Comments by "" (@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684) on "The Loss of HMS Hood - But why did it blow up??" video.

  1. Thats the popular perception, but Hood had the same armour as the likes of HMS Warspite, as well as being 8-9 knots faster.
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  2. Dear oh dear. There's little evidence or belief of the Hood sinking due to the British. Now if you're talking about Bismarck then modern day nazi fantasist children believe that the British had nothing to do with that either.
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  3.  @THINKincessantly  To continue in your ludicrous depiction of the situation, please explain who exactly was the "bully"? HMS Hood & PoW fearlessly confronting a heavily armed and armoured battleship? Or your so called "silent German" who was trying to avoid the "big boys" while "going equipped" and fully focussed on the slaughter of unarmed merchant shipping in international waters? In future think through your logic before commiting your nonsense to type.
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  4. MY word thats a WHOLE lot of nonsense there... I'll have to take some days off work to rebut all that fantasy.
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  5. "Compared to the Bismark the Hood was old and outdated" Bismarck 8 x 15in guns HMS Hood 8 x 15in guns Bismarck 12.6in belt armour & 4in deck armour laid out in an "incremental armour" design. HMS Hood 12in belt armour (though angled to give 13in of armour protection) & 3in deck armour laid out in an "incremental armour" design. Bismarck 29 knots HMS Hood 30 knots (in 1941) Bismarck was largely of the same generation of capital ships as was Hood.
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  6. OH stop talking BS about thigs you have no understanding of.
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  7. Complete bollocks Tom. Hood was an Admiral Class batttlecruiser, and as closely matched to the Indefatigable class of WW1, As I am to Mike Tyson. Start again and do some more research, instead of spouting simple Brit hating nonsense.
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  8. No.
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  9. No it wasn't Hood's wooden deck that was the problem.... It was her oarsmen who had tired themselves out after her sails had been torn in the north Atlantic storms.
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  10. Answer: a million to one shell hit. In her turn Bismarck was then crippled by a biplane, and then mostly dismantled by an RN battleship 13 years older than her that possessed better armour and firepower. "Mighty" is subjective.
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  11. What has 1776 and the US war of independence got to do with Britain fighting nazi Germany alone while the US sat and watched?
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  12.  @pluss400  Dear oh dear. What about Hood's oarsmen? Maybe they weren't rowing fast enough? or what if the crewmen didn't set the main sail quickly enough? Have you considered those possibilities?
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  13. What relationship does Hood's demise have to do with Jutland?
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  14. More nonsense. Remember the saying "It's better to be quiet and thought a fool, that to talk nonsense and remove all doubt".
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  15. Wrong on BOTH counts.
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  16. The last reported sighting of V/Adm Holland was by Ted Briggs as he exited the bridge, sitting calmly & silently in his commander's chair with his head lowered, as if in resignation.
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  17. It stood every chance... what couldn't be accounted for was "one in a million luck" on behalf of the German side.
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  18. Wrong battle, that was Jutland, there's absolutely NO evidence it was the case at Denmark Strait.
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  19. The Royal Navy.... policing the abolition of the slave trade around the world's oceans for over 200 years.
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  20.  @tank3.095  "Hey look don't get all shirty because the RN smashed the French navy at Trafalgar" seems about as "funny" and "relevant" as your remark. Just saying.
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  21.  @WorshipinIdols  Before you gush too much over the performance of the German gunners (which you'll notice I have never said was anything but excellent), you've conveniently missed out other factors that throw a shadow over your suggested hit rates, not the least being that only 2 hits were conclusively confirmed on HMS Hood. First of all look at the total number of rounds fired by each ship. BOTH the British ships had unfortunately had their "T's crossed" and so were firing a total of 10 main barrels against the two German ships who being broadside onto the British ships were in return able to muster 16 main barrels (including 8 of Prinz Eugen's 203mm guns with almost DOUBLE the RoF of the larger battleships guns) as well as 12 secondary barrels to fire back at the British, resulting in a far larger volume of fire at the British ships than was fired at the Germans (even when taking into account the British opening fire first). Secondly you've also failed to take into account the misbehaviour of PoW's troublesome 4 barrelled "A" and "Y" turrets, which resulted in PoW actually firing only around two thirds of the shots she should have fired, the figures then start to look very different from the situation you suggest. I do in one of my books have a summary of the number of rounds fired by each ship, and when those numbers are taken into account, the hit rate of all the ships involved is in the area of 4-6% of shots fired. (Apart from Hood who as you know had mistakenly targeted and straddled Prinz Eugen by its fifth salvo before realising its mistake and then starting from square one in retargeting Bismarck). Considering HMS PoW was operating with a completely green crew and with one arm tied behind her back she gave MORE than an excellent account of herself. Both landing the first hit of the engagment and singlehandedly stopping "Exercise Rhine" in its tracks.
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  22.  @WorshipinIdols  1. No I fully intended to use the widely recognised term "incremental armour" which once again succinctly describes the spread of armour across the structure of a ship, but please feel free to use whatever word you wish. "Distributed" will also suffice. 2. No I did not mistake the 380mm hit on PoW's unarmoured bridge for the 150mm hit on the base of her forward starboard HA director. You already appear to have seen the photographs of the damage to PoW's aft funnel, I assumed whilst looking at that you would also find the photos of both the entry and exit points of the 380mm hit on the bridge that killed everyone there apart from Capt Leach and his navigating officer Lt Comm George Rowell. The entry and exit points clearly show the splinter plating of the unarmoured bridge peeled back like a banana skin. 3. PoW's armoured conning tower was sited BELOW the unarmoured bridge that was hit, which in turn was sited below the also unarmoured anti-aircraft control station which topped the bridge superstructure, and is where Lt Esmond Knight was stationed.
