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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Nov. 5, Mr. Bond’s Blowpipe-carrying smoke boat

HMS Aeneas S-72 seen in 1971 coming alongside HMS Forth A-187 at Devonport Photo from Maritime Quest 

Here we see the His Majesty’s submarine HMS Aeneas (P427, then S-72), an A-class diesel boat of the Royal Navy coming alongside HMS Forth A-187 at Devonport. She is named after the ancient Trojan hero who fought his way out of the burning city state.

Trojan hero Aeneas and the god Tiber, by Bartolomeo Pinelli.

The pinnacle of British submarine development in World War II, the crown ordered 46 “A-class” vessels in the last months of that conflict to serve in the Pacific. These 1600-ton submersibles, at 280.5-feet oal, were smaller than American fleet boats of the time and were more in-line with German and Italian designs of the era. Capable of a 10,500-nm range at an economical 11-knot, these were deep divers, capable of over 500-feet dive depth. With half-dozen forward tubes and four rear ones, these subs could tote 20 torpedoes in addition to their modest topside armament of a single 4-inch gun and a smattering of AAA pieces. Capable of being constructed in 8-months or less due to their modularity and all-welded final assembly, the boats were an improvement over the RN’s pre-war T-class boats.

HMS Aeneas at Britsol 1946. Compare this image with the one above to see the differences between the 1960s streamlining and the WWII outline.

When peace suddenly broke out (remember that the Japanese were expected to resist for another year or two before the atom bombs changed their mind), 30 of the class were canceled and just 16 completed. Of these boats, most were constructed at Vickers or by the HM Dockyards with only three completed by Cammell Laird, Birkenhead. Of those three, HMS Aeneas, laid down during the war was launched 9 October 1945, just a month after the Japanese surrender.

Inside the HMS Alliance, H.M. Submarine Aeneas sister. Photo by Marine Photography.

Used mainly for overseas patrol, the class spent most of the next three decades in quiet service. In the late 1940s Aeneas, along with 13 of her sisters, were modified with pneumatic extending “snort mast” snorkel devices patterned after German examples to enable them to travel just under the surface with only their breathing tube breaking the waves. An example of this capability was displayed by sister ship HMS Andrew which covered the 2500 miles from Bermuda to the UK in 13 days while submerged– a record only bested by nuclear-powered submarines.

However, this modification was not without troubles as sister HMS Affray reported hers “leaked like a sieve” and was thought for years to be the cause of that boat’s loss in 1951 with all hands.

In 1953 a number of the class were present at the Coronation fleet review of Queen Elizabeth II to include Aeneas. In the late 50s, she was streamlined and given more up-to-date sensors and the new pennant number S72.

The 1953 Spithead Coronation Review. H.M. Submarine Aeneas was there along with about a half dozen of her sisters.

Besides holding the line against the ever-growing numbers of Soviet U-boats creeping around the world’s oceans, and forward deployment to Canada for the Cuban Missile Crisis, the only tense service the class saw was in enforcing the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation in which they were used to counter blockade-running junks. It was during this long-running operation that sistership HMS Aurochs was machine-gunned by an aircraft unknown off the coast of Indonesia in 1958. In this type of service, the boats made port calls in remote Pacific islands that rarely if ever logged a visit from the RN in modern times. They also carried a mottled camouflage scheme while performing this duty.

HMS Aeneas S-72 after modernization in 1961. Note the lack of surface armament and the new sonar dome. Photo by Maritime quest

The class did make appearances a number of films, with Andrew filling in for a U.S. nuclear submarine in the 1959 post-apocalyptic film On the Beach. Sistership Artemis appeared in a RN training film entitled Voyage North, from which stock submarine footage was lifted and reused in movies and TV shows for decades.

Aeneas however, one-upped her sisters by appearing in the Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967.

Enjoy two very relevant minutes of You Only Live Twice in which Commander James Bond, RN arrives on a British submarine by being disguised in a funeral casket. The boat, “M1” in the film, is actually the Aeneas in her film debut; this was after she had been “streamlined” during her second refit, which removed much of her WWII appearance.

