Why Did HMS Hood Explode?

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Really good video. Enjoyed it. Nice use of cgi and real footage to show the events that happened. Also like the breakdown of all the different theories.

Thanks for sharing.

👍︎︎ 4 👤︎︎ u/WSBKingMackerel 📅︎︎ Apr 15 2023 🗫︎ replies
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This video is brought to you by Word of Warships. Ladies and gentlemen, its your friend Mike  Brady from Oceanliners Designs. In the field   of conflict during the Second World War one  ship’s destruction has now reached legendary   status and continues to puzzle experts to this  day. That shis was, of course, the HMS Hood. Hood   was catastrophically destroyed somehow and  sank in minutes losing almost all of her crew;   but why? And how? How did a modern warship sink  so dramatically in such a rudimentary engagement   with the enemy? Many sources would say Hood was  poorly armored leaving a vulnerable Achilles’   heel - but as you will find out, this was  not exactly true and the real cause of the   disaster may have been partly foretold by the  Navy over 20 years before it actually happened. It’s May 1941 and the mighty battlecruiser  HMS Hood is steaming through a dreary cold   sea alongside the newly-commissioned battleship  Prince of Wales. They are on a special mission;   to intercept and engage a powerful enemy force  which threatens to break out into the Atlantic and   hunt down crucial Allied merchant ships which are  providing a lifeline to the British people. Two   German warships had been spotted on May 23rd in  the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland   so Hood and Prince of Wales set off in pursuit.  Now all eyes on Hood’s bridge were glued to the   horizon keeping lookout for the enemy. Then, at  5:37am on the 24th there came a call; two ships   had been spotted in the distance. Slowly their  ghostly presence came into focus and recognition;   they were German. One was the heavy cruiser Prinz  Eugen and the other, the battleship Bismarck. Bismarck is a ship which has a lot of myth  and hyperbole attached so here are the facts.   The ship, along with its sister ship Tirpitz,  was the most powerful German warship afloat.   All warships are built with very  specific roles and purposes in mind   guided by their navy’s doctrine and  the expected theater of operations.   Bismarck and Tirpitz were designed and built  to engage and sink enemy warships in relatively   close-range engagements in the North Sea,  Germany’s Home waters - the designers specifically   had the fast French Richelieu-class  battleships in mind as an adversary.   Bismarck and Tirpitz would need to engage enemy  battleships and receive multiple hits and keep   going. A whole 40% of Bismarck’s designed  combat weight was dedicated to protecting   the ship’s vital spaces which was a huge portion  in comparison to other contemporary warships of   the time. They were built to be fast with a top  speed of 30 knots, ideal for engaging the enemy   and slipping away if necessary. Curiously though,  although Bismarck was designed to go toe to toe   with enemy battleships, its guns were of a  relatively small caliber; 380mm or 15 inch   main guns which fired a fairly lightweight  armour-piercing round. In a full broadside,   Bismarck could send 14,112 pounds or 6,400 kg  of projectiles at the enemy, but by contrast   some world war one era battleships could send up  to 16,800 pounds downrange. Contrary to popular   belief, in the second world war 51 battleships  could fire a broadside heavier than Bismarck. With the outbreak of war Bismarck’s intended use  changed because the Kriegsmarine, the German navy,   shifted its battle plan. Germany had rushed to  rearm in the leadup to world war two, building   as many tanks, aircraft and warships as they  could; but Britain’s navy was the largest in the   world at the time. By September 1939 in European  waters where Germany could field 3 battleships,   the Royal Navy could respond with 9. Germany’s  Kriegsmarine had 7 cruisers but the Royal Navy   had 35. The number of destroyers was an even  more dramatic contrast; Germany had 22 but the   British had some 95. Germany’s leadership knew  they couldn’t compete on equal footing with the   Royal Navy in the same way they had back in the  first world war. Instead they shifted focus;   instead of engaging British capital ships  toe-to-toe, the Kriegsmarine would leverage its   warships and powerful submarine fleet to hunt the  greatest prize of all; British merchant shipping,   the lifeblood of the island nation during  wartime. If the Kriegsmarine could sink enough   merchant ship convoys then Britain might starve.  