| Photographer: | Gordy [View profile] | Title: | HMS HOOD | Added: | Feb 21, 2012 | | Captured: | | IMO: | Unavailable | Hits: | 2,196 | | Photo Category: |
Battleships | | Description: | HMS HOOD
HMS Hood 1920-1941.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood_(51)
HMS Hood (pennant number 51) was the last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy. One of four Admiral-class battlecruisers ordered in mid-1916, her design—although drastically revised after the Battle of Jutland and improved while she was under construction—still had serious limitations. For this reason she was the only ship of her class to be completed. She was named after the 18th-century Admiral Samuel Hood.
Name: HMS Hood
Namesake: Admiral Samuel Hood
Ordered: 7 April 1916
Builder: John Brown & Company
Laid down: 1 September 1916
Launched: 22 August 1918
Commissioned: 15 May 1920
In service: 1920–1941
Motto: Ventis Secundis (Latin: With Favourable Winds)
Nickname: Mighty Hood
Fate: Sunk 24 May 1941
Notes: Pennant number: 51
Badge: A Cornish Chough bearing an anchor facing left over the date 1859.
General characteristics:
Class and type: Admiral-class battlecruiser
Displacement: 46,680 long tons (47,430 t) deep load
Length: 860 ft 7 in (262.3 m)
Beam: 104 ft 2 in (31.8 m)
Draught: 32 ft 0 in (9.8 m)
Installed power: 144,000 shp (107,000 kW)
Propulsion: 4 shafts
Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines
24 Yarrow water-tube boilers
Speed: 1920: 31 knots (57 km/h; 36 mph)
1941: 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph)
Range: 1931: 5,332 nautical miles (9,870 km; 6,140 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement: 1919: 1,433
1934: 1,325
Sensors and
processing systems: Type 279 air-warning radar
Type 284 gunnery radar
Armament:
(As built):
4 × 2 – BL 15-inch Mk I guns
12 × 1 – BL 5.5-inch Mk I guns
4 × 1 – QF 4-inch Mark V anti-aircraft guns
6 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
1941, as sunk:
4 × 2 – 15-inch (381 mm) guns
7 × 2 – QF 4-inch Mk XVI AA guns
3 × 8 – QF 2-pdr "pom pom" AA guns
5 × 4 – 0.5-inch Vickers machine guns
5 × 20-barrel "Unrotated Projectile" mounts
2 × 2 – 21-inch above water torpedo tubes
Armour: Belt: 12–6 in (305–152 mm)
Deck: 0.75–3 in (19–76 mm)
Barbettes: 12–5 in (305–127 mm)
Turrets: 15–11 in (381–279 mm)
Conning tower: 11–9 in (279–229 mm)
Bulkheads: 4–5 in (102–127 mm)
Aircraft carried: 1 fitted 1931–32
1 catapult
When Bismarck sailed for the Atlantic in May 1941, Hood, together with the newly commissioned battleship Prince of Wales, was sent out in pursuit along with several other groups of British capital ships to intercept the German ships before they could break into the Atlantic and attack Allied convoys. Hood was commanded by Captain Ralph Kerr and was flying the flag of Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland. The German ships were spotted by two British heavy cruisers on 23 May, and Holland's ships intercepted Bismarck and her consort, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland on 24 May.
The British squadron spotted the Germans at 05:37 (ship's clocks were set four hours ahead of local time - the engagement commenced shortly after dawn), but the Germans were already aware of their presence, Prinz Eugen's hydrophones having previously detected the sounds of high-speed propellers to their south-east. The British opened fire at 05:52 with Hood engaging Prinz Eugen, the lead ship in the German formation, and the Germans returned fire at 05:55, both ships concentrating on Hood. Prinz Eugen was probably the first ship to score when a shell hit Hood's boat deck, between her funnels, and started a large fire among the ready-use ammunition for the anti-aircraft guns and rockets of the UP mounts. Right before 06:00, while Hood was turning 20° to port to unmask her rear turrets, she was hit again on the boat deck by one or more shells from Bismarck's fifth salvo, fired from a range of approximately 16,650 metres (18,210 yd). A shell from this salvo appears to have hit the spotting top as the boat deck was showered with body parts and debris. A huge jet of flame burst out of Hood from the vicinity of the mainmast, followed by a devastating magazine explosion that destroyed the aft part of the ship. This explosion broke the back of Hood and the last sight of the ship, which sank in only three minutes, was her bow, nearly vertical in the water. A note on a survivor's sketch in the British RN Historical Branch Archives gives 63°20’N 31°50’W as the position of the sinking.
Of the 1,418 crew, only three men—Ordinary Signalman Ted Briggs, Able Seaman Robert Tilburn, and Midshipman William John Dundas—survived; they were rescued about two hours after the sinking by the destroyer HMS Electra. Electra spotted a lot of debris, but no bodies.
Photo Credits: The late Allan Green Vic Australia
Details: Mirimar
Cheers and Gb
Gordy |
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