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HMS Hood (51)

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Career

Ordered: 7 April 1916
Laid down: 1 September 1916
Launched: 22 August 1918
Commissioned: 15 May 1920
Fate: Sunk during the Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941
Struck:
General Characteristics
Displacement: 1918: 45,200 tons full load;
1940: 48,360 tons full load
Length: 860 ft 7 in (262.3 m)
Beam: 104 ft 2 in (31.7 m)
Draught: 33 ft 1 in (10.1 m)
Propulsion: 24 Yarrow small tube boilers; 4 Brown-Curtiss Geared oil fired turbines, 4 shafts, 3-bladed propellers - 15 ft (4.6 m) diameter; Power: Designed - 144,000 shp (107 MW); 1920 trials: 151,200 shp (113 MW)
Speed: 1920: 31 knots (57 km/h);
1941: 29 knots (54 km/h)
Range: 1931: 5,332 nmi (10,000 km)
  @ 20 knots (37 km/h)
Complement: 1921: 1,169;
1941: 1,418
Armament (1939): 8 × 15 in (381 mm) (4×2)
12 × 5.5 in (140 mm) (12×1)
8 × 4 in (102 mm) dual purpose guns (4×2)
24 × 2-pdr (37 mm) pom-pom (3×8)
20 x 0.5 in (12.7 mm) (5×4) Vickers machine guns
4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes, above water
Armament (1941, as sunk): 8 × 15 in (381 mm) (4×2),
14 × 4 in (102 mm) (7×2)
24 × 2-pdr pom pom (37 mm) (3×8)
20 × 0.5 in (12.7 mm) (5×4) guns
5 × 20 barrel "Unrotated Projectile" mounts
4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes, above water
Aircraft: 1 fitted from 1931–1932,
1 catapult
Badge: A crow bearing an anchor facing left over the date 1859
Motto: Ventis Secundis (Latin: "With Favourable Winds")

HMS Hood (pennant number 51) was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy. She was one of four Admiral-class battlecruisers ordered in mid-1916 under the Emergency War Programme. Although the design was drastically revised after the Battle of Jutland, it was realised that there were serious limitations even to the revised design; for this reason, and because of evidence that the German battlecruisers that they were designed to counter were unlikely to be completed, work on her sisters was suspended in 1917. As a result, Hood was Britain's last completed battlecruiser. She was named after the 18th century Admiral Samuel Hood.

Contents

History

Construction

Construction of Hood began at the John Brown & Company shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland, on 1 September 1916. Following the loss of three British battlecruisers at the Battle of Jutland, 5,000 tons of extra armour and bracing was added to Hood's design. The intention behind this change was to give her protection against 15 inch (381 mm) guns, such as her own— in theory moving her to the status of a true battleship. This led to some describing her as the first fast battleship, since the Hood appeared to have improvements over the revolutionary Queen Elizabeth battleships. To add to the confusion, Royal Navy documents of the period often describe any battleship with a speed of over about 24 knots (44 km/h) or more as a battlecruiser, regardless of the amount of protective armour.

However, the re-working was hurried and incomplete and hence flawed. Only the forward cordite magazines were moved below the shell rooms— cordite explosions destroyed the Royal Navy battlecruisers lost at Jutland. The combination of the deck and side armour did not provide continuous protection against shells arriving at all angles. Most seriously, the deck protection was flawed— spread over three decks, it was designed to explode an incoming shell on impact with the top deck, with much of the energy being absorbed as the exploding shell had to penetrate the armour of the next two decks. The development of effective time delay shells at the end of World War I made this scheme much less effective, as the intact shell would penetrate layers of weak armour and explode deep inside the ship. In addition she was grossly overweight compared to her original design, making her a wet ship with a highly stressed structure. It was seriously suggested that she should be scrapped before she was launched— the post-war economy drive made replacing her impossible, however.

Construction on her sister ships Anson, Howe, and Rodney was stopped in March 1917, although work continued on Hood. Two factors were at work regarding this decision. Firstly, the German ships that the class were a response to were never completed. Secondly, the flaws in her protection and design were apparent— the repeated redesigns of the sister ships did not solve them. Instead, a series of studies leading to the N3 battleship and G3 battlecruiser designs was started.

