HMS Apollo (M01): The Minelayer That Ran Aground Carrying Eisenhower
A Fast Minelayer for a Fast-Moving War
HMS Apollo, the eighth Royal Navy ship to carry the name, was an Abdiel-class minelayer commissioned in February 1944 after completing sea trials. Displacing 2,650 tons standard and capable of high speed on 72,000 shaft horsepower geared turbines, the class was built around the simple principle of laying mines quickly and getting away again before the enemy could react, and Apollo carried up to 160 mines alongside a respectable anti-aircraft armament of 4-inch guns, Bofors and Oerlikon cannon.
She joined the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow shortly after commissioning, then moved to Plymouth to prepare for the invasion of France, laying mines off Brittany between Ushant and Île Vierge as part of the wider effort to protect the invasion flanks.
A Grounding With Eisenhower Aboard
Apollo's most extraordinary moment came on 7 June 1944, the day after D-Day, when she embarked the Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower and other senior officers for a visit to the assault area off Normandy. In the course of this VIP tour she ran aground and suffered propeller damage, forcing an unplanned transfer of her distinguished passengers to HMS Undaunted, a genuinely awkward moment for any ship's captain, and one that must have made for a fairly memorable few minutes on the bridge. She was repaired at a yard on the Tyne, with the work completed by September 1944.
Minefields That Found Their Mark
Once back in service, Apollo was deployed to the Western Approaches to lay anti-submarine minefields off Cornwall, and two of the fields she laid proved directly fatal to German submarines, U-325 and U-1021, a concrete return on the unglamorous, painstaking work of minelaying that rarely gets the same attention as a direct gun action but was every bit as deadly. She went on to lay further minefields off Norway near Utsira in January 1945 and took part in Operation Trammel, laying mines in Russia's Kola Inlet that April, before the war's final weeks saw her carry out the considerably more ceremonial task of returning Norway's Crown Prince Olav and his government-in-exile to Oslo following VE Day. She reached Melbourne on 1 August 1945, arriving in the Pacific just before Japan's surrender brought the entire war to a close.
Flagship of the Home Fleet
Apollo went into reserve in 1946, and her pennant number changed from M01 to N01 in 1948 as the navy reorganised its minelayer designations. She was recommissioned in 1951 and carried relief supplies to Jamaica after Hurricane Charlie, took part in the 1953 Fleet Review for Elizabeth II's Coronation, and in November 1954 became flagship to the Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet, a considerable honour for a ship that had begun her career grounding a Supreme Allied Commander off the Normandy beaches.
Her later career included a less dignified moment on 25 August 1960, when she was involved in a collision at Portsmouth with HMS Battleaxe and HMS Wakeful, suffering stem damage in the process. She was paid off in 1961 and scrapped by Hughes Bolckow at Blyth, Northumberland, arriving there for breaking up in November 1962, bringing to a close the career of a ship whose war had been unusually eventful for a class better known for quiet, deadly efficiency than for VIP mishaps and collisions.