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  23.  @WorshipinIdols  I've only just spotted your first reply. The "ALL" of the "all or nothing" armour scheme refers to the "box" that covers the machinery spaces, magazines, shell handling, barbettes and turrets, and the "NOTHING" refers to the rest of the ship. Its pretty self explanatory really. Compare a diagram of the armour distribution on KGV and Nelson classes to that of the German ships. you'll notice that apart from the armoured "box" of the citadel (and one or two minor localised areas on their superstructure) the British battleships have virtually NO thinner armoured areas, as opposed to the German ships using the outdated "incremental" armour scheme, where multiple decks and vertical surfaces have armour of between 1 and 4 inches of armour just ripe enough to activate the fuses of incoming shells whilst not being proof to those same shells, as well as sizeable chunks of much heavier armour dotted around her superstructure. The hit on PoW's bridge as the photos you have no doubt already viewed will attest (they'll be there with the photos of PoW's perforated rear funnel) CLEARLY show the torn splinter plating on BOTH sides of the "flying" bridge and NOT the small area of 4 inch armour you suggest that actually faced the sides of the armoured conning tower 1 deck below. You're ALMOST correct in saying that the main armoured belt of the KGVs covered the area between the front of the A turret barbette and the rearmost point of the Y turret barbette in the same manner as Bismarck, but like Bismarck it did actually extend BEYOND those points with both fore & aft lower belt extensions, as well as having much heavier horizontal deck armour both fore and aft of the main turrets than Bismarck. I thought that we'd established that the idea of picking specific areas of a ship to target from 9 miles away was very much in the realm of "fantasy land", as the target you're aiming for is simply "the ship", with the precise point of impact being in the lap of the gods. Your erroneous "one bullseye is a lucky hit, 2 bullseye’s is skill and quality"s is once again drifting into the area of "nazi fanboism". You do realise that buying 2 lottery tickets does not halve the odds of winning, it merely gives you two chances at exactly the SAME outlandish odds that one ticket gives you. in the same manner two lucky shots are exactly that... two lucky shots. You cannot use a blunderbus of 8 x 15in shells to "snipe a bullseye" from 9 miles away. I'm glad you've given a fair appraisal of Bismarck's design, I'd equally like to state that I am NOT ignorantly attempting to diminish the quality of the German gunnery at Denmark Strait, but merely hoping to "keep it real".
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  24.  @WorshipinIdols  Look up "circular error probability" ... the RADIUS (and NOT the diameter)of a circle within which 50% of the impacts of a weapons projectiles can be expected to land.
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  25.  @WorshipinIdols  So now you've changed your original assertion from "Bismarck's hit wasn't luck but skill", to "everyone has a degree of luck". Thats fine by me. Of course the specific point of impact of ANY shell at longer ranges is affected by luck. The skill in long range naval gunnery is simply getting the shells within a couple of hundred feet of your intended target, the rest is providence. As for Bismarck "scoring hits with every salvo" that means that Bismarck must've only fired 3 salvoes at PoW, as that is the number of hits she achieved, when the truth is that there were plenty of salvoes that scored no hits (which is not to mock German gunnery, its just the nature of the game ), and as we agree none of the three hits detonated as intended, due to the design of PoW's armour scheme. Seems your entrallment with the German ships knows no bounds, attributing torpedoes to Bismarck (she had none fitted) and Prinz Eugen Who at no point during the Denmark Strait engagement was anywhere near in range to use her G7a TI steam torpedos even at their lowest speed setting. In what way do you consider that the RN "lost the battle"? Because of the loss of the Hood? What about the fact that Hood and PoW were tasked with preventing the German ships from breaking out into the Atlantic, and as a result of the action "operation Rhineübung" was stopped in its tracks and Bismarck then had to futilely run for its life back to France? Job done. Its the same reason that the RN won the battle of Jutland. German high seas fleet sets out to ambush the Home fleet with a view to breaking the RN North sea blockade, the RN suffers heavier losses BUT the blockade remains intact and the German fleet skulks back to port never to show its face again (except when it was surrendering to the RN at Scapa Flow).
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  26. No there was a HUGE amount of luck involved in Bismarck's hit on Hood's magazine. A full salvo of main gun fire from a battleship is analogous to a scatter of lead shot from a shotgun. During the battle of Denmark Strait, the Bismarck aimed at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of her shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse (think of it as a stretched circle, due to the angle of fall of the shells) measuring approximately 200m (660ft) wide, (or to put it another way 76% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by more than two thousand feet long. The other 4 shots would land even further away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that its believed triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution". A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter. Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet is complete luck. The idea of HMS PoW not being more heavily damaged because of the failure of the German fuses, was less to do with luck and much more to do with the KGV class's "all or nothing" armour scheme. PoW was hit by a total of seven German shells during the battle of Denmarck Strait and not ONE of them detonated as designed. This is because in the "all or nothing" system of armouring only the most vital "citadel" is heavily armoured, the rest of the ship's superstructure being comprised of standard naval "splinter" plating. This meant that a shell hitting non vital areas of the ship, instead of having their fuse activated by the shock of impacting on a substantial piece of armour instead passed through without detonating (or only partially detonating or with a delayed detonation) menaing that far less damage was inflicted on the ship.
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  27.  @akaj188  There were no British aircraft involved in the final battle on the 27th May, in fact Jack Tovey specifically ordered them to keep away. So that scuppers your rationale for why Bismarck made such a truly pathetic showing with her "superb German gunnery" in her final battle.
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  28. Some of us need more detail.... others don't. I'm sure there's a unicorn waiting somewhere for your attention.
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  29. No. At the start of the Denmark Strait encounter Prinz Eugen's chief gunnery officer (Korvettenkapitan Paulus Jasper) misidentified the two royal navy ships as "heavy cruisers" and consequently ordered the loading of high explosive rounds, when the 2 British ships were subsequently correctly identitified, he forgot to order a change to armour piercing rounds, and so for the whole Denmark strait battle Prinz Eugen was firing high explosive, which did not have the penetrating power to cause decisive damage to the British ships. Secondly both German ships initially concentrated their fire on HMS Hood, and both quickly obtained hits on her, but while they were busy doing that the untargetted HMS Prince of Wales landed several hits on Bismarck, and so Admiral Lütjens in Bismarck ordered Prinz Eugen to switch target to Prince of Wales, and this was who she was firing at when HMS Hood blew up.
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  30. Ask the inhabitants of Dresden and 50 other German cities if the Avro Lancaster was "deficient". The Spitfire had the range necessary to blow thousands of "superior" luftwaffe aircraft out of the sky. Please name a modern British battleship that was more than mildly inconvenienced by the Germans. The sten gun, like the T-34 and sherman showed that production numbers instead of "technical excellence" won WW2. The matilda was the only tank in 1940 that put the fear of god into the Germans, luckily for them they'd already created AP ammo for their 88s. Cry harder wehraboo, we LOVE it !!!
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  31. Declan's history of WW2..... The Allies won.
