Speaker 1: maintain hope and survive against the odds. Listen to Through
- 24:13Speaker 1: Their Eyes wherever you get your podcasts