HMS Hood

1941

Pride of the Royal Navy, three minutes, three survivors Location: Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland · Coordinates: 63.35°N 31.87°W · Casualties: 1,415 · Survivors: 3 · Depth: 2,800 m · Cause: naval gunfire · magazine explosion — A shell from Bismarck, fired at approximately 18,000 metres, struck near or penetrated through to the aft 15-inch magazine at 06:00 on 24 May 1941. The resulting detonation broke the ship in two. She sank in under three minutes. · Fate: abyssal · located 2001 · Type: battlecruiser · Admiral class · Tonnage: 47,430 tons · Crew: 1418 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1918 Pride of the Royal Navy for two decades, the largest warship in the world when she commissioned in 1920. In the Denmark Strait on the morning of 24 May 1941, a shell from Bismarck found her aft magazine; she broke in half and sank in under three minutes. 1,415 dead, three survivors, no time to launch a boat. The shock to British morale was the single greatest naval loss of the war. The Vessel HMS Hood was the sole ship of a class of four battlecruisers ordered by the Admiralty in April 1916. Her three sisters, Anson, Howe, and Rodney, were cancelled after Jutland, when the Royal Navy concluded that the lightly-armoured battlecruiser concept had been disproven. Hood was too far advanced in her build to cancel; she was modified during construction with additional deck and belt armour, and was commissioned on 15 May 1920 as a hybrid battlecruiser-battleship, the largest warship in the world. She displaced 47,430 tons, was 262 metres long, and carried eight 15-inch guns in four twin turrets. Her Parsons geared steam turbines produced 151,000 shaft horsepower on four shafts, giving her 32 knots at full speed, faster than any battleship afloat. She was the physical embodiment of interwar British sea power, the pride of the Royal Navy, the ship every British schoolchild knew by name. She spent the 1920s on "Empire cruises" showing the flag, and the 1930s on the Home and Mediterranean stations. Her deck armour remained the vulnerability that Jutland had identified in her class. The Admiralty had planned a full refit to upgrade it, but the refit was deferred four times in the 1930s under Treasury pressure and the priority given to King George V-class construction. She sailed in May 1941 with the armour scheme of a 1920 battlecruiser, designed to survive flat-trajectory fire at standard ranges, not the plunging fire at long range that the new German 38 cm gun could deliver. The Disaster Hood fired her first salvo at Prinz Eugen, having confused the two German ships' silhouettes in the poor dawn light. Prince of Wales fired at Bismarck. Both German ships fired at Hood. Bismarck's first and second salvos straddled her; her third, at 06:00, found her aft. A shell from Bismarck either penetrated Hood's aft deck at a shallow angle and detonated in the 4-inch magazine, or ignited propellant in the 15-inch magazine, or both in sequence. The precise shell path has been the subject of survey after survey of her wreck. The resulting explosion lifted the stern three-quarters of the ship into the air in a single pillar of flame and smoke. She broke in half. The forward section, still moving forward, disappeared under the surface in thirty seconds. The aft section followed at once. The total elapsed time between the fatal salvo and her disappearance was under three minutes. Of her crew of 1,418, three survived: Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn, and Bill Dundas. All three had been on the upper bridge or topside when she blew up and were thrown clear. They were picked up by HMS Electra at 08:00. Admiral Holland, Captain Ralph Kerr, and 1,415 men of the Royal Navy went down with her.