The Submarine Base The Submarine base in situated on the far side of Rabaul at Tavui (being North) over tunnel Hill turn right at Bernie Vickers trade store and picture theatre,( now long gone) Drive along Nonga road past the hospital till the road runs out, then walk to the beach for around 100mts at lands’ end turn right go around the mangroves till you reach another open beach where you would have seen a large crane jutting out water about 50 meters from the beach, at low tide this is where the Submarine base is situated. a vertical reef wall that drops over 75 meters underwater. Japanese reportedly used it to provision submarines during the war. The deep water would allow them to submerge quickly if there was an air raid. Latitude: -4.136724 Longitude: 152.170386 Submarine Base – Japanese used this area to provision submarines. It’s located on the northern side of Rabaul, about 10 minutes from the town and it’s a vertical reef wall that drops over 75 meters underwater. Japanese used it to provision submarines here during the war from a network of tunnels dug into the side wall. In the early years before the crane rusted away, it was a large gantry perturbing out from the reef a set of rail lines ran from the two very large caves out to the crane this was the methods of resupplying the submarines during the war years. You can see the underwater entrance into Tavui caldera this was a very interesting move, the discovery of an area suitable to navigate a submarine into a volcanic calders saddle up to a sheer coral reef front surface reload with fuel supplies and torpedoes and be heading out to sea. The submarine base had many uses in the war years, the structures have all but gone the big caves are filled with silt of high tides and sea rise over the years, debris can still be seen and found in some areas , but the main structure has long since rusted away. Gone are the days of walking over the reef at knee height and diving off the crane into the deep blue abyss. Tunnels were carved in-the the side of the mountains by slave labour , these tunnels were stocked with supplies and torpedoes to supply the the hunting submarines Submarine Bay near Rabaul where deep tunnels in the coral cliffs and the remains of a small mobile crane corroborate the story that this was where submarines were victualled ; if attacked, batteries of guns in the cliff tunnels above would protect them or they would sink into the depths where the shelf of rock dropped a sheer 600 feet.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 11:37:01 +0000
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