HMS Hood (51)

HMS Hood (51) was a British battlecruiser used by the Royal Navy during the first two years of World War II. She was sunk during the Battle of Denmark Strait on May 24, 1941. Before this armed conflict broke out, she had represented the ultimate in British sea power in the interwar period as she had been the largest and the most heavily armed capital ship in the world. She had a long and attractive profile, drawing people's attention at every port she anchored at.

Laid down in 1916, HMS Hood was built by John Brown & Company in the shipyards on the Clyde River. She would be launched in 1918 and commissioned in 1920. Her original design dated from before the Battle of Jutland (1916), when a class of four ships was conceived to counter the German Mackensen class battlecruisers, which were already under construction in those days. However, only one was built, HMS Hood, which was equipped with eight 381-mm (15-inch) naval guns. She followed the lines laid down by Adm. Fisher, with heavy gun armament and high speed, but with relative light armor protection.

As originally built, HMS Hood (51) introduced a number of novel features. For example, she was the first ship in the Royal Navy to incorporate an AC electrical supply from an installed generator, and 140-mm (5-inch) guns, which constituted her secondary armament, strengthened by the addition of twin 102mm (4-inch) AA mountings. Major reconstruction had been planned to start of 1938, including the addition of better armored protection and new machinery for the propulsion system. However, the threat of war following the Austrian annexation to Germany and the urgent need for every capital ship made the British government cancel this major upgrade.

At the outbreak of World War II, HMS Hood was attached to the Home Fleet. She was very busy from the very moment war was declared, taking part in the hunt for the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee and the bombardment of the French fleet in Mers-el-Kebir, a port in Oran, Algeria. She would be part of the force sent to intercept the heavily armed German battleship Bismarck and her escort the cruiser Prinz Eugen. Thus, HMS Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales met these German warships in the Denmark Strait on May 24, 1941. There, sailing broadside along the British battlecruiser, the Bismarck quickly opened fire right before HMS Hood had a chance to use her guns. The British ship was seriously damaged as fire broke out, leading to an explosion that blew the ship apart.

Specifications

Type: battlecruiser

Displacement: 42,750 tons (48,300 tons full-load)

Length: 262.8 m (860 feet)

Beam: 31.8 m (104 feet)

Draft: 9.7 m (32 feet)

Propulsion: four Brown Curtis geared steam turbines, with four shafts, and twenty four Yarrow boilers, delivering 144,000 SHP.

Maximum Speed: 30 knots

Range: 6,300 nautical miles (11,673 km) at 12 knots.

Armament: eight 381-mm naval guns set up in four twin turrets; twelve 140mm guns.

Compliment: 1,397 sailors and officers.

Below, the HMS Hood approaching home port in 1937.

The British battlecruiser moored to a wharf at Gibraltar port in 1934.