Description

At the start of World War II the Hood was forced into service without the gunnery upgrades she needed and was deemed less useful than she could have been. Regardless, she spent the next few months hunting for German commerce raiders and blockade runners in the Northern Europe Seas. In May 1941, the Hood and the Prince of Wales battleship were en route to intercept the German Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen, en route to the Atlantic. In the Battle of the Denmark Strait just a few weeks later, the Hood was hit by many German shells, resulting in the explosion of one of the largest ships of the era and sinking it to the bottom of the sea. Because of the perceived invincibility of the Hood, the loss of the ship devastated the morale of the British military and people. The discovery of the ship's wreck in 2001 confirmed the reason for its sinking as a mixture of torpedo fire and a magazine explosion inside one of the ship's gun turrets.