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  32.  @lumberlikwidator8863  Hood WAS a surprisingly well defended warship when you take into consideration the continual uninformed BS spoken by commenters over many years and now in these threads. "she was a battlecruiser the same as those lost at Jutland"..... "she had no armour" .... even some idiots who opine that "she had wooden decks" and others that seem to consider her equal to Renown and Repulse!!! Hood was an evolution of battlecruiser theory. Post Jutland her uparmoured redesign took her into the new realm of the fast battleship. a THIRD of her 46000 displacement was armour, when launched she was as well armoured as the Queen Elizabeth class battleships, such as HMS Warspite that had survived everything the Kaiser's navy could throw at her when at Jutland her steering motors overheated and she circled alone twice in front of the entire WW1 German battle fleet, and then went on into WW2 surviving encounters with Italian battleships and nazi glider bombs. Hood was as far removed from the likes of the WW1 Tiger and Indefatigable class battlecruisers as I am from a ballet dancer (and thats a VERY long way). The RN's nomenclature for Hood as a "battlecruiser" was entirely down to her speed, which outstripped all her WW1 battleship cohort by a factor of 7-8 knots, and not based on her being "lightly armoured". Bismarck belt armour = 12.6 inches Hood belt armour = 12 inches (Though angled so as to give 13 inches of protection). Bismarck armoured deck = 4 inches Hood armoured deck = 3 inches Hood's vertical armour was well upto the average standard of contemporary battleships fielded in WW2 equalling the North Carolinas and South Dakotas of the Late 30s early 40s, her weakest aspect was her horizontal deck armour, but Holland knowing this had raced to close on Bismarck and had escaped the "danger zone" of plunging fire, only to be then hit by a million to one shot that likely found an obscure "achilles heel" in her vertical armour. So what that Hood couldn't catch German WW2 heavy cruisers? She had been designed to catch WW1 German cruisers which she could? Guess what NO German capital ship could catch RN heavy cruisers, so what's your point?
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  33. "wooden decks" FFS!!!
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  34. That was never in dispute.
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  35. More nonsense.
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  36.  @stephenjones6500  Sorry Stephen, but its utter nonsense. NO naval gun has a "fall of shot" of anywhere near 90°. At maximum elevation shells from the 20.3 cm/60 SK C/34 had an angle of fall of just under 49°, besides there being utterly NO evidence of such a ludicrous event happening. Naval guns are NOT mortars.
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  37. If you're not already aware Tony, the HMS Hood association website hosts individual memorial pages for each recorded member of Hood's crew, including both those onboard at the time of her sinking, and any who had served previously onboard her. The association is ALWAYS looking for confirmed pictures of the individual sailors to place on their memorial pages.
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  38. It wasn't the "Beano" was it?
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  39.  @tonyduncan3243  If you have his name you may still find him on the association website. All the best.
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  40.  @steriskyline4470  No proof required, Martijn is obviously a fully certified youtube comment section naval warfare expert. His word is law. (but also bullshit).
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  41. Good to hear another convert to this rationale. The "plunging shot through the deck armour" theory has been queried for a number of years. At the range of the fatal hit, that is approx 8-9 miles, and using historic gunnery data for the 38 cm SK C/34 at that range gives an angle of fall somewhere in the region of 10-14 degrees from the horizontal (the 4 degree spread of angle being caused by uncertainty regarding Hood's turn that she had just initiated), which was wholly incapable of penetrating even Hood's 3 inch deck armour at the given range. She had the same armour scheme as a "Queen Elizabeth" battleship such as HMS Warspite, a ship that as well and taking everything that the German High Seas Fleet could throw at her during the battle Jutland in WW1, also happily exchanged blows with Italian battleships and nazi glider bombs in the Med in WW2 and sailed through it all. The fact is that a million to one shot from Bismarck was landed on an obscure "Achilles heel" in Hood's vertical armour which almost certainly triggered off a domino effect magazine explosion.
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  42. The "plunging shot through the deck armour" theory has been discounted for many years. At the range of the fatal hit, that is approx 8-9 miles, and using the German's own gunnery data for the 38 cm SK C/34 at that range gives an angle of fall somewhere in the region of 10-13 dgrees from the horizontal, which was wholly incapable of penetrating even Hood's 3 inch deck armour at the given range.
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  43. By using your rationale, I will now recount the life of Socrates. "He was born, then lived for a while, and then died"...... Who needs to know anything more?
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  44.  @akaj188  Strange how the "super German gunnery" failed to land a single shot on any of the 4 RN ships that ripped her to pieces on the 27th May. But to make up for the nazis poor showing the RN pumped over 400 shells into the mediocre nazi tub.
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  45. What you're describing is a distributed armour scheme, the very same layout of armour that was used on Bismarck herself.
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  46.  @jamesfahy-pl2cv  Well the producers of those documentaries must not have researched the subject thoroughly enough. You've now been provided with the correct figures from the Germans own A.V.K. d. KM (Artillerie Versuchs Kommando der Kriegsmarine) that show V/Adm Holland HAD cleared the "danger zone" of plunging fire.
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  47. That's fine for the people with goldfish attention spans. More intelligent people like to discuss things in more depth. Does your "account of WW2" go something like "Nazi Germany fucked about and found out..... the end"?
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  48. It would be fair to say that a main magazine detonation in ANY warship is going to be a bad day.
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  49. How do you send in torpedo aircraft when there are no aircraft carriers within range?
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  50. You're comparing apples with oranges. Read a bit more about the subject and you wil discover the glaring differences between Hood and the Invincibles/Indefatigables.
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  51. The wreck was rediscovered in 2001, and lays in 9000ft of water. Due to the nature of her destruction the wreck of the Hood is severely damaged and lying in 3 main pieces. If you search for HMS Hood 2001 expedition you'll find a lot of material to read.
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  52. The amount of effort required by the RN was more a testimony to the difficulty of finding a single ship in the vastness of the 41 million square mile Atlantic at a time when there were no satellites and only rudimentary radar and air covereage was available. The lion's share of luck went to Bismarck with her million to one hit on Hood's magazine.
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  53. But strangely they failed to land a single hit on any British warship 3 days later... just before Bismarck was torn apart.
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  54. Remember that the RN finished WW2 FAR stronger than it began, meanwhile the kriegmarine effectively ceased to exist after 1943. The small number of telling blows landed on the RN by the kreigsmarine prior to its destruction is akin to my walking up and landing one on Mike Tyson, shortly before I spend the rest of my life on a life support machine.
