The Hunt For The Hood (WW2 Battleship Documentary) | Timeline

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July 2001 an expedition set sail for the North Atlantic they're seeking to find the wrecks of two of the greatest warships of their time one is Bismarck the legendary German battleship the other the pride of the British fleet for 20 years the mighty HMS food in 1941 both were sunk in arguably the most momentous naval battle of the Second World War for 60 years the racks of laying at the bottom of the ocean now this group of underwater detectives hopes to find them and film them it's an ambitious and risky project Bismarck will be difficult but finding the food for the first time ever will be a true moment in history and they do it we've got to be there now it's happening now see that it's gonna be huge yes looking at us the expedition begins here in Cork Ireland after years of planning and months of painstaking preparation over a hundred tonnes of sophisticated search equipment has arrived to be installed on the expedition ship the northern horizon the man whose dream it was to bring this about is the expedition leader David demands one of just a handful of people with the necessary expertise and deep sea searches if we do find Hood we'll be the first it's not an easy target to go after so will be this will be the first attempt and hopefully the first successful attempt american-born Mounds is part of blue water recoveries based in Britain he's found over 45 wrecks during his career scouring the seabed but now his great enemy as time he has just three days to get all the equipment's loaded tested and underweight the channel 4 expedition has brought together some of the best in the field auctioneering or seasoned rec hunters their missions include the Titanic and recovering the space shuttle Challenger but not only will they be tested the state-of-the-art equipment is rare and irreplaceable this ambitious project will take it to its limits to find not one but two wrecks lying in the extreme depths of the unforgiving North Atlantic [Music] oh but not everything coming aboard is modern and high-tech that's a bit tricky so I want to make sure you okay this is 78 year old Ted Briggs 60 years ago he was a young signalman on the hood now he's the only remaining survivor he'll rejoined the mission later to pay tribute to his lost crewmates if Mounds fulfills a promise to bind his ship by crate okay well welcome onboard the northern horizon I just should point out a couple of things that this is the the fight began so now that we're going to use the locate hood returning to the scene will be traumatic for Ted Briggs but it's something he feels he must do me I am the only one that should be in the position to do it for the family's sake and for my shipmates sake the great adventure is underway if just 30 days to find and film both legs and challenge like this relies on both human skill machines and just a little lovin the first estimation of the expedition is to find Bismarck lying off the coast of France the Bismarck was built by the Germans at the start of World War two to challenge British naval supremacy [Music] the British spotted Hitler's massive new warship breaking out into the Atlantic hurrying to scuff of the vital US convoys keeping the war effort alive [Music] who'd mightiest ship in the British fleet was dispatched to intercept this mark the two giants met in the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland and the great guns opened up [Music] who took a fatal hit there was a massive explosion three minutes later she'd gone along with 1,400 men only clean survived Bismarck turned and sped away south towards France Winston Churchill sent out the order sink the Bismarck every available Royal Navy ship was deployed he was tracked to near the Bay of Biscay [Music] the last of these actual victors of the battle so the Bismarck of smoking ruin after two hours of relentless shelling Hitler's greatest battleship was sunk two nations lost their finest warships but the human cost was even higher more than three thousand four hundred British and German sailors from Bismarck a hundred and fifteen German crewmen survived at almost 2,000 Paris [Music] 60 years on Marin's users positions reported by ships witnessing the sinking to form the search area the Bismarck was discovered by another team 12 years ago but they kept its location secret flying off indicator his search area is nearly 80 square miles but there's a clue left by the previous expedition team to help him the wreck is said to lie on the side of an underwater volcano and there's only one within the search area but this one thing that Marans can't control the weather day 3 and just as they reached the SAP site the team is hit by a storm gale force winds gusting to over 50 knots with up the seas the rolling and pitching make it too dangerous to risk lifting the heavy machinery of the day the survey room the operation nerve center remains empty nothing can be done precious time is lost yeah of a diminishing amount of days to do what you need to do and that's whether it's just sort of taking them away from us there's nothing you can really do about it so it's really frustrating and disappointing and you know also boring with us is now there's no work is really not