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General Discussion Area / Re: Is anyone watching.......
« on: 24 April 2018, 11:01:10 »Yes Lizzie I'd agree about the mindset of the admiralty regarding the use of airpower.In fact I think most were still reliant on the fighting principles of the Nelsonian era[and probably before that]where capital ships would batter away at each other broadside to broadside.They even seemed oblivious to the idea that with the huge range of battleship guns the ships were now vulnerable to the "plunging shot"which I believe is what took Hood down.
It did indeed Baza. Although the sequence of Hood's demise is still debated by historians, it is believed that the German battlecruiser Prinz Eugin that was escorting the Bismark put up to four salvos over Hood, with a shell opening up a hole in the poop deck area over the aft magazine, with the next salvo from Bismark itself landing in exactly the same place causing the magazine to blow up, taking off the stern. Within a second or two the flash over from the aft magazine going up reached the forward magazine and that went up, taking off the bow. Within 3 minutes Hood was gone with 1415 men, just 3 left alive in the water. Hood reflected the big flaw in the British battlecruiser design, with very weak deck amour relying on their great speed and heavy guns to hit the enemy before they could bring shells down on to the battlecruiser. But, even in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland that policy was proved to be flawed, but Hood entered WW2 without any significant changes to her deck armour. The other weakness with the British battlecruisers, if no other, was fire control procedures. It was common practice to leave the fire doors to the magazine compartments open whilst in battle so as to speed up the process of getting munitions from the magazines up to the guns. To compound this, large stocks of explosive wadding that propelled the shells was stored near the guns to save time in loading them. This policy cost three British battlecruisers at Jutland on 31st May 1916 and then Hood on 24th May 1941, with very few survivors.