The Loss of HMS Hood - But why did it blow up??

Before I begin, I would just like to say that this video would not have been possible without the kind help and assistance of Mr. Bill Jurans, who did a lot of the research that forms the basis of much of this video. He also contributed significantly to a number of books, including the recent book The Battleship Bismarck, where, together with Mr. Doolin and Nagarski, the voyage of the famous battleship and the battles it fought are presented in detail, including some of what is about point of listening. I highly recommend purchasing a copy. For you, then what exactly killed Hms Hood?

The answer on the surface may seem obvious, but it was surely a German shell, but how did that happen? Much has been said about exactly where and how that shell caused the

loss

of the ship, but some of the most widely held questions, if we examine them more closely, do not make much sense and some of them do not make any sense at all in establishing what what really happened or, more accurately, what is the most probable or plausible sequence of events. We need to establish a few things who might be responsible, what Hood's defensive capabilities were against the threats posed by those entities, and what Hood was doing at the time of the fatal explosion.

In terms of responsibility, we can consider three parts: the German battleship Bismarck, the German heavy cruiser Prince Eugen and Hood, we will see them in reverse order when we get to it in terms of defensive capability, while a battlecruiser and a relatively old one, At least on paper, she was surprisingly well defended, although she was initially conceived as a somewhat light ship. in armor in exchange for speed as was the case with several British battlecruiser designs due to changes in her construction that were carried out due to the Battle of Jutland, she emerged as a ship whose main protection belt was approximately equal to the On the Elizabeth-class battleships, the armor itself was somewhat thinner, at 12 inches thick, but was angled such that at expected battle ranges of 10 to 20 thousand yards, the equivalent thickness of the Armor facing an incoming projectile was more or less similar with Hood armor becoming increasingly effective as the range increases and the angle of fall of the incoming projectile becomes steeper.

This type of angled main belt would be repeated on the Nelson Yamato-class battleships of South Dakota and Iowa, to name a few, although with variations in the precise armoring. The thickness and precise angle of the armor depended on the ship in question. Where the

hood

was vulnerable was the armor on its deck. This consisted of several layers of different thicknesses in multiple decks, each covering slightly different areas. The complexity of these combinations meant that calculating exactly how much armor protected the To begin with, a ship from a hit from above anywhere is something of a nightmare, complicated by the fact that, since the Hood's armor belt, like many Ships of his time, had thinner plates on top, as well as the main belt lower down, projectiles could avoid this thinner. armor and also omitting several layers of armor from the deck, which adds even more complexity to the equation and that's before you realize that multiple layers of thinner armor are, in fact, less effective than the same thicknesses in a single massive layer.

Various schemes to address this weakness. During the interwar years, everything from relatively minimal but useful additions to large-scale repairs and modernizations would be considered, but by 1941 none of these had been carried out, so there was demand to act as the flagship of the Royal Navy. of a wet ship as displacement increases combined with additional armor built into the design while under construction tended to make her sit lower in the water, especially on the quarterdeck, although this varied depending on what exactly was being built. had been added to or removed from the ship in a given year and, of course, what condition the ship was in at the time, how much fuel and supplies had been consumed, the state of the sea and a host of other factors at the time of its destruction , the cowl had already received a hit which started a fire amidships, which we will examine in more detail when we look at the possible causes of her

loss

, but in terms of position, the ship along with the Prince of Wales had been trying to approach German ships, there are a wide variety of reasons.

This includes the fact that the Hood's older fire control system would be much more effective at close range, while much has been made of the Hood's weaker deck armor and while it is true that Holland would have known about this, he also it is true that Admiralty combat instructions called for all major engagements with capital ships to seek to close range as quickly as possible, keeping in mind that, upon closing, a ship would present a smaller target profile and a more difficult target in general, since the enemy would have to adapt to significant changes. In both range and speed, especially when a series of small course corrections were made, these instructions applied even to battleships that had considerably greater deck protection.

It should also be noted that the Netherlands knew of the Bismarck's mission and that the German ships would prefer to avoid engagement. British heavy units, so driving hard limited the Germans' options as they had cruisers in one direction, ice packs in another and now capital ships in a third by closing the range, even if Bismarck and Prince Oregon escaped At top speed, it would. It will take some time for them to get out of range or break through the British line of advance, in any case, giving them more than enough time for the British guns to cause devastating or even fatal damage to allow the range to continue closing in on the two ships.