Bismarck and Tirpitz were assigned new roles;   they would not seek out British battleships  for a fight. Instead they would use their   speed to slip out into the Atlantic ocean and  hunt down Allied cargo ships. It was a role   for which Bismarck was not originally intended  but to which the ship was still well suited.   Other German battleships operated in the same way;  in January 1941 the sister ships Gneisenau and   Scharnhorst slipped out into the North Atlantic  ocean and hunted merchant shipping as a pair;   in two months they sank or  captured 22 Allied merchant ships.   Bismarck was still being completed and  tested then but by May 1941 she was ready;   commanded by none other than senior ranking  Admiral and Kriegsmcarine fleet chief Gunther   Lutjens, Bismarck was paired with the heavy  cruiser Prinz Eugen and given its orders.   The ships would sneak out from Gotenhafen, now  Gdynia, Poland, and steam high over the British   isles and Iceland to avoid detection.  Then free in the North Atlantic ocean,   the warships could mercilessly hunt down  Allied shipping to their hearts’ content. It   was called Operation Rheinubung; on May 19 1941  Bismarck made steam and set off on her mission. Not surprisingly the British weren’t so keen  on learning, from passing Swedish ships and   their crews, that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were  leaving the protection of their ports for the open   ocean. It could mean only one thing; that another  surface raid on their merchant ships was underway.   They had to be stopped in their tracks; British  and Allied lives depended on it. There were only   a couple of likely routes the Germans could use;  the English Channel was the most direct way out   into the Atlantic but it is far too narrow and  was patrolled constantly by British aircraft and   warships. The most likely route to the British  seemed up North in the Denmark Strait between   Iceland and Greenland; to that spot they directed  the British cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk while   further south a powerful force of two capital  ships and six destroyers would patrol off Iceland   to catch the German ships if they were detected.  The British capital ships were two of the most   powerful afloat in European waters; they were the  new HMS Prince of Wales and the older HMS Hood. I mentioned Bismarck was designed with a  specific purpose in mind; so two was Hood.   Prince of Wales was a battleship; like Bismarck,  designed to slog it out with enemy warships and   keep on sailing but Hood was different. She was  officially designated, not as a battleship but   as a battlecruiser, a class of ship whose origins  stemmed from the First World War and was designed   to serve a completely different role to that of  the battleship. Instead of slogging it out with   enemy battleships like a prize boxer, Hood and  other battlecruisers were designed for speed,   aiming to chase enemy fleets and nip at them  with their powerful, battleship-caliber guns.   The point was to have a ship as powerful as a  battleship but with the speed of a cruiser; hence,   the battlecruiser. But Hood was a huge ship for  its day; as built she displaced 41,000 odd tons   and 860 feet, or 262 meters in length. How do you  get so big a warship to operate at speeds up to 32   knots? Well one way to do this is to lengthen the  hull; typically battlecruisers were longer than   battleships because a longer hullform reduces drag  through the water and lends itself to a higher   top speed. A second key factor in hitting higher  speeds is to simply reduce the weight of the ship.   Battlecruisers weren’t expected to slog it out  with enemy battleships so armour protection   could be shaved here and there to save on weight.  Some myths exist around this today; contrary to   modern popular history, battlecruisers weren’t  unarmoured at all. They were some of the most   well-protected warships afloat. For instance, the  dreadnought battleship Queen Elizabeth featured   belt waterline belt armour on her sides that was  13 inches or 330mm thick, while Hood’s waterline   belt armour was 12 inches or 304mm thick, angled  outwards to increase its relative thickness. 31%   of Hood’s total mass was dedicated to armour  protection as opposed to Queen Elizabeth’s 29%.   