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  55.  @lumberlikwidator8863  I suppose it must be tedious having the yawning gaps in your self proclaimed naval "knowledge" highlighted for any interested parties to see. All I saw was your BS reply when the completely obvious nonsense you typed in was pointed out to you. Now go take yourself away to whichever quotations website you use in lieu of genuine wit in search for a pithy reply.
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  56. If you hunt down an old game called "Atlantic Fleet" on steam it provides a much simplified but passable naval gunnery simulation and a recreation of the Denmark Strait engagement.
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  57. Superior firepower?
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  58. Respects to the service and sacrifice of your great uncle, Oliver. I'm sure it was an emotional, poignant pilgrimage to his final resting place.
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  59.  @alexlupsor5484  Because its a nonsense question. Why would you imagine that sufficient heat to melt through multiple armoured decks would be generated by a fire in open air? Even if you used a thermite well it would be hard pressed to melt through multiple layers of armour. The gout of flame in front of Hood's main mast that was witnessed shortly before the deflagration was the energy from the magazines venting via the path of least resistance, that being the comprimised bulkheads between the main 15in magazine the 4" HA magazine and the aft engineroom bulkhead then from there venting upwards through the machinery space ventilation trunking which emerged just forward of Hood's main mast.
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  60.  @lumberlikwidator8863  Where's the real "lumberlikwidator" gone? He was holding his own with a reasonable side of a discussion, to be replaced with the "argument" of a 14 year old. Looks like you ran out of road.
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  61. Ashwani, still pumping out his love of fascism.
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  62. ​ @tank3.095  What reaction do you think I would get if I went onto a thread about the USS Arizona or the USS Indianapolis and start making stupid comments about Americans? Dunno about you, but making light of thousands of tragic deaths is not big. I'm British but even so don't particularly laugh at the deaths of the 2000 German sailors who died during this episode. There's no shortage of comedy threads on YT. Try them.
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  63. Hey Look !!! Another completely clueless commenter talking complete bullshit about a subject he has not the faintest knowledge of !!!
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  64.  @akaj188  You believe that while everyone else knows that Bismarck's final battle began at 8:45am on 27th May 1941. Regarding "Bismarck's superb gunnery" as you put it, and hits landed by both sides during that battle, the score was as follows... Bismarck - 0 Royal Navy - 400
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  65. RN ships rescued as many survivors as they could in a hostile sea, the same cannot be said for the German battleships Scharhorst and Gniesenau on 8th June 1940.
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  66. Germany started the fight in 1939 HiMO.
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  67. "Penny pinching"? She was one of the most expensive ships ever built at the time of her construction, and was brought down by a million to one shot that hit an obscure weakness in her vertical armour.
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  68. Whilst forgetting to mention the imperial pretentions of each and every European power from the 16th to 20th centuries. Read about the centuries long rape of the Spanish colonies, or Belgian abuses in the Congo, Dutch mistreatment of the locals in Indonesia. German atrocities in East Africa or French despotism in North Africa and SE Asia or indeed the concerted destruction of "first nation Americans" first at the hands of European colonists, then to completion by the modern United States of America. Unless, that is, you're not interested in "context" and your only agenda is pouring scorn on the UK. P.S The German battleship was named "Bismarck".
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  69. History of WW2....... the allies won.
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  70. Was she? HMS Warspite and the rest of the Queen Ellizabeths were commisioned years earlier than Hood and all served admirably through WW2. What the problem was was that the "QE"s were modernised interwar, while Hood was in such demand during the interwar period that she only received much smaller upgrades.
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  71.  @justhimo2728  The first shots of the battle of Denmark Strait were fired by HMS Hood & HMS Prince of Wales, BUT you must understand that Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were NOT taking German pensioners out on a sight seeing cruise around the Atlantic and Caribbean, their mission was to destroy international civilian cargo shipping travelling across the Atlantic to supply Britain, the very thing that the Royal Navy existed to protect.
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  72. You guessed wrong.
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  73. Quite simply Norfolk and Suffolk were tailing the Germans who were steaming at close to maximum speed, consequently the British cruisers had only a small speed advantge with which to close in the stern chase. Norfolk did manage to loose off a few salvoes near the end of the engagement, but they fell far short.
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  74. There has NEVER been a "cope" about Hood detonating due to a gunnery accident. It's a very slim, outside possibility due to erratic behaviour that was spotted with relation to "X" turret shortly before the detonation that destroyed her. It was always been widely accepted that she was sunk due to a shell from Bismarck. You (or argumentative self professed "experts" in modern day forums), appear to be making a debate where none really exists.
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  75.  @ellsworth1956  Hood after her mid build redesign effectively had the same armour scheme as a QE battleship, the same as HMS Warspite, who as well as withstanding everything the high seas fleet could throw at her during Jutland in WW1, was equally happy exchanging blows with Italian battleships, and nazi glider bombs during WW2. On top of which Hood was 7 knots faster. While your general point of battle cruisers being an evolutionary dead-end is not in question, the fact of the matter is that Hood, inspite of worn out machinery was still a formidible opponent for Bismarck, but unfortunately a million to one shot from Bismarck uncovered an obscure achilles heel in Hood's vertical armour, which led to her demise. The idea of likening Hood to a WW1 Indefatigable class is akin to likening an Aston Martin to a Morris Minor.
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  76.  @jamesfahy-pl2cv  The most likely explanation to date is one explained very well by Drachinifel himself. https://youtu.be/CLPeC7LRqIY All the best James.
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  77. Being in an enclosed space close to 100 tons of detonating cordite n the middle of the stormy Atlantic is not a good place to be.
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  78. The RN did not have the luxury to wait for other ships to arrive, Bismarck was on the very threshold of the convoy lanes and the wide open expanse of the North Atlantic in which to take evasive action, as she did not want to engage RN warships. The best chance they had to engage the unwilling German ships was in the Denmark strait, bordered as it was to the west by the Greenland ice pack. It was the hit achieved by the PoW that drastically reduced Bismarck's fuel capacity and stopped "Operation Rhine Exercise" in its tracks.
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  79. We are all just a fibre in the thread of our own family history, Mes. Good to see others who also recognise this. All the best.
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  80.  @stephenjones6500  The blowlamp like flame was the overpressure of the Hood's deflagrating magazines venting to open air via the machinery spaces ventilation trunking, which was positioned between the mainmast and her second funnel.