much work that can be done we're ready to go which is sort of sitting here holding fire it's defined at last the weather looks more promising but is it enough for the search operation to start yeah I thought it you're getting pushed a little bit yet going west yeah we're getting enough cable under the water enough weight in the water should help you out once you get set up the team meet with the ship's captain Keith Heron to discuss their options the pressure is on nouns to make a decision hightail it down there okay let's do it 72 hours late but the search is finally underway they prepare to launch the side-scan sonar known as the tow fish it will be used to search for the wreck three miles down it will take over three hours to reach that depth from the ocean floor only then will what lies on the seabed be revealed to the expedition and they hope it's the wreck of Bismarck eight and a half thousand meters of cable is paid at encased within the steel is a copper conductor that supplies power to the tow fish and also transmits the vital information to and from the ship GLaDOS in the water and just not posting get to the bottom without any other delays the sonar will sink down and track 350 meters about the seabed told 3 and a half miles behind the expedition ship it emits a constant pulse of sound that hits the seabed and bounces back to the sonar like an echo a soft muddy ocean floor gives a different echo to rocks or a shipwreck the echoes are relayed that electronically treated and colored to show a virtual map of the seabed and what's sitting on it the tow fish emits signals from each side covering a three-mile area underneath at a 300 meter wide blind spot where the sound pulses don't reach in one control room members of the sonar team guide the movements of the tow fish nextdoor man scans data from the sonar if he interprets it wrongly they could miss the wreck altogether he's looking for dark colors of shapes that could be man-made the dark band in the middle is the blind spot the area underneath the towfish the search goes on round-the-clock the team working in shifts [Music] then after nine hours suddenly something emerges on the screens it could be just a pile of rocks it could be the Bismarck yeah it's there's all hot things right in there you know see the large oval yeah and she could have hit there that would have been the first impact and would have been the largest impact and then as she slid down we've got to measure the the length of that to the untrained eye there's nothing to see but mounds is palan tis to make sense of it he sees a long trench that was possibly caused by Bismarck sliding down the side of a volcano he thinks the wreck could be obscured by the Sonos blind spot then she slid and she's sitting right underneath us and and if that if that if she is that proves that you can go right over the top of the Topher's go right over the top of a huge wreck and never see it yeah and I don't see much point in extending this to the end of the line so I think you can start crawling up and getting ready to turn man's follows his instinct he decides to move on to the second stage of his hunt he'll send down the vehicle that he hopes will bring back pictures of Bismarck you it's be seventh of the channel for expedition to find two of the biggest warships ever built the Bismarck maybe just below than on the team prepare the ROV the remotely operated vehicle it's equipped with color cameras and huge lights to punch through the gloom the ROV is worth more than three-quarters of a million pounds because of the complex technology to make it withstand the massive deep-sea pressure equivalent to 12 jumbo jets sitting on your chest it's the eyes of the expedition any problem that can't be fixed will spell the end of the mission the ROV takes three hours to reach the extreme depths of the seabed experienced scuba divers generally go down to about 50 metres beyond 150 metres light barely penetrates nuclear submarines are designed to operate at around 400 metres whales have never been known to dive deeper than 1500 meters beyond that only specially adapted species can survive conditions here where the pressure is nearly 7000 pounds per square inch and here lies the wreck of Bismarck at more than four and a half thousand metres three miles down that's 12 times the height of the Empire State Building can you show us sonar search all around to see if we can get anything the drives here in the control room mounds can only wait and hope for the ROV cameras to pick out images of the wreck everyone's exhausted after more than 50 hours of searching and if they're in the wrong spot this could all be for nothing slowly the ROV is guided towards the promising target area watching on board is the historian Eric drove here to analyze what if anything was found suddenly the cameras begin to pick out debris a ladder a mask its construction means it must be from Bismarck that's a lot of structural exposure yeah I just hit a lot of guy with a lever yeah let's ship the Honda spread across an area one mile square light pieces of Bismarck superstructure the admiral's bridge evidence of the ship's firepower part of the range finding equipment for its guidance and evidence of the human loss but they still can't find the main part of the wreck the 800 foot power