British. I had to make periodic course corrections, these were signaled by the waving of the blue flag 2 signal calling for a 20 degree turn to port. One of these turns had already been completed, leaving any incoming artillery fire to deal with at an angle of approximately 37 degrees. of the perpendicular along with the angle of the

hood

armor at the time of detonation, the hood was indicating to make another turn that would have left an angle of 17 degrees with respect to the perpendicular, decreasing the overall resistance offered by the armor but opening the x and y turrets and therefore doubling the ship's effective firepower obviously where it was in this turn makes a pretty significant difference, but we can reconstruct the most likely scenario based on a number of factors.

Examination of the wreck showed that Hood's rudder was locked in a port turn, meaning she was at some point in that 20-degree turn but had not completed it since there was a brief delay between signals. initials that something was wrong and the explosion where rudder changes could have been made, this rules out the end of the turn, but also allows the start of the fatal incident to occur shortly before the turn began. Additionally, when a cowl-sized boat sets the helm on it, it takes some time for the altered water flow to overcome the boat's inertia and alter its course in either direction.

As a result, Hood could appreciably have continued on her apparent heading for about 10 seconds or so with the rudder actually locked without changing her angle relative to the target. This, of course, extends the window in which physical evidence of Hud's state at the time of his death coincides with reports of what he was doing at the time. The Prince of Wales's action report states that a turn by two blues at 0 5 55 opened an arc in the Prince of Wales's ninth salvo and two more blues flew when at 6:00, just after the Bismarck's fifth salvo , a large explosion occurred between the after funnel and the mainmast and she sank in three or four minutes.

The way to indicate that a flag order was going to be executed was to lower the flag and here we see that it was still flying, suggesting that the turn had not yet begun at the time of the explosion, while two of the survivors aboard the Hood indicated that the turn to port had just begun and that the order to give the execution signal had possibly been given just before the explosion. Finally, the explosion of the Prince of Wales had to take evasive measures to prevent the sinking of the Hood. If she was still on her previous course, it is unlikely that this would have happened, but it would be a concern if the Prince of Wales had started to turn according to the signal he put on all of these.

While the accounts may seem contradictory at first, there is a way to get all of these accounts to line up and it actually gives us an incredibly narrow window of time for the explosion to occur. If the order to execute had been given on board, it is likely that the rudders would have been set to port at the same time, however, there would be a short delay between the order being given and the signalman physically lowering the flags meanwhile on Principe. of Wales maintaining formation first and having been warned by the raising of the signal, it is likely that the helm of the latter ship was put to port when the cowl began to turn rather than strictly waiting for the signal to be lowered, obviously Ships have inertia, so the Prince of Wales would have continued his turn in the seconds that followed.

The destruction of Hood therefore requires a change in course, this however means that the cause of the detonation occurred immediately before or just at the beginning of Hood's actual turn, meaning that for the purposes of this discussion we can assume that at least because of the circumstances. of destruction caused by a projectile impact, the angle of impact relative to perpendicular is approximately 37 degrees once the HUD armor angle is taken into account and then adjusted for both angles in a 3D environment, this in turn provides an effective angle of impact for a projectile of only less than 44 degrees, so now we know where the ship was and what shape it was in, let's briefly consider the manner of destruction.

There are multiple eyewitness accounts and, as with all of these incidents, the details differ, but the common theme that emerges from the majority of those who saw the entire sequence of events is that an almost silent flame of very high intensity seemed to emerge. from somewhere around the main mast for a few moments before being replaced or subsumed by a somewhat duller but much more expansive explosion in the vicinity of x turret, the latter almost certainly being the detonation of the 15-inch aft magazines , this appears to have occurred shortly after the arrival of a salvo from the Bismarck that most observers who detected the falling shells believe resulted in a hit somewhere between the stern funnel. and the main mast, although a small minority believe that two impacts occurred, these events occurred after the fire on the ship's deck due to an earlier impact was observed to have died down somewhat, so any scenario explaining the Destruction of the ship must take into account this observed sequence of destruction.

