Naval History Forums

I tend to think that Prinz Eugen's (PG)shell which started the fire on the boat deck must have first struck Hood's after funnel, which may explain why it burst on or above the boat deck rather than passing through the deck and exploding beneath. The resulting fire was impressive but not fatal as far as the ship was concerned. To my mind, the only way PG could get a strike into Hood's after magazine was for a near miss to pass beneath the armour and through the soft shell plating. She got at least one such strike to enter PoW after Hood blew up. PG had shifted fire to PoW on Lutjens' orders before Hood took her fatal hit, as has been illustrated earlier, so she could not have struck the fatal blow.

It is my firm belief that it was a shell from Bismarck which did for Hood and given the relatively flat trajectory of Bismarck's high velocity shells, it is unlikely to have resulted from a turret strike or a strike on the belt or decks. Hood's armour fore and aft was equal to that of a Queen Elizabeth class and her armoured decks and that over the magazines would have been more than enough to defeat Bismarck's shells, because of the shallow angle of strike due to their flat trajectory. I am strongly of the belief that it was a wet strike to starboard causing the shell to pass beneath the armoured belt and directly into the after magazine. Bismarck took serious damage from a wet strike herself and it is fortunate that the strike was not in a magazine.

Agreed - the absolute proof of the matter is that the Eugen was shooting at the Prince of Wales when Hood blew up.

pg55555 wrote:What ?

With your bow and arrow, Cock Robin ?

No, but either of those two notions are only slightly less plausible, in my opinion, than a single 8" HE shellburst having caused the fatal explosion which sank HMS Hood.

This ground has been so heavily trodden through the decades, its soil is no longer arable.

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What ?

With your bow and arrow, Cock Robin ?

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'twas I who sank it...

Jagdboot wrote:Bismarck must have scored the fatal hit on Hood. She was first to make contact with the target. As mentioned earlier in the thred Prince Eugen did not claim the hit.
Jagdboot

But Prinz Eugen hit Hood before Bismarck.

Bismarck must have scored the fatal hit on Hood. She was first to make contact with the target. As mentioned earlier in the thred Prince Eugen did not claim the hit.

Jagdboot

I think it needs to be repeated, as this little detail is frquently overlooked - at the time Hood blew up the Prinz Eugen was shooting at Prince of Wales and not Hood.

Prinz Eugen originally opened fire on Hood as the lead British ship, obtaining two hits that we know about. Then Lutjens ordered Brinckmann to shift fire on to the POW because while Bismarck was also shooting at Hood the POW was not up till then under any German fire. This order was executed immediately prior to Hood blowing up.

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A few facts would help.

1: WW2 era cordite was VERY different from WW1 (it was "solventless" and much safer). Also note that the WW1 cordite had a particular problem wit poor quality control.

2: Hood had, since her building, the improved flash-tightness standards imposed because of Jutland - this would have stopped the idea of stacking spare charges (the same applied to Barham).

Lots of idiotic ideas about cordite (both WW1 and WW2) on the web.

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The fact is tha we know now, from careful reading of PE's KTB, that she was not firing at Hood when she blew up but had switched fire to PoW on Lutjen's orders at least 2 minutes earlier.

steffen19k wrote:I think a better question would be whether or not Hood's gun crews were bypassing the flash protection features and procedures to speed up time between salvos. Its been a documented case of British capital ships, dating all the way back to the loss of 3 battlecruisers at Dogger Bank.

That IS a good question, especially given that the Jutland report incriminating the stacking of cordite and abandonment of safety procedures was nixed by Jellicoe when he became First Sea Lord at the Admiralty. I believe that Barham was carrying extra ammo and charges outside of magazine protection when she blew up after capsizing, which could have contributed to that explosion. Whether or not that was the case with Hood will never be known (unless it's in some still "most secret" document that won't see the light of day for another 30 years!).

But that does not efface the fact that it was Bismarck's and only Bismarck's shells that were falling around Hood when she exploded, and it was Bismarck's shells that possessed the penetrating power to punch through Hood's armour and reach a magazine.

Ultimately, for all the speculation that surrounds just who fired the fatal shot, all we know is that both ships engaged Hood, and that she blew up and sank.

Is it possible that an AP round was loaded and fired in spite of the log reports? I think its possible, in the heat of combat.

But even then, there is this: http://www.warship.org/no21987.htm That does a very good job, IMO, of explaining HOW Bismarck was the one who was most likely to have fired the death round.

I think a better question would be whether or not Hood's gun crews were bypassing the flash protection features and procedures to speed up time between salvos. Its been a documented case of British capital ships, dating all the way back to the loss of 3 battlecruisers at Dogger Bank.

I think the claim arose from discovery of PE log and FC data showing that she targeted Hood. However, IIRC, PE didn't use AP ammo when engaging Hood, so the probability of an 8" shell sinking Hood was just about zero.

As I understand it there were members of the Prinz Eugen crew retained by the US Navy, operating under US naval orders, until after the Prinz Eugen had passed through the Panama Canal and arrived in California, en route to its final destination in the Pacific. They were discharged when the Eugen arrived in CA.

As the claim is reported in a newspaper, did it actually come from the US Navy department officially - or crew interviews?

Yes, that may well be the case Paul.

Weren't there Prinz crew members aboard thie ship along with the US crew?

One could speculate that there was a lot of talk and the simple statement "We were the ones that set Hood on fire." (truth, while British accounts attributed this to Bismarck's third salvo) plus the info in the ship's KTB (would the US have possession of that?) without careful scrutiny or proper translation could have given rise to that point of view.....