The Ships of Battlegroup: Great Britain Hood (BB)

Displacement	42,670 tons	Belt Armor	12 inches
Overall Length	860 feet	Deck Armor	3 inches
Beam	104 feet	Main Turret Armor	15 inches
Speed	31 knots	Main Guns	8 × 15″

Laid down on September 1, 1916, launched on August 22, 1918 and commissioned in May 1920, the ship carried a main armament of eight 15 inch main guns mounted in two centerline superfiring twin turrets forward and two aft. Hood was the final comment on Jackie Fisher’s flawed battlecruiser idea. She was laid down three months after the Battle of Jutland was fought, but the results of that battle (three British battlecruisers blowing up with horrific losses) led to a hurried but inadequate redesign that included 5,000 tons of extra armor and integral antitorpedo bulges.

The name "Hood", the third of that name in the Royal Navy, honored a number of Hoods who served with distinction in the Royal Navy, including the very distinguished Admiral Samuel Hood (1724–1816) and one who went down with the battlecruiser Invincible at the Battle of Jutland.

A large and extremely attractive ship, her size and big guns made her, on paper, a match for the much later German Bismarck class, but her design deficiencies proved fatal. Between the wars, in addition to much cruising in home waters, Hood made a world tour in the early 1920s and served on the Spanish neutrality patrol during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s. There she took a hit from a shore battery that was never repaired.  Since this was over one of her secondary gun magazines, there is a supposition that this was a possible hit for the fatal blow that killed her.  She was hit by a German bomb on September 26, 1939 but damage was very minor. After a refit to add antiaircraft guns in early 1940, Hood joined Force "H" at Gibraltar and participated in the attack on the French squadron at Mers-el-Kebir. The French battleship Bretagne was sunk, Dunkerque and Provence were badly damaged but battlecruiser Strasbourg escaped to sea when Hood stripped a turbine while in pursuit.

In the early spring of 1941, Hood had radar added. On May 21, 1941 Hood and Prince of Wales sortied from Scapa Flow to chase the new German battleship Bismarck. Much inked has been spilled since May 24, 1941 when Bismarck sank the "Mighty ‘ood"; but the general consensus is that her loss was due to the after 15 inch magazines blowing up as a result of a nearby 4 inch secondary magazine being penetrated by one of Bismarck’s 15 inch shells. In point of fact, Hood’s protection scheme, especially her deck armor, was noticeably deficient and some theories lay her loss to a mere 8 inch shell from the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugene . Numerous plans to modernize her and rectify her shortcomings were cancelled due to her constant use as a flagship between the wars in "showing the flag" and overawing the other navies of the world with the power and prestige of the Royal Navy. In the end, it seems she succumbed to the same flaws that destroyed His Majesty’s battlecruisers at the Battle of Jutland.

For other "battlecruisers" that served in World War II, see: Dunkerque, Gneisenau, Guam, Haruna, Hiei, Kirishima, Kongo, Repulse and Scharnhorst .

For a further discussion of what happened to the battleships of World War One, see the Introduction to these articles.