HMS Hood 1942 Large Repair

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http://www.hmshood.com/history/construct/repair42.htm

Some very interesting potential outcomes. The one based along the lines of the KGV class would have likely been very effective indeed.
 
Would it have been worth it?
 
CNH said:
Would it have been worth it?

Absolutely, at least from the perception of the 1941 Royal Navy. A rebuilt Hood would have had a speed and armament essentially equal to the Vanguard, and only somewhat inferior armor protection. In the postwar world a battlegroup comprised of Vanguard and a modernized Hood would have been nothing to sneeze at.
 
Came across this video and it seems to fit this topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r-wOlDz9M0
 
"only somewhat inferior armor protection"

I admire your sense of humour. Inferior enough to be taken out after half a dozen salvoes.
 
CNH said:
... Inferior enough to be taken out after half a dozen salvoes.

AFAIK, still yet the reason for the loss of HMS Hood isn't really known and probably never will be, as even
an in-depth investigation of the wreckage won't get doubtless results. If really a 38cm projectile from Bismarck
penetrated HMS Hoods armor, or if a fire burnt through, until it reached the magazines seems still to be open to
question, with various arguments on both sides.
So, maybe not even much improved armor protection would have saved her and on the other hand, just modernisation
in the field of ammunition hoists, or the like could have lead to a different outcome.
 
The timeline suggests only 3 minutes from the first hit on Hood (From Prinz Eugen) and the catastrophic explosion in the magazine, How could a fire burn through the magazine walls in that time? Not saying it is impossible, just implausible.
 
this article have inspired me an italian article on storialternativa.it B)
 
I wonder what could have been achieved with a larger HMS Blake type modernisation. She may even have served long enough to carry the Harrier.
 
Every time I see something about Hood I think of an authors comment I read stating that had Hoods sisters just been completed to the same standard as Hood they would likely have all survived the Washington Treaty and gone on to serve in WWII. With four of them they would have shared the load meaning all would have been in better condition than Hood was in reality and it is more likely that they would have received major modernisations, maybe instead of those received by the QEs or Repulse and Renown. With those ships in service there wouldn't have been a need (or justification) for Nelson and Rodney and likely some of the older ships (QE or R class members) may have been retired earlier.

As stated in the video above the loss of the Battle Cruisers at Jutland had more to do with the removal of safety measures, to increase the rate of fire, than any design flaw, in fact if I recall correctly Lion's captain had not removed the flash tight doors between the magazine and the turret trunk as had been done on the battle cruisers that day, nor apparently had he prepositioned shells and charges throughout the hoists, and turrets, meaning that when Q turret was penetrated the ship was not lost. It appears the data was available to determine what had happened and why but those who gave the order that resulted in the losses didn't really want the truth to come out, end result, the RN enters WWII with the oldest average battleships and battle cruisers, instead of four of the most modern and most powerful.

It can also be postulated that had the fiction that the battles cruisers blew up because they were too weakly protected not been accepted as fact that the RN may not have become as overly concerned about magazine protection meaning no G3 and N3 designs and possibly a continuation of the more conventional four twin gun houses meaning that when the KGVs were eventually designed they would have four twin 16" (or perhaps 14 or 15" depending on treaty requirements at the time) seeing the RN better positioned to mass produce these evolutionary instead of revolutionary ships, including recycling surplus turrets from WWI battle ships into an earlier Vanguard type war emergency design.

Sorry if I have strayed too far off topic.
 
Volkodav said:
As stated in the video above the loss of the Battle Cruisers at Jutland had more to do with the removal of safety measures, to increase the rate of fire, than any design flaw, in fact if I recall correctly Lion's captain had not removed the flash tight doors between the magazine and the turret trunk as had been done on the battle cruisers that day, nor apparently had he prepositioned shells and charges throughout the hoists, and turrets, meaning that when Q turret was penetrated the ship was not lost. It appears the data was available to determine what had happened and why but those who gave the order that resulted in the losses didn't really want the truth to come out, end result, the RN enters WWII with the oldest average battleships and battle cruisers, instead of four of the most modern and most powerful.
It was LION's Gunner - a Warrant Officer, not the Lt Cdr Gunnery Officer - who was appalled on joining the ship early in 1916 was appalled at powder handling practices and set about reinstating the anti-flash measures, sorting out the mixed batches of powder (apparently a major no-no) and generally instituting good practice as known since Nelson's day.