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  81.  @roykliffen9674  "YT" kindly didn't notify me of your responses Roy, only just spotted them today. Hood's belt armour was sloped outwardly at 13° so a "heel" to starboard would as you say have increased the angle (and therefore thickness) of Hood's belt armour even further. But as you have also interestingly illustrated the complex internal armour profiles as well as the many other variables involved mean that without any physical evidence (of which there is none) all our talk is purely conjecture... interesting for us though it is. All the best.
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  82. All quite possible, but we will never know the exact details. Hood's 3in deck armour had been shown in the 1920s to be effective against 15in shells impacting at anywhere below 20°. According to the German's own gunnery data at the range that Bismarck's killing shot struck Hood (8-9 nautical miles) the "fall of shot" was in the region of 11° to 13°, so Hood heeling over in a high speed turn to port would theoretically have had to caused her to lean to nearly 10° for her horizontal deck armour to become vulnerable.
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  83. Bill Jurens' work IS indeed of the highest standard. His, together with Drachinifel's contribution to the subject, is probably the best analysis of the subject matter available. With regard to your Aunt's fiance, if you know his name then search out the site of the Hood association (I can't include a link, if I do then YT benevolently delete the post) and there you will find a "memorial page" for every known member of Hood's crew throughout her illustrious 21 year career. Many of the pages contain certified photographs of the individual crewmen and a "potted history" of their naval service. Its a respectful way of honouring the memories of those brave lads, young and old, who lost their lives on that fateful May morning 81 years ago. All the best.
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  84. Whilst concurring with most of your comment, I'd like to add some of my own thoughts. Yes, in the engagement of Bismarck / PE Vs Hood / PoW there was on paper a superiority in RN firepower BUT. 1. The 2 RN heavy cruisers were at no time in gunnery range of the Denmark Strait engagement, being in a tail chasing position and with V/Adm Holland electing to retain radio silence and not communicating his intentions to Wake-Walker in HMS Norfolk. Norfolk did fire a couple of wishful salvoes at the German ships which fell woefully short. 2. The Destroyer escort that had accompanied Hood / PoW had been detached to search northwards for the German ships when Suffolk / Norfolk had temporarily lost contact with the German ships earlier in the night, and as a consequence of their detachment were NOT at the scene of the battle... Though they did arrive shortly after the engagement had concluded and it was the destroyer HMS Electra that finally rescued the three Hood survivors. It's all very easy to make a charge of a "poor management of resources" in hindsight. But I wonder how the many armchair admirals that haunt comments would have handled a high speed interception at long range with the enemy on the very border of his intended scene of operations, in an era before satellites, over the horizon radars, GPS or even comprehensive air coverage, and then just as the plan was falling into place as planned through the "fog of war" the shadowing cruisers lose contact with the quarry shortly before contact, and all the careful plotting of the interception course has come to nought. Sitting on the sidelines picking fault, is a universe away from being in sole command of major units in a bleak stormy North Atlantic with imperfect intelligence to base your decisions on. Holland was not alone in making a "wrong call", Lütjens was in hindsight equally faulty in some of his decisions, in the immediacy of a fast moving dynamic engagement snap decisions have to be made. Make the right one and its "V/Adm Holland, the Hero of Denmark Strait"... make the wrong call and its "Why did the fool do that"?
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  85. Some truth spoken, but with a few questionable comments. "Excess ammo in passageways, flash doors open" Where is your evidence to support that? Please don't say "Jutland" in response. The "light battleship" you mention had the same armour scheme as a Queen Elizabeth battleship, such as HMS Warspite, and sported vertical armour comparable to Bismarck, though admittedly her horizontal armour had been rendered inadequate due to the interwar advances in long range naval gunnery & hence Holland's dash to close on Bismarck. Could you let me know where it says that PoW's 3 hits on Bismarck were all achieved within one salvo? How was the Bismarck going to "complete the destruction of Prince of Wales" when its speed had been reduced to that of PoW and her starboard propeller was broaching above waterline (and shortly afterwards she was forced to reduce speed to 21 knots to repair the damage to her foc'sle that was threatening to collapse her forward bulkheads), on top of which Lütjens rightly concluded that as well as going against his direct orders to avoid combat with RN heavy units, chasing PoW eastwards with zero speed advantage was almost certainly going to bring him into contact with further RN ships sortieing from the Iceland / UK gap and from Scapa Flow. Also at no time did Bismarck even nearly inflict serious damage on Norfolk or Suffolk, who due to their position as stern chasing "shadowers" and despite of a couple of errant salvoes from Norfolk, were out of range to Bismarck.
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  86. Throw a dart at a dartboard fifty yards away, and see if you can hit the bullseye nine times out of ten.
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  87. Ground breaking new theory there. Could you point us to your source for this information?
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  88.  @montanabulldog9687  Where can I access them please?
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  89. A VERY adroit suggestion with one minor drawback.... HMS Hood wasn't fitted with aircraft or catapults at the time of her destruction. The flash in front of the mainmast is most likely to have been the venting off of her burning 4 in secondary magazine initially into her machinery spaces (engine room) which hopefully mercifully killed the engine room crew quickly, and then when the pressure had very quickly risen then vented out through the main engine room ventilation trunking which came up just in front of the mainmast.
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  90.  @lollius88  Almost as much complete nonsense as the OP.
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  91.  @lollius88  No, it was crippled by a British biplane... There's no evidence that British shells had a higher rate of failure during the episode than was usually expected in all navies, But I agree with you the "lucky shot" assessment. I'm all for the truth, and NOT some credulous wehraboo fool. I just like to "keep it real".
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  92.  @dovetonsturdee7033  I've never seen you driven to use such "workplace" language Admiral !!! Granted it was warranted !!!
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  93. There are physical reasons why Bismarck's hits on Hood were not "plunging" enough to penetrate her deck armour. The maximum elevation of Bismarck's main armament was 30 degrees. To achieve "plunging fire" at the range where Hood exploded would need a FAR greater elevation of Bismarck's guns, effectively turning them into king sized mortars. At the elevation of Bismarck's guns during the engagement any shells hitting Hood's deck armour would have impacted at such a shallow angle as to glance off. Theoretically If Bismarck had the facility to fire shells with reduced charges so as to reduce the range of her shells while firing at her guns maximum elevation in order to "drop" them onto Hood's deck, they would have had insufficient kinetic energy to penetrate.
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  94.  @koenvandam1281  As I said, "History of the second world war - The Axis lost" is a very short book.
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  95. And the relation of that story to the sinking of HMS Hood is? Why not post it on a "B-17" thread?
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  96. Do you know his name?
