One of the best ships and battles of all time you can go to www.hmshood.com
Excellent site, well done for this find and welcome aboard.
Thanks for the greeting fyi william golding who wrote lord of the flies was in this battle he was on board one of the destroyers that sank the bismark.
Thanks for the greeting fyi william golding who wrote lord of the flies was in this battle he was on board one of the destroyers that sank the bismark.[/quote]
Haha I just finished readin Lord of the flies in school. But I didn’t like it :? it was crappy in my opinion.
Didn’t know about Golding taking part in the battle.
Thanks for the greeting fyi william golding who wrote lord of the flies was in this battle he was on board one of the destroyers that sank the bismark.[/quote]
Haha I just finished readin Lord of the flies in school. But I didn’t like it :? it was crappy in my opinion.
Didn’t know about Golding taking part in the battle.[/quote]
I just finished reading it as well! I can tell that me and Mr. Golding just don’t meet eye to eye :roll: Anyway nice site, and welcome aboard!
For what it’s worth my Great Uncle served on the Hood in the inter-war years. I’m not sure exactly when (he died a few months after I was born) but the odds are overwhelmingly that he was transferred off long before Denmark Strait.
Might say that I show a short sinking of the Bismark. That sadly sunk the Hood.
although it was a short battle it was historic.
only 3 out of 1,415 crewmen survived, only one of them are still living, TED BRIGGS.
one died in the 60s the other in 2002 and ted is the last one
wasn’t briggs the signaller?
i…think so.
Interesting site thanks.
The film of the battle at http://www.hmshood.com/ship/history/bshood/film.html was incredible - I didn’t realise that this existed. The huge clouds of smoke when Bismarck fired its main armament were bigger than the ship itself - wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that lot. Quite sobering at the end to see the German crew celebrating whilst such huge loss of life had just taken place.
A question -
Somewhere - presumably in the Atlantic somewhere - the film shows Prinz Eugen being refuelled by an oiler the “Spichern”. The oiler seems to be on its own, does anyone know anything about the casualty rates on this type of vessel as it looks a lonely and dangerous type of a job to me. I’d imagine that casualty rates would be somewhat like those for the U boats themselves but am just guessing? I read an account once of a merchant convoy (might have been going through the Med to Malta) when one of the tankers got torpedoed, oil being lighter than water just spread for miles as a thin burning sheet which gave little chance of survival for anyone in the water or in a life boat. Anyone have any stats or info on the oilers?
TIA
IIRC it depended rather a lot on exactly what fraction of oil it was carrying. Aviation fuel is of course highly explosive, and fuel oil is IIRC toxic if swallowed. However, I’ve also seen accounts of tankers surviving damage that would have sunk any other type of ship (even warships) due to the very very high level of compartmentalisation inherent in the design. A very good example of this is the tanker Ohio on one of the Malta convoys during WW2 - it survived at least one torpedo hit and multiple hits from bombs, etc. and still made port. Note that in this photo the Ohio’s decks are awash, and it was lashed between two destroyers to keep it afloat when it actually arrived in Grand Harbour. It was sufficiently damaged that it never went back into service however, and was scuttled near to Malta after the war.
Incidentally, it’s worth reading up on that particular convoy. The 5 merchant ships that did get through to Malta of the 14 that left the Clyde carried enough supplies that get Malta running again and turn the tide of battle in North Africa. Of these 5, 3 were damaged - the rest of the merchant ships in the convoy were all sunk.
The losses the RN was prepared to take to get convoys through to Malta are also pretty staggering (in this convoy alone, they consisted of 1 aircraft carrier, 2 cruisers sunk and a destroyer sunk, with 1 aircraft carrier, 2 cruisers and 4 destroyers damaged).
HMS Hood, the pride of the RN until it sunk in '41…
Superb ship indeed
my Mother and Father both visited the lovely Hood when it was here in Sydney. before the war.
was probably beginning to sprout 4"AA /DP guns by then.
Mind you as an aside - I still don’t see how you can make
what has been found down below
disprove an 8 inch hit or 2 from PE (more probable at least), that began it.
While I’m not sure that the high angle of descent PE’s APBC shells did have had in this period was actually steep enough to go down inside through a funnel.
But there is the lack of a typical whoomph-CRACK of a lot of propellant going up! IE a ship blowing up.
If 4" magazines had gone off on either side of a boiler room could that give us a boiler explosion? too?
it clearly came seriously apart - and disappeared, quite suddenly!
As an aside, the island of Malta was also given a George Cross as a whole for their efforts during the war.
for much of the war, iirc, the island was defended by 3 Gloster Gladiator biplanes before some spits reached the island.
HMS Hood suffered from a possible brittle iron used in her construction (incidentally the same sort of iron used on RMS Titanic) and the fact that her turrets were directly connected to the magazine. Which allowed the flash back the destroyed her. Most of her younger sisters had one or more flash doors that provided a fire break to prevent such an explosion.
Edit to add. after seeing last post.
Boiler explosions that are fatal to ships of this size, class etc, are (I think) usually caused by sea water hitting hte boilers, causing the explosion.
The 3 aircraft quoted were Sea Gladiators called Faith, Hope and Charity. It was a myth that they were they only defence but it added to the courage of the garrison and islanders showed during a very difficult time.
The Hood ‘weakness’ of steel has also been shown as cobblers, she was as strong as an ox and it was the flash suppression within the ammunition hoists that PROBABLY caused the massive explosion that sank her. We’ll never know for sure.
Hood never had any sisters, she was one of a kind. In my humble opinion the most beautiful ship ever built.
Links provided if requested or you can Google it yourself 
Her sisters that I referred to were other battleships, not neceesarily actual sisters of the same class.
How would the flash suppression cause the explosion?
Ok, sorry, didn’t want to be pedantic but was. A ‘sister’ ship is a one that is built to the same class (Hood) as opposed to the same type (Battlecruiser). When Hood was was built there were 4 others planned/laid down but were cancelled or scrapped post war.
Given the disaster of the battle of Jutland (for the Battlecruisers) there was an inquiry into British losses post WW1 and one of the reasons the Germans lost less ships in that battle was because their flash protection down the ammunition hoists. If a turret was hit the any explosion that detonated the bag charges could only go as far as the next barrier down to the magazine and this was done by flaps that stopped this. Germans had more, Brits had less. You’d think that they’d have learned but wouldn’t put my shirt on it. Hood was due a massive re-build in 1939 so cant say that this modification was carried out.
Will look at this again for links and will post what I find, won’t leave you hanging, no probs.