Major Harvey apparently disregarded the changes that the Gunner instituted with the approval of the chain of command. Granted his heroism saved the ship - but had he followed orders it would not have been in danger. Arguably a court-martial was in order, not a Victoria Cross.

The Gunner, later commissioned and to achieve the rank of Captain, wrote an autobiography in which all this is detailed. The relevant chapter is reproduced with permission here:
http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/grant.htm
 
Volkodav said:
Every time I see something about Hood I think of an authors comment I read stating that had Hoods sisters just been completed to the same standard as Hood they would likely have all survived the Washington Treaty and gone on to serve in WWII. With four of them they would have shared the load meaning all would have been in better condition than Hood was in reality and it is more likely that they would have received major modernisations, maybe instead of those received by the QEs or Repulse and Renown. With those ships in service there wouldn't have been a need (or justification) for Nelson and Rodney and likely some of the older ships (QE or R class members) may have been retired earlier.

As stated in the video above the loss of the Battle Cruisers at Jutland had more to do with the removal of safety measures, to increase the rate of fire, than any design flaw, in fact if I recall correctly Lion's captain had not removed the flash tight doors between the magazine and the turret trunk as had been done on the battle cruisers that day, nor apparently had he prepositioned shells and charges throughout the hoists, and turrets, meaning that when Q turret was penetrated the ship was not lost. It appears the data was available to determine what had happened and why but those who gave the order that resulted in the losses didn't really want the truth to come out, end result, the RN enters WWII with the oldest average battleships and battle cruisers, instead of four of the most modern and most powerful.

It can also be postulated that had the fiction that the battles cruisers blew up because they were too weakly protected not been accepted as fact that the RN may not have become as overly concerned about magazine protection meaning no G3 and N3 designs and possibly a continuation of the more conventional four twin gun houses meaning that when the KGVs were eventually designed they would have four twin 16" (or perhaps 14 or 15" depending on treaty requirements at the time) seeing the RN better positioned to mass produce these evolutionary instead of revolutionary ships, including recycling surplus turrets from WWI battle ships into an earlier Vanguard type war emergency design.

Sorry if I have strayed too far off topic.

Quick few comments;

1. Re: the proposed rebuild/ update of the Hood there was a major need for more armour, especially in her deck armour to protect against plunging fire. It is an open question if the high degree of rebuild required to make her not very vulnerable to Bismarck level opponents better spent on another KGV (or would have been at the cost of one of the KGVs not being completed.).

2. Re: your comments on the desirability of completing Hoods sisters it's important to understand that her design was very much overtaken by events and experience/knowledge from the 1st World War (other Navy's moving to 16 inch guns, more effective and efficient "all-or-nothing" armour distribution, the success of the fast battleship concept and the discrediting of the pure battle-cruiser concept, etc.). Most of all the UK was all but broke financially so any plans for large classes of capital ships had to wait till the lead up to WW2.
 
I saw "HMS Hood 1942 Large Repair" and thought "Who's going to head that project, Clive Cussler?" (Author of Raise the Titanic).

In hindsight...

Build all four Hoods, build all four G3 battlecruisers (really fast battleships), lose the R class, the Queen Elizabeths and the Great War battlefleet.

Convert the WW1 battlecruiser hulls plus possibly Renown and Repulse to aircraft carriers at the same time as Courageous and Glorious are done.

No need to build the Rodney and Nelson; build the KGV class to Lion standards with 16 inch armament (which would have been well developed and mature with the experience gained in building the G3 class) and 4.5 inch twins instead of 5.25, possibly shaving some weight off. The actual historical Lions therefore do not need to be built, nor does Vanguard.

It would be interesting to compare the likely costs of all this to the money that was eventually poured into refits and reconstructions for the R class, the QE's, the Renown/Repulse etc.
 
I read that page a few years ago and it is a very good and well-balanced piece that lays out the pros and cons of the rebuild and the likelihood of it actually happening and the practical issues involved.