With all that out of the way let's now consider the possible culprits, starting with HMS Hood itself and yes you heard that right and there is some evidence behind this, not everyone who saw Hood explode mentioned an incoming enemy salvo at the time or shortly before and Several mentioned that the explosion seemed to coincide with the firing of one of the aft turrets. Three petty officers aboard the Prince of Wales reported the following. George Henry Gough saw a salvo from the Bismarck land on the starboard side of the cowling, very close. The next thing it says What I remember seeing was flames from turret x, a, b and y were firing at that moment and I noticed that So why did the turret fire on its own?

The hood went up Edgar Holt said a fire broke out in the chest turret on the port side of the hood about two minutes later I saw a flame about 10 feet long shoot out of the mouth of the turret b and about a half to a minute later why the turret on the cowl fired its first salvo about a second later, the cowl exploded Lawrence Sutton remembers that the cowl was firing with its forward turrets why the turret had been trained four and a half during this time why the turret then it was aimed at the enemy and before firing there was a flash behind the main mast of the cowl what seemed to be a fire on the deck of the ship, why the turret fired and at the same time a large flash appeared around the turret, the flash rose high above the main mast of the ship and all I heard was a tremendous roar and I couldn't see anything untilAs the smoke cleared, that was all I saw of the hood.

What was going on with turret B in early accounts is unclear, maybe a jam, maybe a gun that fired late, but it doesn't seem to be related to the main explosion which was definitely aft, but all of these and some others Accounts speak of something strange happening with the turret, in theory there are a few ways this could happen, for example if there was a malfunction with one of the weapons that resulted in a flash. or explosion that blew up the gun breach possibly a jammed projectile a premature detonation a charge failure that damaged a charge followed by a spark that turned out to be in the wrong place, etc., this high energy explosion or burn could have resulted in a flash that travels down through the ammunition handling system and into the magazine, however, would have required someone to have disabled the ship's anti-flash measures Jutland-style, which is technically possible, but after Jutlin Those measures became stronger and much more complex, so we disabled them. would not have been something that could have been done easily or quickly with the increase in strength, in particular, even a Jutland style about storing charges in the turret or in the shell room should not have been able to breach the system, a possibility extremely remote it may be that an explosion occurred just as the hoist arrived with the next set of charges and projectiles, which could then ignite those charges and propel the hoist downward, something like a projectile exploding again inside the magazine, but this would have been a sequence of multiple events that would also have had to have coincided up to the second and still nullify a number.

As for the safety features, there is also the fact that, while many turrets of different sizes were hit and burned in both the World War I as in World War II, it was very rare for this to result in magazine detonation and loss of ship fire and Explosions tend to seek out areas of lower pressure and therefore tend to vent upwards and outward, while a flame directed towards a magazine will increase the pressure in front of it, since in a closed magazine all exit routes will be the same. those that the flame or flash are following to try to enter in turn, this increase in pressure will slow the advance of a flame maybe not much and maybe not for long, but when it comes to an explosion nothing lasts long at all modes and the lowest pressure volume in the area of ​​the initial explosion will tend to cause a rebound effect from closed areas that suck in the air and any flash advancing towards it, of course a large enough explosion can overcome this, but not There are indications that Hood was following Jutlan's style of ammunition handling. procedures and stacking the turret with additional charges (a number of other capital ships suffered fairly catastrophic weapons failures several times in World War II and in Iowa in the 1990s, but this did not result in magazine detonation, nor would it explain the first explosion around the main mast, the ship should have exploded around the aft magazines, unless the initial failure in the turret caused enough displaced air to cause the fire on the ship's deck to break out, but such an intense explosion again due to those circumstances it is exceptionally unlikely even further.

The battlecruisers at Jutland were noted to have a notable delay between the arrival of a fatal shell and the subsequent detonation of their magazines, given that Hood's turrets were in much better condition in this respect than those ships, it seems highly unlikely. If a specific weapon shot could be connected with the ship exploding just a second later, there simply wouldn't be enough time for the flash to propagate, the magazine to begin burning pressure to build up, and then the final destructive fireball to emerge, so which, while it cannot be definitively ruled out, it would seem that this is not the most plausible scenario after the fire on the deck of the ship.

This had been going on for some time at this time and was described by survivors as a fire in ready-to-use ammunition lockers for secondary weapons nearby. have spread to the armed magazines, it seems highly unlikely that the fire was in the open and would therefore tend to vent into the air and the ship's deck had multiple layers of armor between it and the magazines vertically, as well as enough distance to travel horizontally. an explosion of even the entire stockpile of ready-to-use four-inch ammunition would not have been enough to breach the armored decks, not even directly below the explosion site, let alone much further back on the ship, the ammunition elevator up the four-inch guns have been locked up because the guns were not in action nor expected to be at any time in the immediate future.