and then the team's worst nightmare the view from the camera cuts Alex Coker strata-ray started hydraulic motors when the pictures resume this show that the ROV has dropped onto the seabed its thrusters spent hopelessly stirring up clouds of sediment I said what does your gut tell you do you think you're going to be able to restart this are we looking at a full recovery recovery could be blowing sea water could be just internally probably looking at Origo right she dropped into the mud but I couldn't bring the motor mega well I think this dive is over [Music] it takes three hours for the ROV to arrive back on the surface it's salt water has leaked inside it's a serious problem we don't have tied down come down regular hydraulic they discovered that the fault is with one of the thrusters that moves the are will be through the water well this one had been damaged yeah library right you won't expect anything in common with up we do have our follows [Music] day eight the repaired ROV is ready to go back into the water it will take with it a plaque commemorating those who died on the Bismarck it's the closest the team comes to actual contact with the wreck there's a strict policy of Luke don't touch and thoughts of the 2,000 men who perished are never far away you try to do your job in a way that your emotions don't don't affect your decisions and and that's the case with in my career and then also the people from OSHA nearing they're involved in cases all the time where people have lost their lives and there's always a time where you can sort of take a few minutes to yourself and walk in the back deck and sort of you know remember those and in most instances we try to be well in every instance we try to be extremely respectful about what we're doing okay that's fine lemon now traffic cover if Sawyer is a bronze plaque but the names of those who died is placed in position and walked more appropriate spot than the Admirals bridge where the ship's captain and Slenderman have stayed to the last with the flat laid man's can resume his set he still to find the enormous hull with the hours slipping by it's time for everything we're going to go back to a position that we were on this morning where he actually had a gun turret and shortly you know before that the main mass then the gun turret then the superstructure manses knowledge of Bismarck last moments helps him plot his way towards her hull Bismarck was hit by over 300 shells including one which jammed her rudders at first and just moments before sinking fifty thousand tons of battleship rolled over in the water debris including the gun turrets cascaded from the decks the turrets are only held in place by their own massive weight they then hit the bottom before the ship herself as she rolled it's got the damaged stone broke off the ship flooded quickly at this point she then turned upright again as the air is forced out and replaced by water about twenty minutes after the sinking began the hull hit the side of the extinct volcano and then slid down the slope for a mile before resting smaller pieces continue to tumble down causing a debris field the team decides to follow the mile long trench left by Bismarck as she slid down the underwater volcano then out of the darkness after hours of searching something looms into frame somebody else take over I need a break okay that's fine what we'll love what we want to do is won't want to stay here because as we did this was one of our investigation points yeah so get yourself sorted Apple we like to stay right here the main piece of one of the largest and greatest ever warships is finally in sight and lying perfectly upright it's 40 foot swastika still evident on the deck but the stand is sheared off during the sinking for naval historians like Eric Grove the pictures of the wreck offered a remarkable insight into the ship's fate one of the most dramatic features of of Bismarck of other swastikas and this is actually at the stern these were painted on with red flags there are basically German flags to show the fluffer aircrew that they were in fact friendly this is actually the are the after armored bulkhead to protect the inside of the ship and you can see here where the break has occurred where the stern has fallen off [Music] these are the barbacks so-called into which the turrets were mounted and you can see the gearing there which turned the turrets in each turret that were probably about a hundred people inside the turrets and also working right down here because that's leading right down into the magazine you can see here very serious hit here in the deck which penetrated the Barbet and I would have thought almost certainly knocked that turret out of action was quite a long range here to come down and hit the deck and made a great hole and also penetrated the Barbet and here we see the armor belt very thick arm about over 12 inches of armor here and I think if I remember right the seven inches of armor and you can see that the armor belt was actually working pretty effectively there are some penetrations of it as one would expect to get from the very close range around [Music] this is a very dramatic part of the wreck this is the after fire control director this is where Baron gone berlin heinrich bertha most senior survivor this was his his station