Hood’s deck armour plating has come under scrutiny  after her loss but the fact is key lessons had   been learned following the First World War and  her design had been changed to reflect this. At the Battle of Jutland on May 31 1916, three  British battlecruisers famously catastrophically   sank after receiving direct hits from German  guns; enquiries blamed poor propellant-storing   procedures for the magazine detonations but  some thought was given the lighter nature of the   battlecruiser’s deck armour. It was thought that  this could prove an achilles heel at long range,   when shellfire arcs downwards to strike a  warship not from the side, but from above.   Hood, which had only just been laid  down, had design changes made that   would see her be much better-protected  than the other British battlecruisers.   Her deck armour was increased in some places by  as much as .3 inches or 10mm and her belt armour   was also thickened from an intended 5.3 inches or  135mm to 8 inches, 203mm. The slight changes meant   Hood’s deck armour and belt armour was actually  quite well-protected from the shell caliber of   choice for newer German battleships, 15 inches  or 38cm. Hood was so relatively well-protected   that many considered her to be a kind of  fast battleship rather than a battlecruiser. Hood was not just any warship. She was special;  beloved by the general public and an ambassador   for the Royal Navy. She was, for about  20 years, the world’s largest warship and   therefore a serious object of curiosity during  peacetime. She visited many international ports,   including my home town of Melbourne, Australia,  seen here. It’s difficult to imagine a time when   the general public could crawl call over what was  then the most advanced and modern warship afloat;   but there they are. Known as the ‘Mighty Hood’  the ship was a household name in the lands of   the British Empire and the Commonwealth,  nothing short of a floating celebrity.   By the Second World War’s outbreak she was  somewhat dated but she’d had components   modernised and could still cause serious problems  for the enemy; she was fast, she hit hard and her   crew were highly motivated. They weren’t just  on any ship; they were aboard the Mighty Hood! A quick word of thanks to today’s Sponsor,  World of Warships. If you’re enjoying the   beautiful models I’ve animated in this video  then we’ve got World of Warships to thank! The   team have created dozens of highly-accurate and  realistic models of famous warships from history   for their game. I’m really excited to talk about  this game because I’ve actually played it for   almost 7 years now. In it you can take command  of mighty battleships and battlecruisers like   Bismarck and Hood and engage enemy players in  epic naval battles. It’s fun and addictive and   a really valuable educational source because you  can reveal the armour schemes of famous warships   and see how they were built. Follow the link on  the screen or in the description of this video   to get free goodies when you sign up! You'll  get 500 gold doubloons, the in-game currency,   7 days of free premium account, 2 million  credits which you can buy ships and modules with,   and your very own premium Tier 4 ship  with a skilled commander to captain it!   Head to worldofwarships.com today to play  it today - it’s absolutely free to play. On May 24 1941, the fateful day Bismarck and  Hood met, all seemed normal aboard the British   warships. The British cruiser force had been  tailing Bismarck and Prinz Eugen for some time,   relaying their movements to Hood and Prince of  Wales. British crewmen were at action stations   and the mood was tense; they knew that soon  they would be engaging the enemy, but when?   Suddenly there they were; on the horizon a patch  of oil smoke finally revealed two German warships.   They had successfully intercepted the German  force. Now they would have to stop them.   Hood and Prince of Wales’ gun turrets turned  to face. It was 5:37 in the morning but   already the British had made a misstep; instead of  manouevering to get in front of the German ships,   Admiral Holland in the HMS Hood had kept  to his course for just too long meaning   the Germans were getting ahead of the British  ships. Soon the Germans would be able to bring   all of their guns to bear on the British  while Hood and Prince of Wales could answer   only with their forward gun turrets. This is  a manouver known as ‘crossing the T’. Admiral   Lancelot Holland, commander of the British  force aboard Hood, had a decision to make.   Tail Bismarck and wait for backup in the form  of the battleship King George V and other ships   under the command of Admiral John Tovey or  engage the enemy now. He chose the latter.   