The burning liquids spreading from this fire might appear to offer a potential pathway, but there were extremely strict controls on the storage and disposal in place of gasoline and other similar supplies and, in any case, any flow of burned petrochemicals would have had to overcome the same ammunition safety systems as an explosion, which would have taken a considerable amount of time, even assuming no one associated with such highly protected ammunition lifting systems. you noticed or did something about, you know, a plume of falling gasoline and assuming that even if the slow-burning gasoline did get to some delicate place, it would have consumed much of the available oxygen within the confined spaces that it needed to get through and, So, most likely he would have set out, so based on the evidence, this line of thinking can probably be effectively ruled out and what about Prince Eugen?

Much has been made of the possibility that the heavy cruiser's smaller 8-inch shells may have been the culprit through When firing at depth, for this we need to take a brief look at the range at which the engagement was being fought, which will influence almost all subsequent scenarios. The range figures given for the final hood moments vary considerably depending on the surrounding source. less than 15,000 yards to just over 21,000 yards, but most figures and indeed those based most closely on observations of the ships involved in the battle tend to gravitate towards the center of these figures from just under 17,000 to just over 19,000 yards, since These tend to talk more about the range at the time of explosion, which would be fractionally shorter than at the time of impact.

You'll take a range of about 19,000 yards as a decent estimate and because it's on the higher end of likely. The ranges favor the arguments for dive shooting, unfortunately for the theory, it doesn't favor them much. The drop angle for Prince Oregon shots at this range is only about 19 degrees at most, meaning no cover penetration is occurring. The round simply pops out and once adjusted to the angle of the cowl belt in relation to the incoming fire, the penetration of the eight-inch shell at this range, even if the German cruiser is using armor-piercing shells, would not penetrate even the top most thin hood. side protection since its initial thickness before the five-inch adjustment is already greater than the approximately four inches of penetration that the eight-inch bullet can achieve, not to mention the thicknesses of seven or twelve inches below, in short, Prince Eugene it could certainly damage the cowl at this range demolishing unprotected elements of the ship but there is no way for the projectile to get anywhere that could pose an existential threat to the British battlecruiser leaving us with the 15 inch guns of the bismarck and here a number of theories have been advanced direct penetration of the Hud main magazines by a projectile through the main belt penetration above the main belt through the 7-inch belt and part of the deck a diving projectile such as the one that hit the Prince of Wales only this time it also exploded and hit Hood's torpedo launchers. and various other permutations well, let's go over these first, the torpedo cowling had a pair of twin above-water torpedo tubes placed just behind the rear funnel, a double launcher per side, each launcher had four torpedoes available for two salvos and each torpedo carried around 500 pounds of TNT as a warhead, the theory goes that a projectile hitting this area could

blow

up the torpedoes and in turn the explosion of 2000 pounds of TNT would tear the ship apart and

blow

up the magazines.

However, this theory has some major problems: a TNT explosion is sudden and is not accompanied by prolonged flames, as was observed immediately before the hood exploded. Additionally, Prince Eugen reported torpedoes in the water a few minutes after the destruction of the cowl. Hood was the only British ship present equipped with torpedoes, as Prince of Wales carried none. which immediately halves the likely explosives available plus these torpedo warheads are actually remarkably stable; The simple impact of a projectile that hits or passes through them will not detonate them, although a projectile that detonates in the middle of them could do so in other cases of equipped torpedoes.

The ships that were hit, the torpedo warheads did not explode even when the compressed air canisters in their bodies ruptured. The much larger guns aboard HMS Nelson, for example, made a complete mess of the torpedo room by running, as they said, like scalded cats, but failing to detonate. when subjected to a nearby torpedo hit during operations in the Mediterranean, very occasionally a direct hit from an explosive would detonate a torpedo; However, the detonation of as much or more TNT did not result in the instant destruction of the ship. in question nor the detonation of the magazines, despite the fact that the ship subjected to the experiment was considerably smaller than the hull, the magazine is much closer and the intermediate protection significantly less, even when the detonation of a torpedo condemned a ship, it took a long time for the ship to sink.