My feeling is that if war had not broken out in 1939 then Hood would probably have been rebuilt in 1942. But the outbreak of war changed that and the resources required for escorts and the new War Emergency building plans were rightfully more important. The two Lions were suspended but Vanguard was inserted into the programme, probably because the Admiralty thought she would complete quicker than a Lion given her re-used main armament (thus avoiding the need to wait until the 16in guns were ready. In fact Vanguard was no quicker, she was delayed by the same industrial bottlenecks, as were the later 1943 Programme carriers and cruisers.

Even if Hood had survived the Bismarck encounter, damaged but able to steam away, its doubtful whether the battle repairs would have encompassed a full rebuild due to wider circumstances. The fleet was short of effective capital ships; Rodney had been badly shaken up in the Bismarck encounter by her own guns and went to refit in the States, Prince of Wales was only the second KGV class as she was still not combat ready as the events in the Denmark Strait proved. Within the next six months Barham, Prince of Wales and Repulse were all sunk and on top of that the Crete campaign and the Malta reinforcement convoys were eating up serviceable ships at a heady rate, let alone the battles in the East Indies in early 1942.

One possible scenario is that Hood might have been patched up (depending on the damage caused in this hypothetical survival in the Denmark Strait) and may have even been ready in time for Churchill to insist on her being sent to Singapore in late 1941 as part of Force Z, he would have favoured Hood over Repulse for her psychological propaganda status as the RN's most powerful ship (he may even of sent the two battlecruisers and left the PoW in home waters to face off the German battleships). The outcome for Force Z would have been the same nevertheless but we might now be typing very different comments on her lack of torpedo protection than magazine protection.
Another alternative would have been to send Hood to the States for a refit but even then the scale of the work might not have been the complete rebuild planned pre-war.

Whether or not the rebuild would have saved enough weight to make her drier and raise her belt is debatable. The additions might have outweighed the gains as the war progressed, extra AA guns, splinter protection, deck armour, radars, improved fire-control, etc.
 
Truly in hypothetical territory here but had all four Hoods been completed (and the G3s begun), then Renown and Repulse (and maybe Courageous, Glorious and even Lion, Princess Royal and Tiger) may have been surplus to requirements and transferred to the dominions prior to the Washington Treaty. There is a school of thought that the earlier smaller and more lightly armoured, newer battlecruisers may have been granted a reclassification as Armoured Cruisers and been permitted to be retained by smaller, including dominion, navies, even with the Washington treaty. The thinking being post Jutland that they were too vulnerable to be used in the battle line so were no longer truly capital ships and only should be counted as such in larger navies that also had battlecruisers.

This was postulated in a piece I read about the possible retention of the Indefatigable class battlecruiser HMAS Australia. Apparently the commonly related story that she was scuttled as a requirement of the Washington Treaty was not entirely the case as she had already been de-stored and partially stripped of equipment as a post war economy measure and the government of the day had little interest in retaining her. Had the decision been made to retain her there was no actual legal requirement for Australia to be disposed of as she was significantly smaller and less capable than the war built ships and could have easily been reclassified to have been excluded from the RNs tonnage limits. The Washington Treaty required the Anglo / Japanese Treaty be dissolved and similarly could have required the links between the RN and dominion navies be severed, freeing them from Britain's limits as well as preventing the older ships of the dominions impacting on the RNs limits. A modernised Australia, perhaps with the wing turrets removed and the casemates supressed in favour of a DP or AA heavy secondary armament could conceivably have proven quite useful early in WWII against Japans treaty cruisers.

End result the RN has four Hoods that receive appropriate upgrades and rebuilds instead of wasting the same money on the inferior QEs, Rs and Renowns. These fully upgraded ships with QE/Valiant/Renown type modernisations, serve with distinction through WWII along side new build ships, with the possibility that the reclassified battlecruisers, transferred to the dominions may receive similar modernisations leading up to an into WWII. The Large Repair was real but the whatif extrapolations are very interesting as well.
 
Volkodav said:
A modernised Australia, perhaps with the wing turrets removed and the casemates supressed in favour of a DP or AA heavy secondary armament could conceivably have proven quite useful early in WWII against Japans treaty cruisers.

What you basically have then is an oversized, under-armoured, but very fast pre-dreadnought.

