The Bell of the Hood which was sunk in 1941 by the German battleship Bismark has been recovered and will be returned to the British Naval Museum.
The Hood was the symbol of British naval domination, and at the time the most powerful battleship ever made. with a armor belt that was over a foot sink and 8 mark 1 guns that could fire a shell over 30 kms the Hood was considered the pride of the British Navy.
The German Battleship Bismark was a similar class of boat with 8 main guns and similar armor and speed.
These boats came together during the Battle of the Denmark Straits where the Hood was protecting convoys from the Germans.
The Bismark and the German cruiser Prinz Eugen engaged the hood in a running battle. The Hood was hit first by a salvo from the Eugo and set a fire but damage control parties put the fire out.
In a running battle that lasted about 20 minutes, the Bismark scored a direct hit from a range of about 18,000 yards on her fifth salvo on the rear deck which penetrated the thin armor and blew the Hoods main magazine, the Hood with her back broken sank in three minutes. Out of a crew of 1400, 3 survived.
The Bismark was engaged in a long running pursuit, and was eventually struck in the rear by a plane launched Torpedo that locked her port rudder and left the ship without maneuvering capabilities. The British Navy then moved in and destroyed the German Battleship after two British Battleships fired over 700 main gun rounds and two torpedoes.
This signaled the beginning of the end of the Naval Dreadnought era, and was considered to be the sunset of the vaunted British Naval dominance in the Atlantic.
I've always been a fan of the Battleship design, but WW2 represented a massive shift way from big gunned heavily armored ships that could dominate a small area, versus a carrier that could dominate thousands of square miles and drop ordinance with more effect and more accuracy.
In the pacific, the Battleship was really reduced to a secondary role, as Carriers became the primary offensive weapon. The American's managed to turn the war around with three active aircraft carriers. The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor could have never been carried out by battleships.
Even the Bismark was eventually stopped by one lucky torpedo drop by one plane.
With the retirement of the last four Iowa class battleships in the 90's the Battleship era officially ended as Naval Aviation pretty well took over close air support and bombardment duties.
Probably the closest thing to a modern battleship today would be the Russian Nuclear heavy battlecruisers, the Kirov class, which is designed around missiles and not guns
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I remember reading the book "Hunting the Bismark" I took out from my elementary school library. The cat and mouse chase between the Bismark and the entire British Atlantic fleet was fantastic and it seemed like just dumb luck the Bismark got hit where it did.
Fantastic read about the whole thing though the British really should have fixed the poor magazine armor problem earlier at the onset of hostilities with Germany instead of pushing things through to 1942.
I remember reading the book "Hunting the Bismark" I took out from my elementary school library. The cat and mouse chase between the Bismark and the entire British Atlantic fleet was fantastic and it seemed like just dumb luck the Bismark got hit where it did.
Fantastic read about the whole thing though the British really should have fixed the poor magazine armor problem earlier at the onset of hostilities with Germany instead of pushing things through to 1942.
Both sinkings were dumb luck really.
The hit on the Hood was about as lucky as it gets. Most battleships were designed with the thought that they would be hit with straight on shots into the armor belt. Being hit with a large gun run on the thinkly armored deck wasn't really thought of as likely, plus putting too much armor on the top would make the boat hard to navigate in poor weather.
The torpedo drop on the Bizmark was an incredible fluke as Naval Torpedo planes and the torpedo's that they fired were still primitive by the standards developed by the Japanese and Americans. So a direct hit on a rudder was considered to be unlikely. Usually if you're firing from the rear, you hope that you hit the screws and unbalance the shafts which would fill the engineering spaces with water when the seals break at the very best. At the worst you strip the boat of its top speed.
I remember reading that the Admiral of the Bismark when hearing about the damage to the rudder was told that the only way to fix it would be to blow off the port rudder, but the Admiral was overly cautious about doing that and causing propeller damage, instead he called for air support help and decided to wait for rescue.
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The hit on the Hood was about as lucky as it gets. Most battleships were designed with the thought that they would be hit with straight on shots into the armor belt. Being hit with a large gun run on the thinkly armored deck wasn't really thought of as likely, plus putting too much armor on the top would make the boat hard to navigate in poor weather.