She was launched on 22 August 1918 by the widow of Admiral Sir Horace Hood, a Jutland casualty and distant relative of the famous Lord Hood for whom the ship was named. After fitting out and trials, she was commissioned on 15 May 1920, under Captain Wilfred Tomkinson, and became flagship of the British Atlantic Fleet's Battle Cruiser Squadron. She had cost £6,025,000 to build. As an indication of her enormous size, Hood was much longer than any other British capital ship and only marginally lighter (at full load) than Britain's heaviest ever battleship HMS Vanguard, which was not commissioned until 1946.

Principal characteristics

HMS Hood at the Panama Canal, 1924
Enlarge
HMS Hood at the Panama Canal, 1924

Protection

Hood's protection accounted for 33% of her displacement; a high proportion by British standards, although less than was usual in US and German designs (for example, 40% for the later Bismarck).

The armoured belt consisted of face-hardened armour (Krupp cemented or KC), arranged as follows:

All sections of the belt were angled outwards by 10  degrees, increasing the effective armour thickness by causing incoming shells to strike at a less favourable angle for penetration.

The deck protection was constructed from high tensile (HT) steel, arranged as follows:

The 3 in (76 mm) plating on the main deck was added at a very late stage of construction, after live firing trials with the new 15 in APC (armour-piercing, capped) shell in the autumn of 1919 showed that this shell could penetrate the ships vitals via the 7 in (178 mm) middle belt and the 2 in (51 mm) slope of the main deck. Further trials showed that the additional plating was just adequate to defeat this threat (results quoted in [Jurens]). It was apparently proposed to extend the new plating to the whole of the upper deck, removing the conning tower, torpedo tubes and four 5.5 in guns as weight compensation; in the event, only the areas above the magazines were reinforced. As completed, Hood remained susceptible to plunging fire and bombs, and had no margin of protection against the next generation of heavy guns.

The main armament turrets had a frontal armour thickness of 15 in (381 mm), side armour of 11 to 12 in (280 to 305 mm) and a roof of 5 in (127 mm). For protection against torpedoes she was given an "anti-torpedo bulge", an air-filled space backed by an inner reinforced wall. It was a new and effective solution for World War I ships and a common solution to counteract the weight increases that would be otherwise needed for ships built between the two World Wars.

Weapons

Main armament
Hood was fitted with the then-standard weapon of British capital ships, the 15 inch (381 mm)/L42 gun of 1912 that was already mounted on the Queen Elizabeth, Revenge, Renown and other classes of ships. Hood was the first, and in the event the only ship to carry these guns in the Mark II twin mounting (Reference 9). The gunhouse for this mounting was larger than the previous mounting, with a flatter roof (less vulnerable to incoming fire) and allowing a much greater range of elevation (-5 to +30 degrees)

As completed, Hood’s provision of 15 inch (381 mm) ammunition, nominally 120 rounds per gun, was made up as follows:

APC shells were designed for maximum armour penetration, with a relatively small bursting charge; CPC was a general-purpose round for use against cruisers and destroyers. The APC round had an extreme range of 29,000 yards (26,500 m) at 30 degrees elevation, and its armour penetration at 19,700 yards (18,000 m) was equivalent to 11 inches (279 mm) at normal (90-degree) impact.

After her 1929-1931 refit, Hood carried 160 CPC (TNT burster), 640 APC (Shellite burster), 48 shrapnel and 96 practice rounds. A new 15 inch (381 mm) APC round, with improved ballistic shape, was introduced in 1938, but Hood was lost before she could receive the necessary modifications to embark this round [(Reference 8]).

Secondary armament
The secondary (anti-ship) guns were the World War I 5.5 inch (140 mm) /L50, originally designed in 1913 as an easier to load and lighter alternate main weapon for light cruisers. They were on simple shielded single mounts capable of elevation from -5 to +30 degrees, and fired 82 lb (37 kg) shells at a rate of 6 to 10 rounds per minute. The muzzle velocity was 2725 ft/s (830 m/s), giving an effective range of 17,770 yards (16.2 km). The high position of the mountings along the upper deck and the forward shelter deck allowed them to be worked in a seaway, less obstructed by waves and seaspray.

