Famed British sub found off Turkish coast
06/22/2012
Nearly a century after being sunk by Turkish shellfire, a noted World War I British submarine has been located in the Eastern Mediterranean.
HMS E14 was discovered just 800 feet off coast of the Turkey town of Kum Kale, apparently largely intact.
The E14 was sunk in January 1918 with the loss of 25 men while on a mission to torpedo the Yavuz Sultan Selim, the flagship of the Ottoman Empire’s navy.
The Yavuz, formerly the German Imperial battlecruiser SMS Goeben, had been crippled during the Battle of Imbros and the E14 was sent to finish her off after repeated Allied air attacks failed.
The submarine had navigated 20 miles through dense minefields and past a string of enemy positions into the heavily fortified Dardanelles – the narrow straits between modern-day Turkey’s European and Asian coasts, according to The Daily Mail.
Finding the Goeben gone, E14 attacked a merchant ship as she withdrew from the Dardanelles.
She fired two torpedoes but one exploded prematurely, damaging the submarine. E14 was forced to surface because of flooding and came under coastal battery fire off Kum Kale.
