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,
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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.
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.