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  97.  @Project_Prescott  I apologise for my late reply. I did reply earlier to your message above but YT LOVES randomly deleting my posts. My now deleted message said... I don't know if you're aware that the HMS Hood association website has a memorial page for EVERY known member of the ship's crew. A lot of these memorial pages contain photographs and history of the individual concerned, and they are a means to keep alive their memory for the future. There currently exists a page for Ordinary Seaman Leonard Moyal Peckham, Service Number: P/JX 158236, born on 04 December 1922 at Fratton, Portsmouth, Hampshire, but unfortunately there is no photograph and no further information. If you have a confirmed family photograph of Leonard the association would be delighted to receive a copy (and any other related information) which they will be only too glad to place on Leonard's page. There is currently NO corresponding page for James William, but if you have his details (service number / dates of service aboard Hood etc) they will create a new page especially for him. I would post a link to Leonard's page, but if I do so Youtube "kindly" delete the message, if you put leonard's name in google, his page at the website will be the first result that will show up. I hope this is of some use to your family. All the best, Project Prescott.
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  98. The question arises that by all reckoning it was almost impossible for the shell to hit the magazine as it was buried deep within the bowels of the ship behind rather a lot of angled armour. Its worth investigating, simplifying things down to meaninglessness is a waste of time. As in "Koen's chronicles of WW2".... The axis lost.
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  99. It was for decades a lazy hypothesis that gained traction, but closer examination shows it to be a VERY unlikely cause of Hood's destruction.
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  100. It was good basic gunnery on behalf of the Bismarck, MASSIVELY compounded by luck.
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  101. Compounded by million to one luck.
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  102. History of WW2.... the nazis lost. The end.
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  103. Considering that HMS Hood had the same armour as contemporary WW1 battleships such as HMS Warspite that had circled alone TWICE while exposed to the concentrated fire of the ENTIRE German battle line during the battle of Jutland and survived, it was indeed a surprise when she was killed by Bismarck's million to one shot at Denmark Strait.
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  104. Very good point Fox. I will have to give some further reading & thought to that point.
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  105. No miracle involved in Germany's recovery. Just BILLIONS of dollars of US investment and stabilisation to rebuild the bulwark to stop the further westward advancement of the soviets post WW2.
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  106. The era of battleships was rapidly coming to an end for ALL nations. Britain's aging battle wagons gave excellent service during WW2, and the majority survived the war only to be scrapped en masse in the post war years.
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  107. I wonder if he stood "on the button" at Ganges?
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  108. Mullenheim CLEARLY states that his aft gunnery director was busy with its attention on Suffolk & Norfolk astern of Bismarck, but that he heard the excited babble of voices over his headphones and traversed an auxiliary scope to port in time to winess the terrible pall of smoke AFTER Hood's detonation. The rumour of torpedoes was not only conclusively disproved later on, but they were never physically within range to reach Hood / PoW. Just the same as the suggested torpedoes the Prinz Eugen spotted could never have come from Hood, for the same reason.
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  109.  @gordonscott528  Yes Gordon, stood at the top of the training mast. You can see videos of the hugely brave young lads doing just that here on YT, and one of the TV presenter John Noakes getting up there as well for his old TV prog "go with Noakes". There's also an "urbex" video (urban exploration) of two young lads respectfully exploring the site of the former HMS Ganges, and a local preservation group had just recently restored the 148ft high training mast to its former glory, It will probably end up standing alone in the middle of a housing estate. From what I was told life at Ganges was pretty brutal, to the extent that two lads died during training in the 1940s, after being "encouraged" into the swimming pool despite being non-swimmers, also another "boy" died after falling from the mast in 1938. I'm not ex-RN but my father was also WW2 RN. His best mate was a prewar 15 year old "button boy" as the young lads who'd topped the mast used to be called. He had a framed photo in his house of him stood at the top of the mast. Even as a 90 year old in the late 2000s he was STILL known as "Boy Mansley" but it was as a mark of respect by dad and his shipmates, ever since they'd all been aboard HMS Dorsetshire during WW2. Unfortunately all them brave men have now "crossed the bar" as the navy say. Best wishes Gordon.
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  110. A fact that most who comment nowadays seem to be completely ignorant of. Britain, having been bled dry during the first world war, and struggling to administer her crumbling empire during the interbellum, had every reason to avoid war, hence the paucity in defence spending, and the "head buried in the sand" mentality during that period. Meanwhile Germany whilst badly beaten, was then in the misty sphere of geopolitics, the new European bulwark against the spread of communism from the east. Powered by international financial interests via Hjalmar Schacht and his "MEFO" bills (Germany's economic "miracle"), Germany was from 1933 through till 1939 working at 110% capacity for rearmamant.
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  111.  @THINKincessantly  Headshot for Hood? Or gang raped for Bismarck. I know which I'd pick if forced to.
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  112. Nonsense. 8in HE rounds had NO chance of landing a killer blow on a magazine 6 decks down in the bowels of a ship.
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  113. What a complete load of nonsense. There was utterly NO comparison between HMS Hood & WW1 Lion class battlecruisers. That is the same as saying my Honda is equal to my neighbours Maserati because they are both cars !!!
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  114. Really?
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  115. Do you have a link to that photograph of Hood that you describe. I've read widely on the topic for nearly 50 years and NEVER seen such a photo. Respects for your own service btw.
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  116.  @alexlupsor5484  Maybe the temperatures reached such a magnitude that atomic fission occured and a nuclear chain reaction took place? Nonsense, which if you take the time to read the 2 inquiries into her sinking will show you what nonsense it is you're talking.
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  117. "outmatched"? Bismarck belt armour = 12.6 inches Hood belt armour = 12 inches Bismarck deck armour = 4 inches Hood deck armour = 3 inches Bismarck armament = 8 x 15in Hood armament = 8 x 15in Their combat worthiness was not so far apart as the 20 year difference in their ages suggests. The fact is that Hood was destroyed by a million to one shot that purely by chance found an "Achilles heel" in her armour scheme.
