The War at Sea tonight

[alant]

The Hood's demise is thought to have been via ' plunging shot ' dropping vertically through the thinly armoured deck straight onto a magazine, a known problem even in Nelson's day.

Seeing as a battleship's guns have a range of around 15 miles, and a carrier's aircraft with bombs and anti-ship missiles have a range of aound 400 miles +, my money would be on the carrier which anyway has escorts with missiles good for 40 miles +.

Nobody anywhere operates battleships any more, but carriers are increasingly popular, for example Russia, China and India are building big ones as fast as they can...

Plunging shot, was the official reason, but disputed since.

"An extensive review of these theories (excepting that of Preston) is given in Jurens's 1987 article. Its main conclusion is that the loss was almost certainly precipitated by the explosion of a 4-inch magazine, but that there are several ways this could have been initiated, although he rules out the boat deck fire or the detonation of her torpedoes as probable causes. In Jurens's opinion, the popular image of plunging shells penetrating Hood* '​s deck armour is inaccurate, as by his estimation the angle of fall of Bismarck* '​s 15-inch shells at the moment of the loss would not have exceeded about 14°, an angle so unfavourable to penetration of horizontal armour that it is actually off the scale of contemporaneous German penetration charts. Moreover, computer-generated profiles of Hood show that a shell falling at this angle could not have reached an aft magazine without first passing through some part of the belt armour. On the other hand, the 12-inch belt could have been penetrated, if Hood had progressed sufficiently far into her final turn.^[85]"

 

[jac]

Plunging shot, was the official reason, but disputed since.

"An extensive review of these theories (excepting that of Preston) is given in Jurens's 1987 article. Its main conclusion is that the loss was almost certainly precipitated by the explosion of a 4-inch magazine, but that there are several ways this could have been initiated, although he rules out the boat deck fire or the detonation of her torpedoes as probable causes. In Jurens's opinion, the popular image of plunging shells penetrating Hood* '​s deck armour is inaccurate, as by his estimation the angle of fall of Bismarck* '​s 15-inch shells at the moment of the loss would not have exceeded about 14°, an angle so unfavourable to penetration of horizontal armour that it is actually off the scale of contemporaneous German penetration charts. Moreover, computer-generated profiles of Hood show that a shell falling at this angle could not have reached an aft magazine without first passing through some part of the belt armour. On the other hand, the 12-inch belt could have been penetrated, if Hood had progressed sufficiently far into her final turn.^[85]"

Certainly at Jutland, one of the reasons for the Queen Mary and the Indefatigable exploding was poor handling of the shells.

The RN prioritised speed of fire over safety (and accuracy apparently) and this led to short cuts - e.g. Blast doors / curtains not being closed, too much ready use ammo. Not sure of this but iirc speed was still a high priority in the interwar years so could well be that Hood (which had been in service since 1919 ) may still have bent some of the rules to maintain her rate of fire.

 

[Douglas T]

If one reads about the battle of Jutland neither side comes out too well but on balance it might just have been a win for the Germans.

In WWII Hitler's cruisers and the 2 battleships were said to have more accurate radar guided gunnery, - see HMS Hood - but it didn't help Bismark much against the RN's response of plastering with 15" shells from battleships and 6" from cruisers all around, with air dominance and torpedos.

Bismark was sunk by King George V (14" Shells) and Rodney (16" Shells). Only 15" guns the Bismark ever faced was Hood.
Ok I am nit picking!

 

[jac]

Bismark was sunk by King George V (14" Shells) and Rodney (16" Shells). Only 15" guns the Bismark ever faced was Hood.
Ok I am nit picking!

Although should be stated that without the FAA and the torpedo strike that rendered her uncontrollable they would probably not have sunk her as they would have been unable to catch her.

 

[Biggles Wader]

Not to forget the gunnery didnt sink her,Dorsetshires torpedos did.Or if you believe some commentators,she was scuttled by her crew.
One thing to learn from it is that battleships were already obselete by this time,and had been for well over a decade,yet we still went on building them.They were too vulnerable to air attack(and submarines to some extent)which made them expensive liabilities.Plenty of lessons for current military thinking if only we had the intelligent leaders to learn them.

 

[Monique]

I love maritime warfare... if I controlled the budget strings, I would have a Navy composed of hunter/killer subs and ICBM capable "boomer" boats.

Surface vessels are nothing but targets for subs.

Air Force = ARM capable aircraft and loads of ground attack aircraft. Some high spec Interceptors.

ARMY= some real fighters capable of dealing effectively with the realities of our times.... Lots of PC about... which according to Roosevelt was "the delusional concept of the medias which suggests that you can pick up a turd by its clean end"