These guns were removed during the Hood's refit in 1940, after which their magazines were used for 4 inch (102 mm) anti-aircraft ammunition.

Anti-aircraft armament
Anti-aircraft defences were the dual role HA/LA 4 inch (102 mm) /L45 guns together with multiple 2 pdr pom-pom (40 mm) guns and quadruple mount 0.50 inch (12.7 mm) calibre Vickers machine guns. To these were added Unrotated Projectile (UP) launchers— rockets that shot their warheads out on three parachutes on lengths of cable that could snag aircraft. The 4 inch (102 mm) guns were a 1934 design. Their unshielded single mounts could elevate from -10 to +80 degrees able to engage both aircraft and vessels. This gun fired a 31 lb (15 kg) shell at 2,660 ft/s (811 m/s) for an effective range of 18,150 yd (16.6 km). At the time Hood was sunk, all 4 inch (102 mm) single mounts had been removed, and she had 7 twin mount 4 inch (102 mm) guns.

Torpedo armament
Two 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes were mounted amidships on either side, a remainder of shorter range engagements expected during the Great War, but augmented with 4 more in 1940.

Aircraft and boats

Hood carried aircraft for part of her service life. She embarked a flight of seaplanes, initially Fairey Flycatchers, then Fairey F3 Fs from 1929 to 1933. At first there were flying-off platforms fitted to "B" and "X" turrets so that wheeled aircraft could be launched from the ship, but these were soon removed as floatplanes became more reliable. A rotatable catapult was installed at the very rear (quarterdeck) of the ship along with a crane for recovery of the plane in 1929, but was removed in 1932.

As befitted a vessel her size, Hood carried a large number of small boats, both sailing boats (a 42 ft (12.8 m) launch, 36 ft (11 m) sailing pinnace, 32 ft (9.8 m) cutter, 30 ft (9.1 m) gig, 27 ft (8.2 m) whaler and a 16 ft (4.9 m) dinghy) and powered boats (50 ft (15.2 m) steam pinnace, 45 ft (13.7 m) steam pinnace, 45 ft (13.7 m) and 35 ft (10.7 m) Admiral's barges, 45 ft (13.7 m) motor launch, 35 ft (10.7 m) and 25 ft (7.6 m) motor- and "fast" motor- boats and a 16 ft (4.9 m) motor dinghy)

Inter-war service

In the inter-war years she was the largest warship in the world at a time when the British public felt a close affinity with the Royal Navy. Her name and general characteristics were familiar to most of the public, and she was popularly known as the Mighty Hood. Because of her fame, she spent a great deal of time on cruises and "flying the flag" visits to other countries. In particular she took part in a world-wide cruise between November 1923 and September 1924 in company with Repulse and several smaller ships. This was known as the Cruise of the Special Service Squadron, and it was estimated that 750,000 people visited Hood during that cruise. In 1931 her crew took part in the Invergordon Mutiny.

She was given a major refit from 17 May 1929 to 16 June 1930, and was due to be modernised in 1941 to bring her up to a standard similar to that of other modernised World War I-era capital ships. Ironically, her status as the Royal Navy's finest capital ship meant that her material condition gradually deteriorated due to her near-constant active service, and by the end of the 1930s she was in poor condition and in need of refitting. The outbreak of war made it impossible to remove her from service, and as a consequence she never received the scheduled update. Her condition meant, among other things, that she was unable to attain her top designed speed.

World War II

Hood was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in July 1936. In June 1939, she joined the Home Fleet’s Battle Cruiser Squadron at Scapa Flow; when war broke out later that year, she was employed principally in patrolling the vicinity of Iceland and the Faroes to protect convoys and intercept German raiders attempting to break out into the Atlantic. In September 1939, she was hit by a 250 kg (550 lb) aircraft bomb with minor damage. As the flagship of Force H, she took part in the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940. In August, she rejoined the Battle Cruiser Squadron and resumed patrolling against German raiders. From 13 January to 18 March 1941, she underwent a refit at Rosyth. Even after the refit she was still in poor condition, but the threat from the German capital ships was such that she could not be taken into dock for a major overhaul until more of the King George V-class battleships came into service.

