HMS Hood

Irony is that the hunt for Bismark delayed her going in for refit and fitting additional deck armour! The balance between speed and armour is indeed a delicate one. BTW my aunt Doris' brother was in her engine rooms, needless to say he didn't survive.

According to all I have read over the years, she was constantly in demand for diplomatic missions and "showing the flag" and a "Royal Cruise" or two and that was why they kept putting off modernization. The work would have taken her out of service for two years and the Foreign Office just couldn't get enough of "The Mighty Hood". Then the war started and it was too late. Sad case of mixed up priorities.

Bill Shuey

Actually, the description originated with the brigs of the 19th century, armed with 32 pdr carronades.

The "Repulse" was hit piecemeal, and by torpedoes--she was also very well handled that day by an able captain, W.G. Tennant; she lasted longer than the "Prince of Wales", which had much better protection and AA.

I recall reading that the design flaw was not so much the light armor, but rather a path that allowed a trail from the turret all the way to the magazine, something in British warships.

Right, Repulse! Renown was the only battlecruiser to get a mid life rebuild and spent most of the war in the Mediterranean. I keep getting the two mixed up. I have an old 1/500 scale identification training model of the Renown and she was a very impressive looking ship.

Bill Shuey

YOu also have to look at the Battlecruiser losses at Jutland.

The main problem was these were never meant to be ships of the line, taking on Battleships or other big gun battlecruisers - that what battleships were for.

They were designed to be 'cruiser destroyers', fighting ships with a much lesser weight in guns, hence less armour.

Don't reply to the btconnect address - and remove nospam!!

One of the later ideas as to "what's wrong with our bloody ships today" was the stockpiling of explosives and shells in areas close to firing to get a greater firing rate than could be acheived by following procedures by edging fire doors open to get stuff through quicker.

Clues to this reasoning were various black and white photographs of sailors posing for photographs and showing the general drop in working standards with stacks of shells behind them and other pictures of the corridors that were meant to be shut but were open from end to end.

Richard.