Expert estimates at the time calculated that even if all four torpedoes were fired, the likely result would be to blow up the five- and seven-inch plate locally, but not the 12-inch plate below, with the overall result being perhaps a 20 foot hole. the side of the ship along with most of everything above it, but offered a relatively easy path to open air, there is no conceivable way for the explosion to travel or propel an object down through several decks, In addition to going through several layers of protection and finally taking out the magazines, this protection also included an armored box that was built around the torpedo room which, although primarily designed to keep projectiles away from the torpedoes, would also have channeled any internal explosion largely outward and upward in the direction exactly opposite to the magazines, although such an explosion could have caused some structural damage to the top of the entire beam if it had occurred, given that the worst of the cases only involves 2,000 pounds of TNT, the chances of half that explosive having much greater effect are remotely remote and as mentioned above, the pattern of damage and fire is inconsistent with the last reported moments of the battlecruiser. , so we come to the more prosaic projectiles that hit the magazine directly.

Much emphasis is sometimes made on this diagram showing the fire swooping, either bypassing most or all of the Hud's primary protection. penetrate the platform at a favorable angle and then pierce the magazines; However, this leaves out a fairly important factor: the drop angles shown are represented between 20 and 30 degrees in the range we are using for the distance between the two sides of the The drop angle of the Bismarck projectiles is only of about 14 degrees, even the lowest angle in this diagram, 20 degrees, does not occur unless Hood is another fifteen thousand feet away, far beyond even the longest estimates for the range between the two ships and A 30 degree impact would practically have to occur at the moment the two sides saw each other, a moment when the German ship was still minutes away from firing, so these particular scenarios are not relevant to our considerations.

Instead, we come to the one that seems most obvious: By simply piercing the main belt with a 15-inch shell, we can estimate the penetration capabilities of a German 15-inch shell at the ranges and anglesinvolved through various methods, including surviving German armor penetration calculations and data, of course, there is always a degree. In terms of uncertainty, a specific projectile may outperform or underperform as can armor, the absolute angle of impact may vary with ship roll and the behavior of the projectile's armor-piercing cap may also vary, including the velocity of Combustion of the charge can give slightly different speeds.

Therefore, such information on the penetration threshold is always an approximation of the average case, with the appreciation that actual results may vary slightly one way or another; However, in this case it is incredibly unlikely since the values ​​for shell angle and armor thickness and impact velocity are well outside the area where one would expect to see penetration without a particularly dramatic confluence of events. Such a blow would have made the nearby compartments ring like a bell, but that would be all under these conditions. I expect penetration to occur with a plate thickness of about nine to nine and a half inches, which is well below the 12 inches of the HUD primary belt, although as you go down from 12 inches to 9 inches, the chances of getting a better than average result for the projectile increases that, however, it will immediately raise some flags since 9 inches is of course greater than seven inches with the armor thickness above the belt of 12 inches, perhaps this is the culprit, while the projectile certainly could have passed through the seven inch belt, its speed would have been greatly reduced and then it would have faced a three inch platform at a very shallow angle considering the speed. remaining belt penetration of seven inches and even somewhat generously allowing only the vertical element of this impact angle and not the horizontal. tolerance which increases the effectiveness of the German shell you still get no penetration the shell would have jumped off the three inch deck plate to explode somewhere amidships high up on the ship and very far from any damage to the magazine with the deck resisting any splinters an even higher five-inch belt penetration results in a projectile passing through the armored platform in that area, but the projectile then detonates when the fuse reaches its time limit before hitting the next platform or jumping off. the same way and detonates again.

High up on the ship, some might ask about the slope of the lower deck armor, but as can be seen when the line is scaled to 15 inches thick to represent the actual width of an incoming projectile for the projectile to penetrate far enough above belt 12 inches. no snagging means the angle of descent is shallow enough to hit the horizontal deck, although only just, so things are looking pretty good for Hms Hood at the moment and the most likely scenario is an increasing possibility. more unlikely that she committed suicide, but we still have a couple of scenarios left and of course there's the fact that she really did explode.

