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Regarding HMS Hood and the Battle of Denmark Strait by Buzz Beurling

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Regarding HMS Hood and the Battle of Denmark Strait by Buzz Beurling Regarding HMS Hood and the Battle of Denmark Strait By Buzz Beurling So this post is here.. ...to answer the questions that keep getting posed and to put right some myths. Firstly a bit of background history. I see it time after time people comparing HMS Hood's loss to those of the ships at Jutland. Aside from the fact that all the ships we are talking about exploded THERE IS NO COMPARISON. The armoured cruisers HMS Defence and HMS Warrior were battered at such close range they were annihilated. It's hardly surprising what happened. All three of the Battlecruisers at Jutland were lost to UNSAFE AMMO HANDLING PRACTICES, where stacks of unprotected cordite were piled up just inside the magazine doors, which were then left open throughout combat. Had this not been done ( and this was proven with the Q turret hit to HMS Lion ) NONE OF THE BATTLECRUISERS AT JUTLAND WOULD HAVE BEEN LOST. Also not one was lost to plunging fire or any weakness in their decks. The ships of both fleets were simply too close to each other. Now it would be helpful to explain that all Naval gunfire has a plunging aspect. That is how they work. When we refer to plunging fire we are talking about a shell incoming at such an angle as to be able to pierce the decks of a warship. On the largest ships this would have to be above 20 to 25 degrees descent angle to penetrate. Higher velocity guns fire at a flatter trajectory than lower velocity guns. Now in the case of HMS Hood there was nothing similar to what happened at Jutland. British ammo handling practices had been wholly and completely changed after Jutland and this did NOT happen again. So with the Jutland part out of the way... let's get onto HMS Hood herself. After the Battle of Jutland, HMS Hood's build was stopped. She was totally redesigned with the addition of 5000 tons of extra armour and her keel was re-laid 3 months later on the 1st September 1916. She had with the various additions, in all reality, ceased to be a Battlecruiser. She kept the DESIGNATION as Battlecruiser right up until WW2. The Royal Navy designation for a "Fast Battleship" ( that being a Capital Warship with the speed of a Battlecruiser, but the protection of a full Battleship) was Battlecruiser. (See Note 1 in Appendix 1 on Fast Battleships and Battlecruisers and Note 2 in Appendix 1 on BB and BC Armour differences) To put this into perspective the G3 Battlecruisers, had they been built, would have been the most powerful Warships on the planet. Yet due to their speed they were DESIGNATED Battlecruisers. The same would have applied had the RN built the Iowa class in the 20's. In fact, when HMS Hood was commissioned she was pretty much the most powerful single capital unit on the planet. She was the most heavily armoured and protected warship in the RN until the launch of the Nelson class, with protection in vertical, deck, and underwater, wholly superior to that of the Queen Elizabeth class. There are multiple sources for this, including the DNC and the Admiralty, her designer D’Eyncourt and can be found in books by Maurice Northcott, Raven and Roberts, and Friedman, not to mention any actual study of Hood’s design and specs. Now jump to 1941. HMS Hood was 21 years old and well overdue for a major refit/rebuild. We have a vague idea what this would have entailed ( looking at HMS Renown is a good starter), but the ideas were only vaguely written down and no official plans yet drawn up. HMS Hood was struggling with her engineering plant ( the boilers were past due, but her turbines were still good ) and her fire control was overdue updating. However she was still faster than the KGV's , and had one of the finest and best trained crews in Page 1 FINAL Regarding HMS Hood and the Battle of Denmark Strait By Buzz Beurling the RN. She was a Battleship and as such, she was expected to be used to engage enemy capital units when needed. The main reason for her not getting this refit earlier ( other than the obvious flying the flag escapades and the start of WW2 ) was simply because she was considered far stronger than any of the older ships, and as such the older ships were prioritized modernizing. Bismarck herself although more modern, was riddled with her own flaws. Her decks were just as vulnerable to plunging fire, her armour was barely superior to Hood's, in fact she had a similar main belt, and she was vulnerable to mission kill