At 5:52am Hood fired the first shots of the  engagement at a range of about 22 kilometers   or 14 miles and Prince of Wales fired a minute  later. The Battle of the Denmark Strait had begun. Holland initially ordered his ships to target  the lead German ship but realised it wasn’t   Bismarck but the smaller Prinz Eugen.  Prinz Eugen, with cruiser-caliber guns,   could damage the British battleships but could  not penetrate their armour and kill them.   Bismarck was the more dangerous target;  fire priority was concentrated on it.   Prince of Wales scored first blood; one shell  hit the German ship’s seaplane catapult and put   it out of action. A second shell passed straight  through the bow without exploding; but a third   detonated under the waterline and began to  flood the Bismarck’s forward compartments.   This was good gunnery from Prince of Wales; but  unfortunately her forward gun turret fired only   one salvo before becoming inoperable and it was  out of action for the remainder of the engagement. The German ships had so far remained silent but  at 5:55 they both fired at Hood and Bismarck’s   guns achieved remarkable precision. On the opening  salvo the British flagship was bracketed by German   shells but on the 2nd or 3rd salvo she was hit;  a fire was started on the boat deck that grew by   the minute. It’s most likely this hit came, not  from Bismarck, but the Prinz Eugen whose smaller   calibre guns were ideal for nipping at the British  ship and causing damage to its deck equipment.   Now flames were licking at the base of the ship’s  mainmast, fueled by detonating ammunition lockers.   It was now 6am, and even though Hood was on  fire she was still a formidable fighting force.   Aboard Prince of Wales, men on the ship’s port  side who weren’t yet engaged in the action   watched Hood as she fired her guns and burned.  A salvo from Bismarck roared in and crashed all   around Hood. Both sides had drawn blood in the  engagement but it was the British gunfire that   had so far caused the most damage. But then,  something horrifying happened. Hood blew up. A sheet of flame suddenly erupted from below the   ship’s mainmast searing high up into  the sky and then, with a dull roar,   it was rent apart by a massive explosion  and disappeared into a pall of smoke.   The men on both Prince of Wales and the German  ships watched in awe as Hood simply ceased to be;   one second ago she was like a vast floating town,  almost 1,000 feet long and crammed with 1,500 men.   Now Hood had been blasted in two and her bow  section was ripped up clear out of the water.   Half a mile away Prince of Wales was peppered  with splinters of metal and light debris from her   comrade’s wreck; like a vast cathedral Hood’s bow  was lifted hundreds of feet into the air, shrouded   in smoke and flame. Then, just three minutes after  the explosion she was gone. Hood was no more. Prince of Wales had to make an emergency change  to course to avoid the burning wreck of her   fleetmate. The ship now found itself alone  against the combined fire of Prinz Eugen and   Bismarck. Shells rained down and around her and  she was now less than 14 kilometers away from   the enemy with one main turret out of action.  The results were not good; she was hit seven   times from both ships in various locations and  suffered casualties because of it. Bismarck’s   captain wanted to chase the British ship down  and finish her off, but operation commander   Admiral Lutjens refused to give his permission;  Bismarck’s orders were to avoid the Royal Navy   at all costs. The British ship slipped away  and the Germans pressed on with their mission.   As they did, Hood was already on its way  to the seafloor. Up on the surface only   three men clung together on a raft and awaited  rescue. 1,415 men were lost with their ship. So what had happened? How could a mighty fighting  ship be reduced to flaming wreckage in mere   seconds? The Navy was shocked by the incident  and had to find out as soon as possible what   had happened lest a similar fate befall any  of their other warships. Only one thing could   cause an explosion of that magnitude; the violent  detonation of the ship’s ammunition magazines.   But what had set off the magazines and  how? Eyewitnesses from Prince of Wales   recalled shots seen straddling  Hood seconds before she went up;   the most obvious answer was that a shell from  Bismarck’s salvo had not hit the sea around Hood   but plunged through her armour and exploded  within the confines of the powder magazine. An inquiry was launched and right away, Hood’s  armour protection was placed under scrutiny.   