HMS Hood

HMS Hood was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy. Hood was the first of the planned four s to be built during the First World War. She was already under construction when the Battle of Jutland occurred in mid-1916, and that battle revealed serious flaws in her design; with drastic revisions, she was completed four years later. For this reason, she was the only ship of her class to be completed, as the Admiralty decided it would be better to start with a clean design on succeeding battlecruisers, leading to the never-built G-3 class. Despite the appearance of newer and more modern ships, Hood remained the largest warship in the world for 20 years after her commissioning, and her prestige was reflected in her nickname, "The Mighty Hood".
Hood was involved in many showing the flag exercises between her commissioning in 1920 and the outbreak of war in 1939, including training exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and a circumnavigation of the globe with the Special Service Squadron in 1923 and 1924. She was attached to the Mediterranean Fleet following the outbreak of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935. When the Spanish Civil War broke out the following year, Hood was officially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until she had to return to Britain in 1939 for an overhaul. By this time, advances in naval gunnery had reduced Hoods usefulness. She was scheduled to undergo a major rebuild in 1941 to correct these issues, but the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 kept the ship in service without the upgrades.
When war with Germany was declared, Hood was operating in the area around Iceland, and she spent the next several months hunting for German commerce raiders and blockade runners between Iceland and the Norwegian Sea. After a brief overhaul of her propulsion system, she sailed as the flagship of Force H, and participated in the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Transferred to the Home Fleet shortly afterwards, Hood was dispatched to Scapa Flow, and operated in the area as a convoy escort and later as a defence against a potential German invasion fleet. In May 1941, Hood and the battleship were ordered to intercept the and the heavy cruiser, which were en route to the Atlantic, where they were to attack convoys. On 24 May 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank with the loss of all but 3 of her crew of 1,418.
The RN conducted two inquiries into the reasons for the ship's quick demise. The first, held soon after the ship's loss, concluded that Hoods aft magazine had exploded after one of Bismarcks shells penetrated the ship's armour. A second inquiry was held after complaints that the first board had failed to consider alternative explanations, such as an explosion of the ship's torpedoes. It was more thorough than the first board but concurred with the first board's conclusion. Despite the official explanation, some historians continued to believe that the torpedoes caused the ship's loss, while others proposed an accidental explosion inside one of the ship's gun turrets that reached down into the magazine. Other historians have concentrated on the cause of the magazine explosion. The discovery of the ship's wreck in 2001 confirmed the conclusion of both boards, although the exact reason the magazines detonated is likely to remain unknown, since that portion of the ship was obliterated in the explosion.

Design and description

The Admiral-class battlecruisers were designed in response to the German s, which were reported to be more heavily armed and armoured than the latest British battlecruisers of the and the es. The design was revised after the Battle of Jutland to incorporate heavier armour and all four ships were laid down. Only Hood was completed, because the ships were very expensive and required labour and material that could be put to better use building merchant ships needed to replace those lost to the German U-boat campaign.
The Admirals were significantly larger than their predecessors of the Renown class. As completed, Hood had an overall length of, a maximum beam of, and a draught of at deep load. This was longer and wider than the older ships. She displaced at load and at deep load, over more than the older ships. The ship had a metacentric height of at deep load, which minimised her roll and made her a steady gun platform.
The additional armour added during construction increased her draught by about at deep load, which reduced her freeboard and made her very wet. At full speed, or in heavy seas, water would flow over the ship's quarterdeck and often entered the messdecks and living quarters through ventilation shafts. This characteristic earned her the nickname of "the largest submarine in the Navy". The persistent dampness, coupled with the ship's poor ventilation, was blamed for the high incidence of tuberculosis aboard. The ship's complement varied widely over her career; in 1919, she was authorised 1,433 men as a squadron flagship; in 1934, she had 81 officers and 1,244 ratings aboard.
The Admirals were powered by four Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by 24 Yarrow boilers. The battlecruiser's turbines were designed to produce, which would propel the ship at, but during sea trials in 1920, Hoods turbines provided, which allowed her to reach. She carried enough fuel oil to give her an estimated range of at.