The torpedo drop on the Bizmark was an incredible fluke as Naval Torpedo planes and the torpedo's that they fired were still primitive by the standards developed by the Japanese and Americans. So a direct hit on a rudder was considered to be unlikely. Usually if you're firing from the rear, you hope that you hit the screws and unbalance the shafts which would fill the engineering spaces with water when the seals break at the very best. At the worst you strip the boat of its top speed.
I remember reading that the Admiral of the Bismark when hearing about the damage to the rudder was told that the only way to fix it would be to blow off the port rudder, but the Admiral was overly cautious about doing that and causing propeller damage, instead he called for air support help and decided to wait for rescue.
While the Hood was indeed the pride of the Royal Navy it was technically a battlecruiser not a battleship. Battlecruisers were a (misguided) design from before WW1 up to and including Hood that put an emphasis on speed over protection. They weren't intended to go one on one with more heavily armoured battleships, and if they did the theory was they could use their speed to close the range and avoid high trajectory shots hitting vulnerable points from above.
The British lost 3 battlecruisers at the battle of Jutland the same way as Hood - a penetrating shot to the deck or turret roof resulting in a catastrophic explosion. The captain of the Hood was well aware of this weakness and was trying to close range when she got hit.
In reality the Hood was not a good match for the Bismark. She was accompanied by a more modern battleship - Prince of Wales - which should have tilted the scales in favour of the British but it was still being commissioned at the time and was only partially functional. Still, she managed to get one hit on Bismarck that punctured an oil tank, forcing her to head to port in France, giving the British a chance to intercept her by air and the rest is history.
The same Prince of Wales was sunk by Japanese aircraft shortly after Pearl Harbour, confirming that the end of the battleship era was at hand.
Last edited by edslunch; 08-10-2015 at 12:27 PM.
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There is a Iowa class battleship docked in LA Harbor that has been transformed into a floating museum, and carries the name of it's class, the USS Iowa.
The Iowa ferried Roosevelt over the Atlantic to the Tehran conference, along with his chiefs of staff. You can actually enter the room where the invasion of Europe was planned. Authentic jackets from all men present are slung onto the chairs they sat in, as well as Roosevelt's wheelchair. You can also enter the President's living quarters while onboard.
I've visited the ship about 3 or 4 times, and it is incredible. Simply incredible to be onboard a real Battleship and experience the sheer size and power these ships had, as well as how amazingly advanced the technology was in the 30's. Highly recommend a visit to the ship if in the LA area. The 16" guns (406mm) guns are something to behold.
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While the Hood was indeed the pride of the Royal Navy it was technically a battlecruiser not a battleship. Battlecruisers were a (misguided) design from before WW1 up to and including Hood that put an emphasis on speed over protection. They weren't intended to go one on one with more heavily armoured battleships, and if they did the theory was they could use their speed to close the range and avoid high trajectory shots hitting vulnerable points from above.
The British lost 3 battlecruisers at the battle of Jutland the same way as Hood - a penetrating shot to the deck or turret roof resulting in a catastrophic explosion. The captain of the Hood was well aware of this weakness and was trying to close range when she got hit.
In reality the Hood was not a good match for the Bismark. She was accompanied by a more modern battleship - Prince of Wales - which should have tilted the scales in favour of the British but it was still being commissioned at the time and was only partially functional. Still, she managed to get one hit on Bismarck that punctured an oil tank, forcing her to head to port in France, giving the British a chance to intercept her by air and the rest is history.
The same Prince of Wales was sunk by Japanese aircraft shortly after Pearl Harbour, confirming that the end of the battleship era was at hand.
Its interesting to note, that The Prince of Whales was one of the first major capital ships that was sunk strictly through the use of air power when it was sunk two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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^ under the cool story bro category - I had a chance to briefly visit the docked ship New Jersey when I was in philly a number of years ago. I wish I had budgeted more time for this visit as it was very impressive. I was most intrigued by this small room by one of the forward guns, you really needed to shimmy into it and while I was looking at it I was trying to wrap my head around how a person sitting in this room could even function under war conditions with the guns going off and the operator had no view of the outside.
I also find the docents on these ships to be amazing to talk with, as they have tons of knowledge and experience.