Four guns are IIRC too few to provide adequate straddles for long-range gunfire against fast opponents. Six is the minimum (Graf Spee class pocket-battleships, Renown-class battlecruisers; Australia's nominal broadside without cross-deck firing); eight is better.
 
pathology_doc said:
Volkodav said:
A modernised Australia, perhaps with the wing turrets removed and the casemates supressed in favour of a DP or AA heavy secondary armament could conceivably have proven quite useful early in WWII against Japans treaty cruisers.

What you basically have then is an oversized, under-armoured, but very fast pre-dreadnought.

Four guns are IIRC too few to provide adequate straddles for long-range gunfire against fast opponents. Six is the minimum (Graf Spee class pocket-battleships, Renown-class battlecruisers; Australia's nominal broadside without cross-deck firing); eight is better.

Or as the paper concerned suggested, an armoured cruiser. Post WWI the RN was interested in further developing "Large" cruisers between 20,000 and 30,000 tons, similar to Courageous and Glorious, but with extensive aircraft facilities and even a pair of torpedo boats on davits. These ships were very much replacement for armoured cruisers in concept but not that different from Fishers Follies in size, protection and power, while battlecruisers had evolved into fast battleships and battleships were evolving into super battleships prior to Washington. Following London treaty negotiations the Large Cruiser was reintroduced but had to be above a certain size and gun calibre that effectively made them light battlecruisers (I can't recall the exact limits and will have to dig them out when I have time), i.e. the Alaskas and similar. So following this thinking it is conceivable that older, smaller battlecruisers, especially those with only 6 or 4 15" guns, or smaller, would be reclassified as Large Cruisers or Armoured Cruisers.
 
CNH said:
"only somewhat inferior armor protection"

I admire your sense of humour. Inferior enough to be taken out after half a dozen salvoes.

Hood was catastrophically unlucky at the Denmark Straits to the point that her loss was far more attributable to Murphy's Law than her own weaknesses. In addition to the fatal hit she had probably already had her fire control knocked out by another hit to her bridge area which resulted in what one of her survivors described as a rain of bits of officer.
 
Sherman Tank said:
CNH said:
"only somewhat inferior armor protection"

I admire your sense of humour. Inferior enough to be taken out after half a dozen salvoes.

Hood was catastrophically unlucky at the Denmark Straits to the point that her loss was far more attributable to Murphy's Law than her own weaknesses. In addition to the fatal hit she had probably already had her fire control knocked out by another hit to her bridge area which resulted in what one of her survivors described as a rain of bits of officer.

Your are exaggerating how unlucky the Hood was to be destroyed in her engagement with the Bismarck.
The Hoods armoured scheme (post-Jutland extra armour worked in at the last minute into what was essentially a lightly armoured battle cruiser design) was essentially inadequate to not be seriously vulnerable to an opponent with battleship scale armament, apart from potentially at close range were the thin deck armour would be less likely to be exposed.
And even close in the Hood would have still been disadvantaged by its inferior protection.
Fighting a Scharnhorst or Kongo class would have been very risky, fighting any more heavily armed and armoured opponent was always more likely than not to end badly for the Hood.
Their was a degree of a lucky/unlucky shot that the Hood was lost as she was but likely she would have taken fatal damage in a sustained long-range plunging-fire engagement with the Bismarck; her deck armour simply wasn't up to the task. An ironically a more sustained fight may have also cost the Prince of Wales.
 
DK Brown's Nelson to Vanguard offers a little more info on the Hood refit. Hood was scheduled to follow Queen Elizabeth in the rebuild programme.
Much as the article linked above, he states the features agreed in December 1938 were; new machinery, conning tower and torpedoes removed, eight twin 5.25in mounts and six 8-barrelled pom-poms added and a cross-deck catapult.

Brown notes that the rebuild would have been difficult due to the overloaded structure and high stresses. He argues trying to put the 5.25in trunks through the strength deck would have been a problem. Perhaps eventually a 4.5in battery would have been fitted?

The other major refit programme would have been Nelson and Rodney around 1940. Although the final scheme was not agreed before the war, in October 1938 the DNC was looking at new machinery, armour changes and a cross-deck catapult. It was planned to deepen the belt and armour the lower deck forward during their 1937-38 refits (£330,000 cost) but resources were not available. Nelson did later get 2.75-3in armour forward.