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  118.  @peterson7082  BOTH ships had other layers of "splinter armour" on various decks. It is what was known as an "incremental armour" scheme. When Hood was built during WW1 it was the "in thing" in naval armour, but by the 1930s when Bismarck was ordered most other navies were moving to the "all or nothing" armour system, due to the realisation of the principle that, for example, one layer of 12in armour is far more effective than 4 layers of 3 in (or whatever other combination of multiple layers you choose). Also the thinner layers of armour tended to activate shell fuses causing the detonation of the incoming shell and thereby incur widespread damage.... "all or nothing" armour tended to let the shell pass through the ship without activating the fuse and thereby left an entry hole and a usually larger exit hole but with a lot less collateral damage. In Bismarck's final battle her superstructure was turned into "Swiss cheese" and her systems quickly destroyed due to so many incoming shells detonating as they passed through the ship. Conversely, when PoW was hit by 7 shells during the battle of Denmark Strait, only a couple of them detonated, the rest passing through the ship or in one case was left lying unexploded in her "double bottom".
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  119. Thin armour? Read more about HMS Hood from reputable sources and don't listen to the uninformed nonsense spoken in comments. P.S what happened to Bismarck's "Superior Targeting Capabilities" during the two Fleet Air Arm attacks on her, or in her last battle when she failed to land a single hit on ANY of the RN ships confronting her?
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  120. But strangely enough all that technology and markmanship came to nothing on the morning of 27th May 1941. Bismarck was only slightly better than Hood and landed a lucky shot. When the luck deserted her, she was beheaded and declawed by a ship 13 years older than her.
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  121.  @kurtsherrick2066  Theres a lot of inaccuracies in your post, but I'll leave them to someone else to correct. I like to use an analogy to illustrate what was lucky about Bismarck's hit on Hood's magazine. The analogy involves the use of a dartboard... and a shotgun. A broadside salvo of 15 inch shells are very much like the pellets in a shotgun scatter. Now if you place a dartboard 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter. Now you can fire all day at the dartboard and still not hit the the actual "bullseye" with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet is purely a matter of complete luck.
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  122.  @vincentlavallee2779  During the battle of Denmark Strait, Bismarck's "killing shot" was fired at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of the shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipsis (due to the angle of fall) measuring approximately 100m (330ft) wide, (or to put it another way 38% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by close to 2500 feet long. The other 4 shots would land even further away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that is believed to have triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution". A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter. Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet IS complete luck.
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  123.  @finncarlbomholtsrensen1188  No, the oarsmen rebelled against having to row the 45,000 ton battlecruiser at 29 knots, and so set fire to the barrels of black powder stored in her belly. /sarcasm
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  124.  @finncarlbomholtsrensen1188  Hood's oarsmen were reaching speeds of nearly 30 knots... in a 45000 ton battlecruiser !!! "Lazy" isn't a word fit to describe them. P.S haven't you noticed the deindustrialisation of the west in general? What have you been doing for the last 50 years?
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  125. Both sides had their share of good and bad luck. Finally it was superior ships and numbers that carried the day.
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  126. A fair point Ray, but if you believe that Adalbert Schneider had his beady eye looking through an eyepiece with a crosshair on Hood's magazine, then you're really drifting into the world of make believe.
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  127. Gunnery data tables which were formulated and created by the test firing of naval guns by all navies before, during & after the war show that shells fired by Bismarck's 15 in guns when fired at the range involved at the time of Hood's destruction in the battle of Denmark Strait (17,000 yards or 8.5 naultical miles) had an "angle of fall" of between 11 ~ 13 degrees, that is 11~13 degrees from the horizontal. Prewar testing of Hood's deck armour showed that it was proof against penetration by 15 in shells at angles of fall of 20° or less. That is not speculation but documented fact.
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  128. No.
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  129. During the battle of Denmark Strait, the Bismarck's killer blow was fired at Hood from 8-9 nautical miles away. At that range the 38 cm SK C/34 (Bismarck's main armament) had a CEP (circular error probability - effectively the radius of a circle within which 50% of its shots would fall) of 100m. That means that if 8 of Bismarck's 15in guns fired at a single point 8-9 nm away, 4 of the shells would be expected to land (with completely random distribution) within an ellipse measuring approximately 100m (330ft) wide, (or 38% of HMS Hood's 860ft length), by more than two thousand feet long (an ellipse due to the angle of fall). The other 4 shots would land even further away from the aiming point. That being the case, how can an individual shell be aimed specifically at a tiny part of HMS Hood's structure, namely the 4in HA magazine, that triggered off Hood's detonation? I'll give you a hint, there's a little clue in my paragraph above....where it says "completely random distribution". A simplified analogy is that if you prop a dartboard up 50 yards away and can consistently knock it over with a shotgun at that range then that is pretty good shooting, just as Bismarck / PE achieved during the Denmark Strait encounter. Now you can "knock the dartboard over" all day long with the shotgun and STILL NOT hit the bullseye (magazine) with an individual pellet. As opposed to being a skillful shot by knocking over the dartboard, whether you hit the bullseye with an individual pellet IS COMPLETE LUCK.
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  130.  @alexlupsor5484  That's a whole crock of horseshit..... if you insist on living in fantasy land, I'm sorry I'm not flying there... I much prefer it here in the real world.
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  131.  @alexlupsor5484  Not at all, it's laughable that YOU think YOU'RE correct in contrary to almost everything thats been written about the subject. Pools of molten metal pouring down a vent into the magazine.... you should get a job writing science fiction. Who knows? Maybe Hood was vapourised by a previously undiscovered alien assault spaceship? P.S just because I suggested your theory was a crock, doesn't mean I've insulted you.
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  132. They're not. PE was firing at HMS Prince of Wales at the time of Hood's destruction.
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  133. Oswald had the "magic bullet", Bismarck had the "magic 15in shell".
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  134. It always annoys me that religion always seems to preach self interest, as in "be nice and you'll get everlasting life / 1000 virgins / whatever" afterwards. What about those of us who are agnostics and even atheists who while not believing in "afterlife" "reincarnation" or whatever "rewards" are promised, just treat people decently because its how we are. Religion seems to believe that goodness and decency is inextricably linked to religious observance, and conversely any "non-believers" are inherently wicked and evil. WE'RE the true selfless types, NOT the religious nuts who act decently for some future self-interest. Anyhow lets get back to HMS Hood.
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  135.  @janicmeier1  Why is it German fanbois ALWAYS talk about "lucky shots" and torpedoes, with a completely straight face, while ignoring the luckiest hit in naval history on Hood's magazines. If the "dice gods" hadn't smiled on the nazis at that point, Hood / PoW would have closed a little further, exposed their full broadsides, and initiated a horrible exchange of heavy fire with the probable end result of both Hood AND Bismarck crippled or sunk in the Denmark Strait engagement. P.S the Bomb's dropped on Tirpitz were known as "tallboy" weighing 12000lbs (Or approximately five and a half tons).
