It seems that from the time of her commissioning up until the fateful battle with Bismarck, she was a special ship. Why was that? Also, if she had survived the war do you think they would have preserved her as a museum ship?
The Hood was the largest warship in the world for the first 20 years of its life. In what other ways do you feel that it was special?
IIRC the Hood was mostly important because it was the largest warship of its day, it was fast (32 knots), and it had big guns (15" guns same as the British battleships).
So on paper it looked extremely formidable, and when it blew up and sunk so quickly, it was a huge shock to everyone.
A modern day example might be how we had heard for decades about how tough and relentless the Russians were, and how shocked the world was when they got their asses handed to them by the Ukrainians last year.
As far as museum ships go… had it survived, its consideration for museum ship status would most likely have depended on what it did for the remainder of the war. The British weren’t so eager to have museum ships after the war, unlike the US, so the chances were low to begin with, I believe.
If she sank the Bismarck instead of the other way around, most certainly.
Hood was the biggest ship in the world for several years, fast with a powerful punch, known as “The Mighty Hood.” She was in many ways an embodiment of the Royal Navy, often serving as a flagship and flying the flag. Her loss was a tremendous psychological blow.
Her armor was upgraded while she was under construction, after British battlecruisers performed so poorly at Jutland, so many considered her a fast battleship. She was overdue for a major overhaul and modernization, but the outbreak of war made it impossible and the ship was not in very good condition by the battle of the Denmark Strait.
The tactics of Admiral Holland were also somewhat suspect, but that’s another discussion.
Previous thread on topic:
Same metallurgy as the Titanic, I remember reading:
It blew up in a manner remarkably similar to the battlecruisers at Jutland 25 years before, and suffered from some of the same defects as construction was too advanced to make substantial changes by the time the lessons of Jutland were properly absorbed. The battleship building ‘holiday’ mandated by Washington meant that only Nelson and Rodney (an experiment not repeated) were built until 1936 when the first two KGVs were laid down. Their design was very different from Hood, though still not unsinkable as events proved.
The British don’t really do warship preservation, and most of those that do survive owe it to accidents of chance rather than selection.
The biggest issue, her Achilles Heel, was her deck armor, 3-5 inches, which was meager even by the standards of the time. [By contrast the Iowas had about 7.5", the Yamatos 8-9"-note they were often layered to decap incoming shells before hitting the thickest layer]
If the hood survived it is doubtful that she would have been made a museum ship. After WWII all the obsolete ships were decommissioned and used for scrap iron. Almost all the museum ship were pulled from the bone yard years after WWII and were slated to be scrapped. It took a group of people coming together and realizing that history should be honored and saved.
There is the HMS Belfast which is conspicuously moored in downtown London on the Thames. IIRC part of the Imperial War Museum.
Not sure why that ship and not others. Dunno the story of how it got there.
Meager by the standards of 1940, but her armor and armament were comparable to the best battleships in service in 1920. For that reason, it’s more accurate to describe her as a fast battleship.
She could also outpace most of the cruisers of 1920. A deadly combination of speed and fighting power.
But it seems she bought that speed at the expense of armor. IIRC the ship was due for an armor upgrade but events caught up before that happened.
Catch 22 if they upgraded the deck armor; her previous upgrades had already pushed her deeper into the water, making her a very wet ship. Adding another thousand tons or two would have just made that worse.
By 1940, yes, her speed was sufficient* while her armor wasn’t up to the demands of 1940 combat. IMO, it’s not a design flaw if a ship can’t compete with ships that are 20 years newer.
*The speed of Hood and Prince of Wales was just barely enough to allow an intercept Bismarck, and only at an unfavorable angle.
HMS Belfast had a long and distinguished career with the Royal Navy. Escorting Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union, assisting in destroying the German warship Scharnhorst, and supporting the Normandy landings on D-Day. Then in action against the Japanese and in the Korean War.
The government refused funding to preserve her and she was due to be scrapped, but the Belfast Trust raised the finance and she was finally towed to her home in the Thames in 1971 as an official part of The British War Museum.
They originally looked at preserving just a turret, then dared to think of a ship. The Colony-class cruiser HMS Gambia, then lying up for disposal in Fareham Creek, was first looked at, but Gambia had drastically deteriorated even in the short time it had been there. Belfast was the harbour accommodation ship for Portsmouth (a role now filled by HMS Bristol) so it was in better shape.
After a few years the financial position of the Trust became unsustainable (a common thing with warship preservation) and the Imperial War Museum took it over. Prince Philip was very much against the project, I gather, though he came round in later years.
I suspect that really the US wasn’t that excited about museum ships either; it’s just that the majority of them either continued to serve or were mothballed after the war, and sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, local groups managed to get them donated to their states/cities as museums and tourist attractions.
I get the impression that the British government was a bit more draconian about cutting the RN’s size and didn’t keep as many old ships in commission or in mothballs.
She was also known as the largest and most heavily armed submarine in the world, so that’s pretty special