The three main schemes were:
Eight twin 5.25in, two eight-barrelled pom-poms and catapult on X turret
Ten twin 4.5in, two eight-barrelled pom-poms and catapult and hangars on the shelter deck
Six twin 5.25in, two eight-barrelled pom-poms and catapult on X turret
 
A moment's thread drift.

Vanguard used turrets from Courageous & Glorious.

Would it have been possible to build more Vanguards using turrets from the old R class?
 
CNH said:
A moment's thread drift.

Vanguard used turrets from Courageous & Glorious.

Would it have been possible to build more Vanguards using turrets from the old R class?

Possible, yes; practical, no. The R class (the ones which survived) spent much of their war on convoy duty, and one of them was lent to the USSR (which IIRC used her extensively for shore bombardment). So in the actual timeline their guns would not have been available. In a scenario where you scrap them before WW2 breaks out, this wouldn't happen either because the effort would more appropriately have been put into the 16 inch gunned Lion class.

As for building them later, Vanguard was never finished before the war she was constructed to fight in ended, so even if you had money and resources to build three or four more with R-class guns, the entire class would have been wasted effort - even presuming an extended war against Japan, there would probably have been no more capital ships left for them to fight.

In a way it's a shame, because Vanguard was probably in many ways one of the best battleship designs in history - but she never fought, so we will never know.
 
I recall reading somewhere that the Rs and unmodernised QEs were seen to be as, if not more vulnerable to long range plunging fire than Hood, in fact I believe it was an endemic problem of all designs prior to the G3, N3, Nelsons. The reasoning behind concentrating the main armament, hence the main hence their magazines forward on the G3 etc. was to remove the vulnerability of plunging fire from the forward sector passing through the by necessity Repair could have done anything about it?

I wonder how this was dealt with in the KGVs and Vanguard, as well as the various modernisations, including Hood proposed Large Repair.
 
"was to remove the vulnerability of plunging fire from the forward sector passing through the by necessity Repair could have done anything about it"?


Pardon?
 
Volkodav said:
I recall reading somewhere that the Rs and unmodernised QEs were seen to be as, if not more vulnerable to long range plunging fire than Hood, in fact I believe it was an endemic problem of all designs prior to the G3, N3, Nelsons. The reasoning behind concentrating the main armament, hence the main hence their magazines forward on the G3 etc. was to remove the vulnerability of plunging fire from the forward sector passing through the by necessity Repair could have done anything about it?

I wonder how this was dealt with in the KGVs and Vanguard, as well as the various modernisations, including Hood proposed Large Repair.

Approx. World War 1 designs generally had deck armour that hadn't foreseen the threat of air attacks and whose general armour configuration tended to be optimised for shorter range engagements rather than against longer range plunging shots. Hence why the British, Japanese & Italy inter-war rebuilds tended to add extra deck armour.
However battlecruisers like the Hood did rather worse in this regard than there battleship contempories, while the generally thinner lighter armour left them just generally more vulnerable.
Considering none of Hoods battleship contempories suffered loss in anything like the same manner suggests the Hood was particularly vulnerable.
 
Wasn't there a plan to upgrade the Hood's armor scheme to that of a true battleship? That would be along the lines of the IJN Kongo class, which began life as battlecruisers but were upgraded to fast battleships.

And does anyone here subscribe to the theory that Hood was actually sunk by a shell from Prinz Eugen?
 
kaiserd said:
Considering none of Hoods battleship contempories suffered loss in anything like the same manner suggests the Hood was particularly vulnerable.

Nonsense. Hood was comparably armoured to her battleship contemporaries, by WW1 standards she was a fast battleship (hence her displacement), rather than a battlecruiser as popularly imagined. The nature of her sinking was the result of one of the unluckiest (or luckiest depending on your perspective) sequence of events in naval history even though we will never conclusively know what that sequence of events was. She was absolutely not "particularly vulnerable" compared to other ships of her generation.

That does not change the fact that she was materially in poor condition (she needed a refit) and in increasingly desperate need of full modernisation as well as attacking from a tactical disadvantage; steaming into spray, unable to link up with the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, initially opening fire on Prinz Eugen rather than Bismarck and in formation with a HMS Prince of Wales that was in the opposite condition to Hood in that she needed a shakedown cruise and subsequent remedial work following her completion.
 