When the German battleship Bismarck sailed in May, Hood was sent out under the flag of Admiral Holland, together with the newly-commissioned Prince of Wales, to intercept the German ships before they could break into the Atlantic and attack the Allied convoys. Holland’s ships caught up with Bismarck and her consort, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, in the straits between Greenland and Iceland on May 24.

Explosion of Hood
Enlarge
Explosion of Hood

During the subsequent Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941, Hood suffered from a series of unfortunate events which culminated in her destruction. She first engaged Prinz Eugen instead of Bismarck. When the German ships found the range of the Hood, she was hit first by an 8 inch (204 mm) shell from Prinz Eugen on the boat deck which ignited 4 inch (102 mm) ammunition and UP rockets, causing a fire to burn out of control endangering the ship. Shortly after this, the Prinz Eugen shifted her aim to the Prince of Wales, in accordance with a semaphore order from Bismarck [(Reference 7]). At about 0600 (0601 in German reckoning), as Hood was turning to bring all her guns to bear onto the Bismarck, she emitted a huge jet of flame, reaching skyward from the vicinity of the mainmast. This was immediately followed by an explosion that destroyed the after part of the ship. The stern rose and sank rapidly, while the bows rose clear of the sea as the forepart also sank. Of the 1,418 aboard, only three men (Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn and Bill Dundas) survived and were rescued about two hours after the sinking by the destroyer HMS Electra.

The dramatic loss of such a well-known symbol of British naval power had a great effect on many people; some later remembered the news as the most shocking of World War II. Following the loss of the Hood, the Royal Navy concentrated all available resources in pursuit of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen; although Prinz Eugen escaped, Bismarck was eventually sunk after being brought to battle again on 27 May 1941.

Boards of Enquiry into the sinking

The official Admiralty communiqué on the loss, broadcast on the day of the sinking, reported that: "during the … action, HMS Hood … received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up." [link]

The first formal Board of Enquiry into the loss, presided over by Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake, reported on 2 June (less than a fortnight after the loss). It endorsed this opinion, stating that:

(c) (The) probable cause of the loss of HMS Hood was direct penetration of the protection by one or more 15 inch shells at a range of 16,500 yards [15 km], resulting in the explosion of one or more of the after magazines. [link]

However, the conduct of the enquiry became subject to criticism, primarily because no verbatim record of witness’ testimony had been kept. Moreover, Sir Stanley Goodall, the Director of Naval Construction (DNC), had come forward with an alternative theory, that the Hood had been destroyed by the explosion of her own torpedoes. As a result, a second Board was convened (under Rear-Admiral Sir Harold Walker), reporting in September 1941[(Reference 1]). This investigation was “much more thorough than was the first, taking evidence from a total of 176 eyewitnesses to the disaster”, [link], and examined both Goodall’s theory and others (see below). The Board came to a conclusion almost identical to that of the first board, expressed as follows.

That the sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck's 15 inch shell in or adjacent to Hood's 4 inch or 15 inch magazines, causing them all to explode and wreck the after part of the ship. The probability is that the 4 inch magazines exploded first.

Modern Theories on the Sinking

The exact cause of the loss of HMS Hood remains a subject of debate. The principal theories can be summarised as follows.

A sketch prepared by Captain JC Leach (commanding HMS Prince of Wales} for the 2nd Board of Enquiry, 1941. The sketch represents the column of smoke or flame that erupted from the vicinity of the mainmast immediately before a huge detonation which obliterated from view the after part of the ship. This phenomenon is believed to have been the result of a cordite fire venting through the engine-room ventilators (see article).
Enlarge
A sketch prepared by Captain JC Leach (commanding HMS Prince of Wales} for the 2nd Board of Enquiry, 1941. The sketch represents the column of smoke or flame that erupted from the vicinity of the mainmast immediately before a huge detonation which obliterated from view the after part of the ship. This phenomenon is believed to have been the result of a cordite fire venting through the engine-room ventilators (see article).