The next option is a diving projectile, that is, a projectile that hit the water before the ship, traveled through the sea and then hit the ship under the armor protection through the torpedo defense system and then inside or near of the magazine before detonating such an attack had been planned and the French and Japanese navies made special modifications to the projectiles, not the German one; On the contrary, one shell dived and well penetrated HMS Prince of Wales. below its armor scheme and that was on a ship that was equipped with a deeper armor belt specifically in case of such an assault while the cowl was not designed with this type of attack in mind, its tendency to sail somewhat low in the The water at this point gave a similar degree of additional protection, although it is difficult to judge exactly how much, but it must first be noted that the projectile that hit The Prince of Wales hit so deeply that it indicated a point of impact with the water considerably away from the ship.

Her fuse had been activated upon impact with the water, but not being designed for the forces associated with violent, high-speed underwater travel, the fuse had failed. leaving the shell to continue its journey, if the fuse had worked it would have detonated long before reaching the side of the ship as far as the cowling was concerned, assuming the fuse actually works with the standard delay common to German armor-piercing fuses. a marginal possibility that a projectile landing in a very narrow window about 20 feet away from the ship could, assuming that the few survive the impact and the fall, sneak right between the elements of the torpedo defense system that, of Otherwise, they could slow it down through the underwater coating. and in the magazine area before detonating, although tempting, this assumes that the fuse would still work, that the projectile remains on course and arrives at the ship facing the correct direction.

The projectile and the Prince of Wales met upside down. There is also the fact that a direct underwater hit to the magazine would bring with it an enormous amount of pressurized water not only due to the depth but also due to the speed of the ship and since the magazine charges do not detonate instantly since the fire takes little time to spread and The pressure to generate incoming water would likely put out or at least significantly mitigate any subsequent fire (see the impact on the USS Boise in the Battle of Cape Esperance, for example). Very possible, but a bit of a long shot from a physics perspective, I would have done that too. resulted in a water impact that was far enough from the ship to be distinctive and this was not observed.

Of course, there is also the fact that where the observers saw an impact was much further forward on the ship and, of course, the column of flames around the main mast, which mitigate a direct hit on the ship's magazines; However, there is a hypothesis that fits all these facts and notably takes advantage of a hydrodynamic characteristic that corresponds to the area where we are. If we're looking for a strike to happen, it all starts hundreds of feet away at the bow of the ship. As any boat moves through the water, it creates a bow wave outside of fancy designs like a bulbous bow or other unique shape, generally the larger and faster the boat, the larger the bow wave.

Created by the ship passing through the ocean, a crest forms in the front quarter of the ship before gradually falling, like all waves that eventually reach a valley and then rise again and so on until their energy is exhausted. The wave profile will vary depending on the speed of a given boat, the faster the boat is going, the larger the bow wave will be and therefore the deeper the trough. We know that Hood was traveling at just over 28 knots around the top speed of the Prince of Wales following behind him. and in these circumstances the valley or lowest point of the bow wave turns out to be a little forward of the aft turrets, a little like that now I can hear you say, well, this is a model that you can adjust to show whatever you want, well, the admiralty.

I also thought about this possibility and they put together this diagram that shows pretty much the same thing and you might be thinking, wait a minute, this Admiralty diagram looks a little less severe than their model and yes, that would be an accurate statement, however, I would ask you to look at this image. This is one of the last, if not the last, surviving high-quality photographs of HMS Hood, taken a couple of days before her final engagement as she races towards the Denmark Strait, taken from a seaplane in the that she travels. at virtually full speed and you can see that the bow wave and accompanying trough are actually quite severe, much closer to the model than the theoretical admiralty diagram and are actually exposing a good bit of the red paint that is below the ship's waterline on the right.

In the area we are considering, since this photo represents Hood virtually in the condition he would have been in a few days later at the Battle of Denmark, it is a fairly definitive image now, although this change in depth is not enough to fully expose the 12-inch belt, the loss of depth means that a projectile could reach a similar point just below the belt without having to travel through as much water, which in turn makes it much more likely that the fuse will still be intact as most. of the forces that would shut it down are exerted during travel through the water, which is minimized in this case the point of impact with the water would also be much closer and less distinct from the boat itself and the shell would retain considerably more energy during passage subsequent to the ship and what would happen if a projectile reached approximately the area described in these circumstances, given subsequent events, the most likely scenario is that a 15-inch projectile hits the water just before the ship in the ship's channel. wave profile probably just over 10 feet off the side of the ship sinking a short distance towards the hull just below the armor belt sailing merrily above the bulk of the shock tubes that form part of the torpedo defense system and a through the hull plating the fuze has been initiated at this point less than a third of a second remains once inside the ship due to the location of the impact the projectile is in the aft machinery spaces but thanks to the angle of the ship with respect to At the angle of impact, it travels toward the aft bulkhead rather than simply toward a piece of very valuable machinery, the projectile then strikes the aft bulkhead separating the 4-inch magazine machinery spaces, either in its path or, more likely, shortly after.