for the strom inside there he observed the sinking of HMS hood and here's receive a door in the side here from which he escaped and this is one of the secondary armament turrets they're all they're all six of them this one actually has gone back and jammed inside and one reason may be that rather sinister looking hole there which has penetrated the armor and probably kill the guns crews there's a very dramatic picture of two of the anti-aircraft guns which should not be able to protect Bismarck with the Bismarck found and just 18 days of the expedition left it's time to head 1,100 miles north somewhere beneath the subarctic seas of Greenland lies HMS hood last seen going down after losing her battle with Bismarck as the expedition heads to the new search area further not the team's anxious to get started but there's still days away all we can do is wait but that doesn't mean taking it easy no less captain heaven likes to run well a tight ship ought to do with a new effect and now that are even more on board a cameraman and myself have joined the expedition by ship-to-ship transfer the discovery of hood will be a major event and we are here to report it for channel 4 news if David man's and his team succeed it may help explain one of the greatest mysteries in naval history how could an eight hundred and sixty foot long ship the pride of the British fleet sink in just three minutes the hood was dispatched to the Denmark Strait to stop the Bismarck from getting into the Atlantic and wreaking havoc among British supply ships then the lifeline of the country the two great warships 40 miles apart closed the rachana just 11 minutes into battle who'd suffered a catastrophic explosion and was lost more than 1400 men perished of the three that survived today just one of them is still alive then then Ria's at that bow standing upright like that Peter just going she was about 50 yards away and the hissing having work that was going on around the thought of those men that were in there the search for his ship is now just a day away basic steam the northern horizon the rise of the search area now the real work begins David Mann to several different reported positions for HMS hood that means an enormous search area of nearly 700 square miles the size of Greater London but he's not a bit down to just 200 square miles it's by really studying the archives and there's a process of one researching everything and getting all the information at hand and then it's analyzing it to and you have to make judgments about which witnesses are creditable which positions were accurate and which ones weren't so after all the research is assembled then there's an equal amount of period where we analyze that and come up with our search pod the tool fish is returned to the water the sonar scans along a series of parallel lines the search box each pass along a line takes ten hours to complete with thousands of meters of cable paid out the ship must make a wide turn at the end of each line to avoid snaring the cable the turn takes five hours suddenly meirin has called to the bridge by the captain they have a real problem then you fought his feet on the offer and see where he's going to because the other option is letting him go a fleet of fishing boats from the Faroe Islands is in the area if you turn before they pick up we may not be able to get back on the next line to avoid the fishing boats nets the northern horizon will have to make a turn before completing a line that could mean missing the hood but the risk of damaging the tow fish and cable is too great we need to do that as Captain Heron conducts delicate negotiations David Mearns prepares to abort this out yeah chuckling you start out recovering bringing it up now because we've got some fishing boats and we need to get the line finished as soon as possible we can't wait till the end right but the captain's diplomacy skills win the day and the fishing fleet withdraws avoiding an international incident the search can continue uninterrupted [Music] the seabed in the Denmark Strait is very different from the Bay of Biscay there are no volcanoes here it's flat and muddy making interpretation of the sonar data easier david mounds has given himself a week to find the food [Music] he starts with a low frequency scan covering an area more than 2000 meters and I decided that sonar then after a day and a half with a toll fish on its third pass he spots something yes looking at us only one eat the van inch-long on the screen but definitely not a natural phenomenon I think this is that two pieces is a second one coming with a shadow right down the middle they make a high-frequency sweep which increases the picture resolution over a smaller target area revealed is a massive impact crater made by a ship smashing into the ocean floor there's something down there but it's only about 350 feet in length the hood was eight hundred and sixty feet long not quite what we wanted but it's a fantastic shot of the little pack Raider it's time to send the ROV down to get some answers the submersible has four cameras a color television camera two navigation cameras and one for digital stills it also has three thousand six hundred watts of powerful lights the camera housings were made specifically for this expedition built to resist the huge