The Battle of Jutland was fresh in the minds  of Navy planners and senior authorities;   but why did Hood suffer a similar fate to the  battlecruisers lost at Jutland when her armour   had been reinforced specifically  to avoid this kind of destruction?   At the inquiry and in the decades since, the  prevailing theory had been that plunging fire   was to blame. That Bismarck, engaging from  a distance, had her shells fired high in the   air to drop down on Hood, plunging through  her deck armour from above and hitting the   magazines. But there was a simple issue with  this theory; the ships were just too close.   At the time Hood was lost, the range had  closed to about 14 kilometers or 9 miles;   in terms of naval engagements of the second  world war, this was fairly close range.   By contrast some actions in the Pacific took  place at ranges out to 19 miles, or 31 kilometers.   It meant that Bismarck’s shells weren’t  curving dramatically up into the air;   the trajectory was flatter and the shells were  coming in, not directly from above, but from an   angle at Hood’s starboard quarter. Despite this,  the plunging fire hypothesis has been repeated in   documentaries and books again and again, unfairly  casting the Hood as a ship whose deck armour had   been sacrificed for more speed and that this  lack of deck armour presented an achilles heel.   No - it was something else that sank the  Hood, not plunging fire and a lack of armour.   Another hypothesis involved the fire; what if it  was much more serious than it had first appeared?   If gasoline tanks stored near the deck  had burnt, their cascading fuel could   catch alight and gush through ventilation  trunking and ammunition hoists into the   heart of the ship, spilling into the  magazines and causing a detonation.   Except this seems most unlikely; crew had secured  many of the ammunition hoists and fuel tanks   specifically for this very reason. With everything  locked up securely it seems the fire was confined   to burn only the exterior of the ship and in  fact, just before Hood blew up, men on Prince   of Wales figured the fire was dying out and would  shortly be extinguished as it ran out of fuel. Hood’s own supply of torpedoes was considered  as a potential source of initial detonation and   has been repeated in years since. The torpedoes  were kept on deck in their tubes and some thought   that a hit near these torpedoes could set them  off, creating an explosion powerful enough to   reach Hood’s magazines and cause a devastating  chain reaction leading to the loss of the ship.   So compelling was the idea that the second  inquiry considered it seriously and even ran   tests. A torpedo similar to one carried by  Hood was fired at and any nearby hits from a   15 inch shell would not detonate it. A direct  hit might; but even in a fire it might take   more than 20 minutes for a torpedo to burn and  then explode. Even then the explosive force of   the torpedo explosion could not be enough to  devastate the Hood and reach its magazines;   the aft magazine was two decks down  and 25 meters, or 82 feet, further aft;   well outside the explosive radius of a torpedo  and well-protected by armour and bulkheads. Another theory proves more tantalising, difficult  to disprove and is ultimately the more tragic.   That Hood was the agent of her own destruction.  Following the Battle of Jutland in the First   World War, inquiries figured that poor procedures  within the warship’ gun turrets and magazines had   resulted in lax handling and stowage of powder  and propellants. It was easier to leave access   points open and leave powder around outside the  protective magazines because it meant your guns   could fire faster; but unsecured hatches and  doors and poorly-placed bags of explosive meant   that a hit or ignition point could cause a chain  reaction and detonate the main powder magazines.   Strict new so-called anti-flash protocols were  put into place to drastically reduce this risk   and Hood and her crew adhered to them. But, in  the heat of battle and needing a higher fire rate,   could these have been temporarily sacrificed or  ignored? If bags of powder were allowed to stack   up and hatches were not secure before firing, a  misfire or venting of gas back into the gun turret   could have set off the powder and detonated the  magazine. There is eyewitness evidence to support   this idea; crewmen on Prince of Wales saw Hood’s  guns fire but they did not appear quite right.  Petty Officer. George Henry Goff recalled that  "The next thing I noticed was that the 'B' turret   was firing but belching out flames. After that  'Y' turret fired on its own and 'Hood' went up."   