An extensive review of each of these theories (except that of Preston) is given in Jurens [(Reference 3]). Its main conclusion is that the loss was almost certainly precipitated by the explosion of a 4 inch (102 mm) magazine, but that there are a number of ways in which this could have been initiated. Jurens rebuts the popular image of “plunging fire” penetrating Hood’s deck armour; the angle of fall of Bismarck’s 38 cm shells at the moment of the loss would not have exceeded about 14 degrees, an angle so unfavourable to penetration of horizontal armour that it is actually off the scale of contemporary German penetration charts. Moreover, computer-generated profiles of the Hood show that a shell falling at this angle could not have reached an aft magazine without first passing through some part the belt armour. On the other hand, the 12 inch (305 mm) belt could have been penetrated, if the Hood had progressed sufficiently far into her final turn.

A more recent development is the discovery of the Hood’s wreck (see below). Inspection of the wreck has confirmed that the aft magazines did indeed explode. The stern of the Hood was located, with the rudders still in place, and it was found that these were set to port at the time of the explosion.

To summarise: the evidence of the wreck refutes Goodall’s theory, while the eyewitness evidence of venting from the 4 inch (102 mm) magazine prior to the main explosion conflicts with the theory that the Hood was blown up by her own guns. The other theories listed above remain valid possibilities; Preston’s theory would be particularly attractive if it could be shown exactly where the “additional 4 inch (102 mm) stowage” was located.

Wreck

The wreck of Hood was discovered in 3,000 metres of water in July 2001 by an expedition funded by UK-based Channel Four Television and ITN and led by shipwreck hunter David Mearns. In 2002, the British government designated the site a war grave.

Hood's wreck lies on the seabed in pieces among two debris fields. The eastern field includes the tiny amount of the stern which survived the magazine explosion as well as the surviving section of the bow and some smaller remains such as the screws. The 4 inch (102 mm) fire director lies in the western debris field. The heavily armoured conning tower is located by itself a distance from the main wreck. The amidships section, the most massive part of the wreck to survive the explosions, lies south of the eastern debris field in a large impact crater. The starboard side of the amidships section is missing down to the inner wall of the fuel tanks; this has been interpreted as indicating the path of the explosion through the starboard fuel tanks. It is further supposed that the small debris fields are the fragments from the after hull where the magazines and turrets were located, since that section of the hull was totally destroyed in the explosion. The fact that bow section separated just forward of A turret provoked the suggestion that a secondary explosion might have occurred in this area; however, the forensic assessment by Jurens has dismissed this theory [link].

See also

Further reading

References

  • 1. [Report on the Loss of H.M.S. Hood] (Admiralty record ADM116-4351, London, 1941)
  • 2. Steve Wiper, Warship Pictorial #20: H.M.S. Hood (Classic Warships Publishing, Tucson, Arizona, 2003), Contains pictures of the Hood during construction, including pictures of the launching.
  • 3. William J. Jurens, [The Loss of HMS Hood: A Re-Examination] (originally published in Warship International No. 2, 1987) A modern technical analysis of Hood's loss.
  • 4. Antonio Bonomi, Stretto di Danimarca, 24 maggio 1941, printed on "Storia Militare" magazine, December 2005.
  • 5. Anthony Preston et al, Sea Power: A Modern Illustrated Military History, Phoebus Publishing Company, 1979. ISBN 0-89673-011-5. (for a more accessible source, see also Anthony Preston, The World’s Worst Warships, Conway Maritime Press 2002; ISBN 0-85177-754-6).
  • 6. VE Tarrant, King George V Class Battleships, Arms and Armour Press, 1991. ISBN 1-85409-524-2.
  • 7. Helmut Brinkmann, et al., “Kriegstagebuch des Kreuzers Prinz Eugen” [War Diary of the cruiser ‘’Prinz Eugen’’].
  • 8. www.navweaps.com [British 15in-42 (38.1 cm) Mark I].
  • 9. John Roberts Battlecruisers. Caxton Editions 2003. ISBN 1-84067-5306

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Admiral-class battlecruiser
HMS Anson | HMS Hood | HMS Howe | HMS Rodney

List of battlecruisers of the Royal Navy

 

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