HMS Hood: Pride of the Royal Navy Sunk

 



HMS Hood in peacetime

 In May of 1941, Germany let loose the most powerful battleship into the Atlantic, battleship Bismarck. To respond to this, the Royal Navy sent out the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy at that time. She was known as being the fastest and most heavily armed ship of its kind in the world. Unfortunately, on May 24 the HMS Hood sank, taking all but 3 of its 1,418 man crew with it down to the bottom of the Atlantic.

HMS Hood was an Admiral-class battlecruiser, and was the last battlecruiser commissioned by the Royal Navy. She was intended to have three sister ships, but the German ships built to counter the Admiral-class, the Mackensen-class, were unlikely to be finished, and so the other ships were cancelled. Even with the Hood being the only one of her class in the navy, she was seen to have serious problems with her design. Over her peacetime career, her guns were replaced, her propeller was replaced after a collision with HMS Renown, and she was intended for a full upgrade of her deck plating and armaments, but these were put on hold after the outbreak of World War II.

Hood was commissioned in 1920, and during her peacetime career she participated in several exercises intended to 'wave the flag' as it were for king and country, which included a world circumnavigation. She also was stationed in the Mediterranean during the second war between Italy and Abyssinia. When the war broke out, the Hood also was part of the fleet that destroyed the French fleet following their surrender to the Germans. After this campaign, Hood was assigned to the Home Fleet, where she participated in several attempts to intercept German battlecruisers and pocket battleships from entering the North Atlantic.

It wasn't until the middle of May that Hood was assigned to intercept the Bismarck and the German battlecruiser Prinz Eugen, alongside the battleship Prince of Wales. The two ships intended to catch the ships at the Denmark Straits, and to arrive at the mouth of the straits before the Germans, to 'cross the T' as it were, in order to bring all of their cannons to bear on the Germans while leaving the Germans able to aim their forward cannons only. However, when it came time to intercept the Germans the British found themselves out of position, and by accident the Germans had crossed the T of the British.



Depiction of Hood sinking



The Germans initially didn't respond to the British firing at them, but when they did their guns turned out to be far superior to the British. After a matter of minutes and some tentative hits on Hood, the Bismarck was able to achieve 'plunging fire', that is being able to land hits on the top deck of the Hood in order to puncture into the belly of the ships. This hit ignited the powder of a main gun battery, which led to a huge pillar of fire rising from the ship right before a large explosion which broke the ship in two and resulted in the ship sinking in a short few minutes.

Out of 1,418 men aboard the Hood, only three men survived. Testimonies from German crew members aboard Bismarck and Prinz Eugen tell how shocked the Germans were as to the destructive capabilities of Bismarck and the terrifying consequences of their actions. In a matter of minutes, the pride of the Royal Navy was no more, and the report from Prince of Wales led to the famous declaration by Winston Churchill which read "Sink the Bismarck!", and the most famous naval pursuit of World War II. Until next time, take care, and thank you.