He explained that "when a gun fires the flash  licks slowly round the muzzle of the gun.   But there was no straight flash and  the flames licked slowly round."   To Goff, the type of fire coming from Hood’s guns  just didn’t look right. There was something else   wrong with ‘Y’ turret that indicated they might  have been experiencing a problem. Observers on the   Prince of Wales saw the gun train toward Bismarck,  lock on target and then disengage before returning   to its previous position and firing. Petty Officer  Lawrence Sutton testified that ". . . Hood was   firing with her foremost turrets," 'Y' turret then  trained towards the enemy and before firing there   was a flash abaft the mainmast of the 'Hood'  which appeared to be a fire on the boat deck.   'Y' turret then fired and at the same time  a huge flash came up all around 'Y' turret.   The flash rose to well above the mainmast of  the ship and all I heard was a tremendous roar   and I could not see anything until the smoke had  cleared away. That was all I saw of the 'Hood'." This paints a very dramatic picture; if ‘Y’  turret was having internal problems, a backblast   or misfire could have caused a dramatic detonation  of the powder if protocols had not been properly   followed in the battle. The inquiry dismissed  the idea but it is difficult to disprove because   there were simply no survivors from Hood’s gun  turrets. Or, the timing of ‘Y’-turret’s firing   just a second before Hood detonated could have  simply been a coincidence and there is one clue   that leads us to another hypothesis; a direct hit  from Bismarck with a clear penetration into the   powder magazines, not from above and through the  deck armour, but directly through Hood’s hull.   Disturbingly, this exact method of destruction  was prophesied by the Navy 21 years beforehand.   I mentioned that just after the Battle of  Jutland, Hood’s armour protection scheme   was called into question. It was felt that her  armour; 5.3 inches or 135mm of average belt armour   and 5.3 inches or 137mm of deck armour would be  insufficient to prevent clean penetration of 15   inch shells from German battleships. Hood’s armour  was increased; not dramatically, but sufficiently   to prevent most penetrating shots; the belt  from 5.3 to 8 inches and the decks to 6.35.   The armour was arranged in three thicknesses;  towards the top of the hull ,5 inches.   The middle belt was 7 inches and the lower belt  reaching below the waterline was a full 12 inches.   Gunnery trials took place on a  mockup of Hood’s new armour scheme   and found that the lower belt could not  be penetrated; but the middle belt could.   A well-placed shot with a relatively flat  trajectory could plunge through the belt   armour and, if fused correctly, be timed to  detonate within the confines of the powder   magazine. But this was not a problem unique to  Hood; for example the Revenge-class battleships   used a similar scheme with a 6” upper belt and a  13” belt at the middle hull and to the waterline.   A hit from Bismarck could have followed this  exact trajectory outlined by the navy in 1920.   Hood has often been cast as the victim of  an ‘unlucky shot’; but a straight one-on-one   with an enemy battleship with 15 inch guns  was predicted to end badly for her by the   navy some 20 years earlier. It sounds like a  case-closed argument; but it isn’t. Because   even though the navy feared a penetration of the  belt armour, there was still one more obstacle   the offending shell would need to overcome  and calculations reveal it to be impossible;   the deck armour. See the shells landing on Hood  and penetrating the upper or middle belts would   then need to crash through up to 7 inches or  180mm of combined deck armour. Historian and   authour Bill Jurgens has run complex simulations  and calculations on this outcome and discovered   that the Bismarck’s shell would not be able to  reach the powder magazine before it detonated.   Striking the belt armour would cause two issues  for the shell’s path into the magazine. First the   shell would, after having punched through the belt  armour, now be travelling at a much slower speed,   giving it less penetrative power and making it  far less likely to plunge through the deck armour   and into the powder magazine. More tellingly  though, contact with the belt armour would have   set off the shell’s fuse leaving only 0.35 seconds  before detonation of the explosive charge inside.   