The projectile detonates the 4-inch magazine catches fire and a rapidly expanding cloud of burning gas begins to spread. Four-inch loads have a higher surface area to volume ratio than larger gun loads and are encased, while the latter means they are actually harder. Exploding first once they start burning the confinement means an explosion is much more likely than rapid combustion, which in turn increases the chance of triggering other nearby charges. The expanding gases now seek the path of least resistance through the hole the projectile just punched in the bulkhead, the pressure inside the magazine growing as more four-inch ammunition is cooked by the hot gas and flames begin. to fill the machinery space, but it already has a way up and out through the ventilation shafts that run.

Across the ship emerging around the main mast area in the second or two it takes for all of this to happen, outside observers have seen nothing now except a tall, glowing column of flames rising from the vents. while the charger burns. It spends some of its energy like a short-lived blowtorch through the easiest route to the atmosphere, but the energy in the magazine is too much, the air can only flow so fast, and the hole exiting the magazine into the space of machinery and ventilation ducts. can only relieve so much pressure, the pressure inside the magazine increases rapidly pushing in all directions downwards and sideways, the incompressible ocean is not that far away, above, a series of shell armor layers contain the rising pressure momentarily in a few few tenths of a second.

After the pressure reaches a point where the four-inch magazine begins to break down, the only remaining easily accessible space that is not already under high pressure backed up by incompressible liquids is the bulkhead separating the four-inch and 15-inch magazines. , the five-and-a-half-inch intermediate magazine Having been removed for conversion into more space for the four-inch magazine, the pressure and combustion of the four-inch magazine bursts into the 15-inch magazine, igniting charge after charge as several hundred tons of propellant ignite almost in an instant, while the new pressure spike is much greater and begins to tear the ship apart in all directions, there is one route that is a little easier than most, the pressure wave rises through the ammunition lifts pulverizing the anti-flash measures along the way and as the explosion is now powerful enough to destroy the entire battle cruiser 12 inch plate and all in two, a few flash doors are no obstacle real now, an infernal storm of flame-retardant shell fragments and high-pressure superheated air explodes from the aft turrets, spilling out of the embrasures, opening hatches and sending a colossal fireball racing skyward along with both aft turrets, with most of the pressure now relieved, the ship's hull pierced like a swiss cheese andBarely holding together it is now subject to the immense forces of a 45,000+ tonne ship undergoing the early stages of a high speed turn, the weakened. the hull twists as if dragged by turbulent water at the front of the ship, where some people are still alive feel the ship recover slightly to starboard as the front tilts from the port side, turns without some of the stabilizing effects of the stern. third of the ship and most likely due to the fact that tons of water are rapidly flooding what remains of the engineering spaces, especially on the starboard side where the impact occurred, it is possible that what remains of the hull between the two sections is probably act like a torsion spring.

As the ship slows, the front of the ship then turns back to port, but the overheated, stressed, torn and now twisted hull can no longer hold on for long and is, in any case, rapidly filling with water, The front of the ship heals to port as what remains. of the aft sinks quickly filled with water by forward inertia and, alternatively, it is most likely that the tide as the flood moved through the ship induced a free surface effect, as a change in the angle of healing of the ship towards the more normal vertical have induced a wave of water that rushed from starboard to port aggravating the flooding which then combined with the understandable lack of stability experienced by only half of a ship induced a port considerably larger and more permanently Now healed with water pouring in from the rearmost surviving part of the ship, the forward section begins to sink rapidly by the stern, perhaps aided along the way by debris left attached to the stern before it was freed.

The forward turrets fire a final defiant salvo and less than three minutes after the shell arrived, the pride of the Royal Navy has disappeared beneath the waves so there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, which from all the evidence I can see seems to be the most likely explanation for why Hms Hood exploded when and where it did. Yes, indeed, it is an incredibly lucky break, but it turns out that the evidence to follow is there. Let me know what you think in the comments below and I'll see you again in another video. That's all for this video.

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