pressure the cameras are encased in ultra strong titanium the lenses are protected by reinforced glass over a centimeter thick the fifth glass distorts an image like this to correct it a three lens system is placed behind the protective glass this widens the image rectifies color separation and removes the fisheye effect the result a perfect picture this remarkable technology helps us unlock the secrets of the ocean word evidence and what you bring back to the films and the photographs could be the clearest examples of the ships and their architecture and everything about them that has been seen for 60 years and unless you get that now they'll be gone I mean we will see it on HMS hood she will begin beginning now to start showing the signs of you know being on the seabed for 60 years and in 20 years time she'll look far worse and she won't maybe show her elegant lines any longer they'll just be you know slowly slowly you know sort of the crate you know degrading and falling in day 19 the ROV returns to the ocean floor in just a few hours time david mounts hopes to locate the last resting place of HMS hood [Music] slowly the ROV glides through the waters controlled from almost two miles above they find scattered debris man's nose he's at the hoop sight but is this all that's left the only thing recognizable a single boot in every single way she is badly destroyed as anybody could have imagined or described she was basically blown to smithereens from the middle of the ship to the stern she suffered a massive massive massive explosion the ROV is becoming difficult to control a strong current is pulling it violently just trying to hold that heading and that current just risk me that one just look at north for him currents of this depth are rare this one appears to be tidal pulling the submersible first one way than the other but despite this the search continues revealing more of the destruction then suddenly hopes are raised after 60 years in darkness a large pieces find it appears to be a section of the whole can you look down ready to go over it so we can see down the grill there are no celebrations where there should be superstructure with images to capture and be analyzed there's only a featureless damaged surface food is upside down everything is hidden I'm just incredibly disappointed we expected to find it upright I've looked at 45 ships in deepwater and only found two that were on their sides before I've never found one completely turned over and this is the one I wanted to find more than any so to find her this way is uh heartbreaking just as the ROV begins to find more of the wreck once again the monitor screens go dark the signal has been lost at this time the screens stay dark [Music] we lost the fiber-optic communication with the for the RV the in troubleshooting we found the problems down as they are we somehow see water got to electronics well I got it bring it up on deck bring all my table 28 hunger interested no Claire they're lucky they still have the ROV incredibly the underwater current has twisted the cable so badly that it's nearly become detached there's forked up a few minutes more and the ROV would have joined the food at the bottom of the ocean it will take seven hours to repair the damaged nearly who killed the albatross there's fifteen threads and last night it was recovered with just three threads left and what was happening was that in that high current exactly rotating around and turning it which is something you know has never been seen before to this extent well you have just three friends left and the center conductor there's the center conductor here that's where they that's where the power conductors are and the fibers are this is a fiber optic cable come through here this is mechanically terminated the steel bit here and that twisted right through well this is a very very hard piece of cable it would take hundreds of hundreds of pounds probably thousands of pounds of force acting twists back you couldn't do it so it gives you an indication of what was happening and how close we were to three threads away from the entire thing dropping off and losing it so we're very lucky dodged a bullet last night day 20 the fear is now that there may be nothing recognizable left to find but David mount is convinced there's still key parts of the hood waiting to be discovered the team has been searching for two days for the greatest battle cruiser of her time it looks as though they may never find the part that made the hood so mighty but then I don't know where a rusting anchor chain guides them forward at last the images everyone has hoped for the bow lying on its side [Music] you [Music] the rudder fixed forever on a turn to port and lying in a tangled heap of metal the symbol of hoods personality the ship's Bell a torpedo from the Arsenal [Music] [Music] one over for massive gun turrets [Music] [Music] the conning tower used to navigate in battle [Music] the main motto we're feeling much better we found the bow we found the stern we found the main mass parts of the superstructure turrets so we're showing more parts of hood which was our intent all along to be able to show to people you know what a beautiful ship she once was and when we were found her just overturned we were very fearful that we wouldn't see anything