due to not adequately protecting her communications equipment ( this is the briefest of summaries ). In no way shape or form was HMS Hood incapable of taking her on. Comments such as "she should never have been there" are frankly ridiculous. She wasn't there on her own. There were 2 county class cruisers and the POW ( See Appendix 1, Note 3 Brief summary of POW readiness and combat performance ). The Germans only ever had a 25% success rating and if you played this out 1000 times it would end badly for the Germans. However luck is a huge part of naval combat and luck was not with HMS Hood that day. I won't go into battle tactics in this post. Bismarck's 15inch guns fired a lighter shell than the British but at very high velocity. This gave them a very flat flight trajectory. Much flatter than the RN shells. We know this as we have the Germans OWN gunnery manual for details. As such we know what their armour penetrating characteristics were. ( it's also known that the German shells had issues, for whatever reason, in activating their bursting charge ) They had excellent penetration properties for vertical armour, but to be sure of penetrating Hood's decks she had to be out as far as 25k to 32k yards. Bearing in mind that the longest ever confirmed ship on ship hits ( shared by Warspite and Scharnhorst) was 26k yards, HMS Hood wasn't in too bad a position. In fact Hood's own guns had superior deck penetrating characteristics. HMS Hood had a total of 7 inches of protection over 3 decks above her magazines. Slightly less over her engineering spaces. By 24k yards her magazines were pretty much safe and by just under 22K yards there was simply NO PHYSICAL WAY her magazines were going to suffer a plunging hit. HMS Hood was sunk at 16,500yards. At that range the German shells were "plunging" in at 11 degrees down angle. Let that sink in a little. There is simply no way ( unless you want to change the laws of physics ) that the German shells will penetrate ALL 3 of Hood's decks above her magazines AND her magazine crown. Now... Bismarck's shooting was not good ( an argument for another time ). She had a baring issue. The gunnery officer had abandoned the ladder after 2 salvos and was making adjustments on the fly. The shell of the 5th salvo that hit HMS Hood was going to be a near miss. Unfortunately, HMS Hood had begun her 20 degree turn to port at this time and turned INTO the shell. This turn opened up the length of the ship and she was hit at between 50 degrees and 60 degrees to the horizontal plain ( see Appendix 1 ). Now to put this in perspective. Battleships are designed for broadside engagements. So even if the shell penetrates, the armour is designed to slow it in the most efficient way. The evidence is clear. When you collate the witness statements AND the time frame of what actually happened, there was only ever one way for the German shell to penetrate to Hood's magazines. Page 2 FINAL Regarding HMS Hood and the Battle of Denmark Strait By Buzz Beurling Now it would be helpful to mention certain aspects of Hood's design that enabled Bismarck's shell to do what it did. Firstly the main armoured deck ( Refer to Figure 1 & see Appendix 2 ) curved down at the edges into the 2inch slope. It was known in the 20's that not only was the 2inch slope inadequate ( it was upgraded to 4inches in Renown for example ) but the horizontal deck didn't go all the way out to the edge of the hull abreast the engineering sections as it did abreast the magazines. Had either of these issues been dealt with (and it was relatively simple) it's highly possible the shell would have been deflected away from the engineering spaces. In fact tests by the Admiralty on Hood’s armour mockups prove this very statement. ( see Apendix 2 ) Also HMS Hood in 1939 and 1940 had her AA armament substantially increased. As such this necessitated an enlarged 4-inch magazine. Unlike say Renown whose rebuild had allowed more space within the citadel to Figure 1 - HMS Hood hull armour plan adequately protect her secondary magazines, there was no space in Hood. Please refer to Figure 1 above for the following analysis They were wrapped round the upper Look at the Deck that curves at the end ‘8’. ( See Appendix 2 for Builders level of X magazine and butted up pics ) against the magazine bulkhead. Also That deck needed additional 3 inch plating extending all the way to the hull. they were extended forward behind a That never happened so a shell coming in through the side, wouldn’t be weakly protected bulkhead to the deflected due to the angled deck plate.
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