This fits into a classic story from a jack aboard the sub at the time:

“Coming down from Hong Kong to Sydney on HMS AENEAS we were looking for the loom of the light at Darwin. Our navigator was a Lieutenant RNR and a noted tosspot and womanizer. “Bridge to control room” – “Control Room! Tell the Captain I have seen the light” – “Bridge! Message passed to the Captain, from the Captain, about time too!”

The A-class were the last class of British submarine to have deck guns, with most retaining them into the 1960s while Andrew kept hers as late as 1974. During this time, Aeneas, long stripped of her WWII-era gun battery, was armed with something new for a submarine– a surface to air missile system.

SLAM installed on sail of H.M. Submarine Aeneas

Vickers set up the aging smoke boat with a set of Shorts Blowpipe MANPADS style surface to air missiles that were fitted to a retractable mast on the submarine’s sail in 1972. Called the Submarine-Launched Airflight Missile (SLAM) system, it held 4-6 missiles and could ideally shoot down low-flying helicopters and other aircraft while the submarine remained at periscope depth. While carrying the SLAM system, she was pennant number SSG72.

SLAM Blowpipe missile mast

The problem was that the visually guided Blowpipe never was very good at downing aircraft and was generationaly in-line with the U.S. Redeye and Soviet SA-7 Grail (which weren’t very good either). After a series of trials, the idea was scrapped.

(Note the paying off pennant) and the crest on her sail under the SLAM system which is still fitted. And during this time her unit crest was also modified. In place of a spear, the warrior Aeneas carried a stylized missile.

The class was largely disposed of in the early 1970s, replaced by more modern O-class diesel boats, and augmented by nuclear-powered submarines and several of the class were loaned to the Canadian navy to help jump start that service’s sub branch. Aeneas was one of the last to go, 14-Nov-1974 sold, 13-Dec-1974 arrived Clayton & Davie Dunston for scrapping. By 1975 she was no more.

Only Andrew, scrapped in 1977, and Alliance, who served as a pier side trainer at the RN Submarine School until 1979, survived the Bond ship.

HMS Alliance on public display.

Today Alliance is preserved as part of the National Historic Fleet on land and on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, as a memorial to Her Majesty’s 4 334 RN submariners lost in both World Wars and the 739 officers and men lost in peacetime accidents.

Aeneas‘s 4″ Mk XXIII deck gun, removed in 1960, is preserved at the Royal Navy Armament Museum at Priddy’s Head, Gosport, near HMS Dolphin.

Specs

Displacement: 1,360/1,590 tons (surface/submerged)
Length: 293 ft. 6 in (89.46 m)
Beam: 22 ft. 4 in (6.81 m)
Draught: 18 ft. 1 in (5.51 m)
Propulsion: 2 × 2,150 hip Admiralty ML 8-cylinder diesel engine, 2 × 625 hip electric motors for submergence driving two shafts
Speed: 18.5/8 knots (surface/submerged)
Range: 10,500 name (19,400 km) at 11 kn (20 km/h) surfaced
16 nmi (30 km) at 8 kn (15 km/h) or 90 nmi (170 km) at 3 kn (5.6 km/h) submerged
Test depth: 350 ft (110 m)
Sensors (1946) 291, ‘handraulic’ Radar Set with a double di-pole aerial with only an ‘A’ Scan and no PPI
Complement: 5 officers 55 enlisted, up to 75 could be carried to include commandos and MI6 agents as needed.
Armament: 6 × 21″ (2 external) bow torpedo tube, 4 × 21″ (2 external) stern torpedo tube, total of 20 torpedoes,
Mines: 26
Guns: 1 × 4″ main deck gun, 3 × 0.303 machine gun, 1 × 20 mm AA Oerlikons 20 mm gun (removed 1960). Missiles: SLAM system fitted 1972-74.

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