As regards the Prinz Eugen - I have heard the story but I do not subscribe to it as gospel. It seems to me that it cleaves too neatly to the agenda of "Let's bash the Hood's armour protection and sate our anglophobia by showing that a German heavy cruiser sank her with one shot."

(Granted, one of the reconstructions - a lesser magazine detonating the 15" mag in a chain explosion - seems to be compatible with a hit from either German ship, but the lay explanation that "Hood was sunk by Prinz Eugen" can be used as a jumping off point for too much Brit-bashing for my liking.)

I've heard it said of Prince of Wales that it was a tribue to her fire control system that she could get hits on an enemy battleship on her shakedown cruise when her crew were still in shock at having their flagship blown up in front of them.
 
JFC Fuller said:
kaiserd said:
Considering none of Hoods battleship contempories suffered loss in anything like the same manner suggests the Hood was particularly vulnerable.

Nonsense. Hood was comparably armoured to her battleship contemporaries, by WW1 standards she was a fast battleship (hence her displacement), rather than a battlecruiser as popularly imagined. The nature of her sinking was the result of one of the unluckiest (or luckiest depending on your perspective) sequence of events in naval history even though we will never conclusively know what that sequence of events was. She was absolutely not "particularly vulnerable" compared to other ships of her generation.

That does not change the fact that she was materially in poor condition (she needed a refit) and in increasingly desperate need of full modernisation as well as attacking from a tactical disadvantage; steaming into spray, unable to link up with the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk, initially opening fire on Prinz Eugen rather than Bismarck and in formation with a HMS Prince of Wales that was in the opposite condition to Hood in that she needed a shakedown cruise and subsequent remedial work following her completion.

"Comparably armoured" is pushing it; while during final design and construction efforts made to recast as something closer to a fast battleship it was still essentially still a battlecruiser with an inferior protection scheme than the QEs (pre & post their reconstructions) and the R class, yet alone what came after.
The unfortunate fact that the Hood lasted less than 10 minutes of combat with the Bismarck (and were lost in a strangely similar way to its battlecruiser brethren at Jutland but without the same propellent & flash door mishandling to blame) but the supperior protection schemes of the Prince of Wales, Rodney & KGV survived much longer & better.
Even the handling of the Hood in the battle (desperately trying to close the distance to reduce the time the decks were vulnerable to plunging fire) shows the Royal Navy was very aware of the Hoods short comings/ vulnerabilities in this regard.
The Hood was a beautiful elegant design and her design flaws were a product of her time and the evolving context of her creation; her fate may well have befallen contempoary battle cruiser designs such as the US Lexington class (whose armoured scheme was inferior to the Hood) if built.
 
kaiserd said:
"Comparably armoured" is pushing it;

No it isn't "pushing it", it's factually accurate. HMS Hood was as well armoured as RN 15" battleships at the time of her commissioning, in fact the RN belief in the interwar period was that she had superior protection in many ways to the QE and R classes. Rodney and Nelson are a different generation and thus not, in design, contemporaneous.
 
JFC Fuller said:
kaiserd said:
"Comparably armoured" is pushing it;

No it isn't "pushing it", it's factually accurate. HMS Hood was as well armoured as RN 15" battleships at the time of her commissioning, in fact the RN belief in the interwar period was that she had superior protection in many ways to the QE and R classes. Rodney and Nelson are a different generation and thus not, in design, contemporaneous.

It is probably fair to say that the Hood's deck armour as commissioned was similar to the HMS Queen Elizabeth when the later entered service 5 years earlier. However directly after Jutland the QEs received extra deck armour (the Hoods extra armour worked in during construction only brought it roughly up to the QEs starting point). Then the QEs interwar rebuilds added significantly thicker deck armour (as much against air attack as plunging heavy shells). The R class always had a better armoured scheme (including significantly better protection deck armour) than either the Hood or the QEs pre their interwar rebuilds, but still not up to the standards of subsequent capital ship designs (the British 15 inchers having being designed with a focus on shorter range engagements than the ships that came latter).