else that people could remember about the past beauty and glory of hood the wreck of the hood is scattered over a vast area the upturned hull lies nearly half a mile away from the bow understand yes Ted can you hear me it's David I'm fine tighten yourself David Mearns has a promise to keep he calls whose last remaining survivor everything's going very well Ted and I just thought you'd like to know I've I've just spent the last hour looking at pictures live from the seabed of your ship so we found her Ted Ted Griggs is longing to see the pictures and he can vary another major challenge for the expedition is to transmit live images from the seabed for channel 4 news and the expedition website a satellite link needs complete stability but the ship is constantly moving due to the ocean swell the revolutionary system on board predicts the oceans movements maneuvering the dish to keep it in line with the satellite such the Wonder is not that so few survived but that anyone survived at all just a few hours later in the Channel 4 News room Ted Briggs is watching the images of the ship he last saw 60 years ago sinking beneath the waves I didn't hear an explosion all I saw was a gigantic sheet of flame which shot round me they come as platform the comforting thought that have always hurt is that they wouldn't have known very much about it I don't think our naval historian Eric Grove is captivated by the images here we see two openings at the side probably windows effectively in the side of the ship rather than hatches they are open here it looks as if hoods ships company didn't have any chance to escape really at all surprising the rain any survivors I think one of the most exciting things we found was the belt could have more than one Bell but we think we found the one that was actually on quarter depth the main Bell as it were and this in a sense was the heart of the ship which was rung to show the changing of the watches and it was a very poignant thing and here we have one of hoods four propellers for going about 29 knots I think the figures were something like 190 revolutions a minute something would be going around it would have been going around at that speed one widget sank and now it's set in place these are two pounds of pom-pom shells for the light anti-aircraft guns and here are four inch readies shells from the secondary armament and here we have the sign that we were looking for it's really wild HMS hood these are the covers over the forward above water torpedo tubes which were not fitted and this is unique for hope that these covers are here so we use this with the ship that we had been looking for these pictures will be invaluable to academics and historians trying to piece together the last moments of the hood David mount and the team had completed their work on the northern horizon but there's one more task before they can return home boy am I glad to see you Ted Briggs comes back to the scene of his miraculous escape to say goodbye to his shipmates [Music] now it's the turn of HMS hood to be honored Ted Briggs has asked for the memorial plaque to be laid on the bow the last part of the shippi song as an eighteen-year-old signalmen the RLB positions itself close to the anchor chain and he's invited to release the plaque they shall grow not old as we that are left grow old age shall not weary them nor the years condemn at the going down of the Sun and in the morning we will remember we will for years I've lived with it a total memory and now it's something I can look back up my pride I've never experienced anything like it in my life and to think that I even played a small part in it is something all over so I'm just yeah much the good has worked I was helping this would be his reaction with him here safe this time yes for David Mound after six years of preparation and a month at sea it's time to go home I feel that went very well he's sort of broken in quarters to reach 100% we had to find both wrecks and film Gophers and we did that so I think it's 100% results from the point of view of using this expedition and the film's to get people interested in hood again and her history then then possibly what's what we found could actually do that because more people will maybe be intrigued by her story and try to figure out what actually happened to her for 60 years the hood has remained in obscurity in more ways than one she may not have been a match for the bhisma but in her day she was the finest there was she may be in pieces but they have now been found she may be a war grave but this expedition has helped ensure that HMS hood and her crew are not forgotten [Music] you

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Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 558,101

Rating: 4.7953138 out of 5

Keywords: History, 2017 documentary, documentary history, Bismarck Battleship Wreck, stories, WW2, HMS Hood, real, Documentaries, Documentary Movies - Topic, warship, Full length Documentaries, BBC documentary, Full Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, history documentary, Channel 4 documentary, Documentary

Id: AXBODH8tkeE

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Length: 48min 18sec (2898 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2017

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