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Its interesting to note, that The Prince of Whales was one of the first major capital ships that was sunk strictly through the use of air power when it was sunk two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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My uncle was on the Duke of York, the Prince of Wales' sister ship, when it sank the Scharnhorst - one of Germany's battlecruisers - in one of the few ship on ship battles of the war
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Paul Allen's Octopus has been here for about 2-3 weeks now in Reykjavik harbor, right outside my office window. Noticed it left last week around Thursday and then came back in to dock yesterday.
What a freaking amazing yacht, and the fact he lets people use it for science makes him awesome.
It's definitely impressive what smaller powers will try to build to rival larger nations naval superiority. The Bismark was built as one of the first surface boats to try to break British naval dominance of the Atlantic. Though the war broke out faster than Nazi naval planners had anticipated and with the expense of building battleships during war footing they had to shift resources to a U-Boat strategy.
Speaking of impressive and mean ships, the Bismark is definitely dwarfed by super battleships out of the Pacific. The Yamato was a mean ship designed from the offset to engage multiple American battleships simultaneously. It is the biggest battleship every built at over 60k tons. It dwarfed almost every surface naval vessel right up until the first nuclear carriers decades later.
The ship had massive 18.1 inch designed to defeat the thickest battleship armour of the time. Though it came at a time when the Japanese already demonstrated naval air superiority and didn't play any significant role in WWII
I am always amazed at how much more advanced segments of axis power technology at the time. Japanese had wicked ship building and far superior fighter designs at the onset of the war. Germans had built ballistic missiles, jet fighters and excellent U-boats whose designs had to be reverse engineered and copied for decades to come.
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It's definitely impressive what smaller powers will try to build to rival larger nations naval superiority. The Bismark was built as one of the first surface boats to try to break British naval dominance of the Atlantic. Though the war broke out faster than Nazi naval planners had anticipated and with the expense of building battleships during war footing they had to shift resources to a U-Boat strategy.
Speaking of impressive and mean ships, the Bismark is definitely dwarfed by super battleships out of the Pacific. The Yamato was a mean ship designed from the offset to engage multiple American battleships simultaneously. It is the biggest battleship every built at over 60k tons. It dwarfed almost every surface naval vessel right up until the first nuclear carriers decades later.
The ship had massive 18.1 inch designed to defeat the thickest battleship armour of the time. Though it came at a time when the Japanese already demonstrated naval air superiority and didn't play any significant role in WWII
I am always amazed at how much more advanced segments of axis power technology at the time. Japanese had wicked ship building and far superior fighter designs at the onset of the war. Germans had built ballistic missiles, jet fighters and excellent U-boats whose designs had to be reverse engineered and copied for decades to come.
I wouldn't disagree, except that the Japanese really cut corners in terms of their technology and the American's over took them fairly quickly.
The Japanese Aircraft carrier designs weren't terrific, their sighting was bad and munitions placement was not good, on top of it their crews weren't trained well in terms of damage control and their abilities to fight fires at sea wasn't great, you can directly look at the sinking of the Akagi and Hiryu and the fact that they couldn't get control of the fires. Meanwhile the American carriers at midway took hits and got back into the game.
In terms of air power The Japanese held a significant edge at the start of the war, but the Japanese really cut corners on pilot safety when they designed the zero, and it lead to the Japanese losing a lot of planes and pilots, once the American's made their great leap forward in terms of naval strike planes. Something as simple as fireproofing their gas tanks made all the difference in the world.
With the German's they get a reputation for having these super advanced weapons, but at the end of the day one of the biggest inventions of the war, that turned the tied was made by the Russians with the T-34 tank and the way they armored it by getting rid of flat face on surfaces.
While the ME-262 German Jet Fighter was considered a great leap forward, way to few of them made it to the front lines, and there were some real wacky reliability issues. Where the German's were far ahead of everyone else were in terms of artillary/rocket bombardment.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
It's interesting to think about where the technologies would have led if Germany conducted it's war differently, or in steps, instead of essentially declaring war on the entire world at once.
Germany was on the forefront of technology. If they weren't being carpet bombed, I believe their strength would have grown so large that the Allies would be willing to appease them like they did in the 30s. Hitler being a whackjob though, obviously impossible to tell.
Bell of the HMS Hood recovered