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  136. Bearing what you say in mind, its surprising that German large calibre naval guns did so little during the war. "All the gear and no idea" maybe?
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  137. While I've seen the last photo ever taken of HMS Hood, (A still taken from the PoW's quarterdeck) I've never heard of the possibility of cine footage, but good grief that would be incredible if true !!!
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  138. One of Bismarck's 15in shells was recovered during repair work carried out on HMS PoW at the RN base at Rosyth. It was recovered from a "double bottom" tankage space near to her Y turret magazine 12 days after it had penetrated various bulkheads before coming to it's final resting place. Much is made of this with the belief that PoW nearly followed Hood to the bottom of the sea with a magazine detonation. The truth is that if the shell fuze had not malfunctioned as it did, then it would have detonated during its 25 meter underwater passage BEFORE entering PoW's hull 30 ft below her waterline.. The only reason the shell ended where it did was because of the faulty fuse. The shell was carefully removed from PoW while she was in dry dock and transported to a research establishment at Shoeburyness in Essex, where after inspection it was finally safely detonated.
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  139. You lost.... let it go... besides we always knew the globalist puppets in the former houses of Parliament were never going to deliver it.
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  140. Great post Mark. Thank you.
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  141. The Hood has been analysed for 80 years as her demise was so sudden and complete, when all the previous signs were that she should have given as good as she took.
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  142.  @cesaravegah3787  The Bismarck had already received the hit to her bow which cut off 1000 tons of her fuel supply that was landed by HMS Prince of Wales before she herself had landed her first hit on Hood, the same first hit that by a million to one chance impacted on an obscure "Achilles heel" in Hood's vertical armour and set of a chain of events that within a few seconds detonated her aft magazines. As for Fleet Air Arm "luck" read about how their Fairey Albacores did the same thing as happened to Bismarck to the propellers of the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto at the battle of Cape Matapan.
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  143.  @VincentComet-l8e  YT seems to have failed to notify me of your repsonse above Lawrie, and I've only just stumbled on it accidentally. Why was Denmark Strait "A total disaster"? undeniably it was a much heavier cost that had been expected, BUT the Bismarck's stated mission WAS unquestionably stopped in its tracks at 06:20 on 24th May 1941, when Lütjens' hand was forced to make directly for the nearest home port with suitable facilities. I didn't agree that Holland "did badly" I said he managed a difficult high speed long range interception, made one or two questionable tactical decisions and then was laid low by a million to one shot. Its easy on the surface to view his performance as "bad" but how much worse would it have been if he had failed to engage at all (as so easily could have happened, just see how Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had evaded the RN for over 8 weeks during the earlier "Berlin" sortie) and the Germans had instead slipped out unopposed into the wider North Atlantic? You assessment of PoW "only very narrowly escaped destruction" is overstating the reality. She was hit by just 7 shells (3 from Bismarck and 4 from PE) none of which detonated due to the correct functioning of PoW's "all or nothing" armour scheme. She withdraw because her gunnery which had already landed multiple hits on Bismarck was working at close to 50% of its designed capacity, and she was then facing two ships that were working at full efficiency and which were certainly having "a good day". She was so near to destruction that within 30 minutes of her withdrawal she was again easily shadowing the German ships (who for reasons of damage control and fuel economy) were now forced to lower their speed. In the following 24 hours she again engaged in two further gunnery duels with the German ships but no hits were landed by either side, before she finally had to return to Iceland for refuelling. If after the Denmark Strait engagement Bismarck / PE had slipped her pursuers, refuelled from one of the supply network ships and gone on to savage a convoy or two and disrupt the routing of the whole Atlantic convoy system for a few weeks THAT would have been "a complete disaster". As it was directly as a result of the action at Denmark Strait NEITHER of the German ships even laid eyes on a supply ship OR a British convoy, the Convoy system carried on undisrupted and 3 days after the loss of Hood the PRIZE asset of the kriegsmarine also settled onto the bed of the Atlantic. Job Done.
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  144.  @VincentComet-l8e  Don't for one second think I'm justifying Holland's decisions, yes they were flawed especially with the advantage of cool, unpressured hindsight... but he's not alone in making such bad calls, when the chips are down, the pressure is very much on, and a fluid situation calls for an immediate decision. I'm aware of and agree with the points you make. On the other side of the scales of history is the fact that the inexperienced and mechanically imperfect HMS PoW singlehandedly stopped the German's plans to wreck the Atlantic convoy system, and that whereas the RN lost a revered and venerable 20 year old battlecruiser which comprised a relatively small part of the RN capital ship establishment and whose loss was replaced manifold, in exchange the Germans due to events precipitated at Denmark Strait lost a much vaunted nazi "uberschiff" who after 9 days at sea was put on the bottom of the ocean, a loss of 25% of the Kriegsmarine's capital ship force which was never replaced. In all likelihood this only happened because of Holland's initially unplanned interception at Denmark Strait. Unplanned in the sense that his force was originally tasked to sail to Reykjavik to refuel and from there backup the Norfolk & Suffolk, but instead had to plot a long range, high speed interception course "on the fly", which as we know would have been a perfect interception but for the temporary loss of contact with the German ships at a CRUCIAL moment just hours before battle was joined. What would have been the outcome if Holland complete with his attendant destroyer screen (which had been detached earlier to attempt to regain contact with the Germans, and as a consequence took no part in the action) had instead crossed the German's "T" at Denmark Strait, something that could easily have been achieved had it not been for the unfortunate crucial loss of contact in the early hours of 23rd May which threw all of his planning to the wind?
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  145. Try using the internet to find such footage....oh you're there already !!!
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  146. Not much shorter than Bismarck's sinking 3 days later. She wouldn't have lasted that long if she hadn't been constantly running away at top speed.
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  147. There likely was some localised flooding in the seconds before 100 tons of cordite blew HMS Hood in half.
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  148.  @adamcarriere4465  It is reported in the book "battleship Bismarck: An Operational History" that Prinz Eugen's hydrophone operators had TWICE reported torpedo alerts in the hours before the Denmark Strait engagement. There is also the fact that at NO POINT did HMS Hood (the only one of the two British capital ships at Denmark Strait to carry torpedoes) come anywhere near within range of using her Mk4 Steam torpedoes even at their lowest speed setting. It is quite simple to demonstrate with maths and geometry (a very basic "target Motion analysis") that this is the case.
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