The distance from the belt armour to the  inside of the powder magazine would not be   sufficient and the shell would detonate  outside the confines of the magazine. So this leaves us with one final possibility;  the most likely culprit for Hood’s loss.   One of Bismarck’s shells could have landed  slightly short of target, plunged underwater   and penetrated BELOW Hood’s thick waterline belt  within the powder magazine. At first it seems   unlikely; surely impact with the water would slow  the shell enough to prevent this kind of impact?   But it is not without precedent; because in that  very engagement Bismarck scored a similar hit on   Prince of Wales, a hit that if it had landed  in line with that ship’s powder magazines,   could have resulted in a similar detonation and  sinking of the second British warship that day.   When Prince of Wales was drydocked for repair  after the Bismarck engagement a penetration   was found deep below the waterline. The shell  had hit the water first and plunged down over 8   meters or 26 feet deep. Here the ship’s hull is  very lightly armoured; the shell easily punched   through Prince of Wales’ hull plating and drove  through four more steel bulkheads before coming   to rest within the ship; it was a dud shell and  failed to explode. If it wasn’t a dud and had hit   Prince of Wales in line with her magazines  the results would have been catastrophic;   Hood and Prince of Wales could have  detonated within minutes of each other. This seems the most likely culprit; if one of  Bismarck’s shells landed slightly short of Hood’s   hull in line with the mainmast it would have  plunged clear below the armoured belt’s protection   into the soft underbelly of the ship. The standard  fuse delay would mean the shell could penetrate   into the after magazine and explode, igniting  the powder stored within and causing a relatively   slow burn of propellant. X and Y turrets’  magazines between them kept just under 100 tons   of cordite propellant; if this were ignited by  Bismarck’s shell it would burn fiercely, causing   superheated gasses to vent out violently. This  could have demolished the bulkhead separating the   powder magazine and the engine room incinerating  all inside; but crucially it would have caused   the geyser of flame seen by witnesses on Prince of  Wales. As the gasses and flame followed a path of   least resistance to escape the inside of the ship  they’d have been vented upwards through the engine   room vents at the base of the mainmast, surging  high into the air. It still wasn’t enough though;   Hood’s stern section had become something like  a pressure cooker; the pressure was temporarily   relieved when the gasses burst into the engine  rooms but it built up again dramatically and   there could only be one outcome. The ship’s  hull burst at the seams and Hood exploded. Whatever the mechanism for Hood’s destruction  the result was devastating. On Bismarck the crew   watched with a mix of elation and shock; proud of  their victory but instinctively feeling a sense   of horror for their British counterparts. Back  in Britain Hood’s loss was a devastating blow   and many recalled it as being the most shocking  moment of the second world war. Churchill and   the admiralty sought revenge; Bismarck was hunted  down by a huge combined fleet of British warships   and aircraft and famously sunk under a barrage  of fire. All told 2,200 men were lost with her. In 2001 Hood’s wreck was discovered lying in  pieces on the seafloor, confirming a violent   detonation of the aft magazines. She was the  pride of the British Navy and a favourite of   the general public; touchingly, her bell was  spotted in the debris field and recovered,   restored and unveiled in 2016, 75 years  long years after her loss. For decades,   debate has raged over the cause of the explosion;  but regardless of its exact origin the fact   remains that more than 1,400 men, many of them  young fathers, brothers and sons - were lost in   mere seconds on the day she sank. Hood’s twisted  and mangled wreck is their gravesite and many of   their last resting places, just as on Bismarck,  are marked by pairs of boots on the sea floor.
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Channel: Oceanliner Designs
Views: 329,423
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: great ocean liners, maritime history, ocean liners, famous oceanliners, ships documentary, history of ships, engineering, history, ships, documentary
Id: jYqrBcX-f5k
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Length: 30min 36sec (1836 seconds)
Published: Mon Feb 13 2023
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