Armament

The main battery of the Admiral-class ships consisted of eight BL Mk I guns in hydraulically powered twin gun turrets. The turrets were designated 'A', 'B', 'X', and 'Y' from bow to stern, and 120 shells were carried for each gun. The ship's secondary armament consisted of twelve BL Mk I guns, each with 200 rounds. They were shipped on shielded single-pivot mounts fitted along the upper deck and the forward shelter deck. This high position allowed them to be worked during heavy weather, as they were less affected by waves and spray compared with the casemate mounts of earlier British capital ships. Two of these guns on the shelter deck were temporarily replaced by QF Mk V anti-aircraft guns between 1938 and 1939. All the 5.5-inch guns were removed during another refit in 1940.
The ship's original anti-aircraft armament consisted of four QF 4-inch Mk V guns on single mounts. These were joined in early 1939 by four twin mounts for the QF 4-inch Mark XVI dual-purpose gun. The single guns were removed in mid-1939 and a further three twin Mark XIX mounts were added in early 1940. In 1931, a pair of octuple mountings for the QF 2-pounder Mk VIII gun "pom-pom" were added on the shelter deck, abreast of the funnels, and a third mount was added in 1937. Two quadruple mountings for the Vickers Mk III machine gun were added in 1933 with two more mountings added in 1937. To these were added five unrotated projectile launchers in 1940, each launcher carrying 20 rockets. When they detonated, the rockets shot out lengths of cable that were kept aloft by parachutes; the cable was intended to snag aircraft and draw up the small aerial mine that would destroy the aircraft.
The Admirals were fitted with six fixed torpedo tubes, three on each broadside. Two of these were submerged forward of 'A' turret's magazine and the other four were above water, abaft the rear funnel. About 28 torpedoes were carried.

Fire control

The ship's main battery was controlled by two fire-control directors. One was mounted above the conning tower, protected by an armoured hood, and was fitted with a rangefinder. The other was fitted in the spotting top above the tripod foremast and equipped with a rangefinder. Each turret was also fitted with a rangefinder. The secondary armament was primarily controlled by directors mounted on each side of the bridge. They were supplemented by two additional control positions in the fore-top, which were provided with rangefinders, fitted in 1924–1925. The antiaircraft guns were controlled by a simple high-angle rangefinder mounted on the aft control position, fitted in 1926–1927. Three torpedo-control towers were fitted, each with a rangefinder. One was on each side of the amidships control tower and the third was on the centreline abaft the aft control position.
During the 1929–1931 refit, a high-angle control system Mark I director was added on the rear searchlight platform and two positions for 2-pounder "pom-pom" antiaircraft directors were added at the rear of the spotting top, although only one director was initially fitted. The 5.5-inch control positions and their rangefinders on the spotting top were removed during the 1932 refit. In 1934, the "pom-pom" directors were moved to the former locations of the 5.5-inch control positions on the spotting top and the rangefinders for the 5.5-inch control positions were reinstalled on the signal platform. Two years later, the "pom-pom" directors were moved to the rear corners of the bridge to get them out of the funnel gases. Another "pom-pom" director was added on the rear superstructure, abaft the HACS director in 1938. Two HACS Mark III directors were added to the aft end of the signal platform the following year, and the Mark I director aft was replaced by a Mark III.
During Hoods last refit in 1941, a Type 279 early-warning radar for aircraft and surface vessels and a Type 284 gunnery radar were installed, although the Type 279 radar lacked its receiving aerial and was inoperable according to Roberts. An Admiralty document indicates however that, following the 1941 refit at Rosyth, Hoods Type 279 radar was indeed functional. The early-warning radar was of a modified type, known as Type 279M, the difference between this and Type 279 being the number of aerials. While Type 279 used two aerials, a transmitter and a receiver, the Type 279M used only a single transceiver aerial. Hood reported an accuracy of 3 degrees with her 279M set.