For more detailed and informed views than my own I would refer you to the following;
http://www.kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3065
http://www.hmshood.com/history/construct/design.htm
http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarkstrait/woodward.htm#limitations
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Queen_Elizabeth_(1913)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Revenge_(06)
 
The history of RN battleships is very well documented through multiple publications (most of which I own) and archive material. Hood was as well protected as Battleships contemporary to her. One of the reasons she was so far to the back of the queue for a major modernisation was the belief that her deck armour was not just sufficient but superior to other ships of her generation.

Trying to claim that Hood entering service 5 years after HMS Queen Elizabeth means she was not contemporaneous to that ship is design terms is as ludicrous as claiming Hood was "particularly vulnerable", in reality Hood was being designed at the same time as the last of the R-class were being commissioned and was intended to keep out the same shell types.

G3, N3, Nelson & Rodney are a generation later than Hood and absorbed all the lessons learnt in wartime and the associated technological advances. They were consequently very different ships.
 
JFC Fuller said:
The history of RN battleships is very well documented through multiple publications (most of which I own) and archive material. Hood was as well protected as Battleships contemporary to her. One of the reasons she was so far to the back of the queue for a major modernisation was the belief that her deck armour was not just sufficient but superior to other ships of her generation.

Trying to claim that Hood entering service 5 years after HMS Queen Elizabeth means she was not contemporaneous to that ship is design terms is as ludicrous as claiming Hood was "particularly vulnerable", in reality Hood was being designed at the same time as the last of the R-class were being commissioned and was intended to keep out the same shell types.

G3, N3, Nelson & Rodney are a generation later than Hood and absorbed all the lessons learnt in wartime and the associated technological advances. They were consequently very different ships.

I don't think your tone is particularly conducive to constructive discussion.
The Hood was a hybrid design (started as a battlecruiser, ending up closer closer to a fast battleship) and because of its delayed construction & completion arguably sits somewhat between clear generational lines (though clearly far closer to the R class then the latter N3/ Nelsons - but with significant innovations for example use of sloped armoured belts, use of small diameter turbines etc.)
Perhaps as you contend the unrebuilt QEs & R class ships shared the same in-built flaw to plunging fire as compared to the pre WW2 modern fast battleships and were just lucky not to face the same quick brutal fate as the Hood in either of the World Wars.
The Hoods protection scheme comprehensively failed her and her unfortunate crew when put to the test and its that juxtaposition versus the Hood's exaggerated prewar reputation that helps make her such an interesting/ controversial ship. To share the same fate as her battle-cruiser half-brothers at Jutland does speak to lessons not learned quickly and/ or well enough.
 
My tone is entirely appropriate for responding to the false claim that Hood was "particularly vulnerable". Hood was lost to a hit whose odds are almost incalculable, on its own it is not instructive of her protection compared to her contemporaries. As pointed out multiple times in this thread she was just as well protected as her contemporaries. That she was a 25 year old design in poor material condition and fighting at a tactical disadvantage against a fully worked up yet practically new opponent does not change the fact that when commissioned in 1920 (21 years prior to her demise) she was a well protected vessel for a her era. The Royal Navy fully understood both the strengths and weaknesses of Hood's protection as they did the rest of their fleet and judged her essentially superior to all their other 15" ships. In turn that is not to say the RN was happy with those ships protection as is evident from the protection schemes proposed for G3 and N3 and implemented in Nelson and Rodney.
 
I get this image in the spanish language book "Guia Ilustrada de los Acorazados y Cruceros de Batalla" by John Jordan Editorial San Martin, Madrid 1986. The text talks about a reconstruction like Renown but with sixteen 133 mm guns and a urgent change of machines for a lighter one (Excuse me my bad english).

Hood38.jpg
 
I wonder what could have been achieved with a larger HMS Blake type modernisation. She may even have served long enough to carry the Harrier.

Seriously!

Throughout the 1950's and 60's the War Office/MoD was hurridley disposing of far newer, more efficient and more capable vessels than a 40 year old Hood, no matter what level of modernisation she may have received...
 
I can only think that the pain meds were good that day or it was a tongue in cheek moment. Otherwise, seriously? NO.
 
The Royal Navy between the wars had to cope with reduced budgets and ever increasing commitments. Hood enjoyed a good peace as the largest capital ship in the world. The tendency of the RN to treat its battlecruisers as battleships to give it 15 capital ships was understandable in these circumstances.
 

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