The Ship Model Forum

A good case could be made for rebuilding Hood in the style of the modernized Queen Elizabeths, as Hood was essentially a stretched Queen Elizabeth design.

But a refit in the US with a South Dakota-style superstructure would be even more up-to-date.

Les

Turn Hood into a floating golf tee ?
No thank's

ok heres one for you.
what if the hood never found the bismark
what if the hood survived to this day and the royal navy decided to refit her today . I 'm thinking that they would remove the masts and all those small boats also reomove those chimney stacks and replace them with a single Bismark type stack for more deck space . maybe fit a heli pad or maybe somwhere for a couple of the new f35 verticle take off jets. new hms daring type superstructure with that big ball shaped radar tower and remove that heavy armour so the ship would be much faster and would look so cool i know this would never happen but what a good looking ship it would be
it would be a kind of hms daring hms hood hybrid

Nearly every Royal Navy gun 5.25" was being manufactured in the USA as well as Britian. Lets say that after being mauled by Bismarck the Hood arrives in the USA for repairs and a refit. First thing to go would be the large fore mast. The fighting top being taken down would save serious weight. A new lighter mast with most recent electronics. Honestly with the Hood the Royal Navy's twin 4" or twin 4.5" would be far more useful for the Hood than the USN 5"/38. The twin 4" and 4.5" were both good AAW weapons. The USN might provide a few 40mm Bofors even though they were in short supply. The deck armor would be stripped off and replaced with newer armor.

Ok gentlemen, here is the deal: I have a second Hood ready for modernisation (the first one will be built sometime in the future, when I improve) and the question is:

Which kit to buy for use of the superstructure and the secondary armament. The Trumpeter Queen Elizabeth or the Tamiya KGV? I am leaning towards tje first one... Better superstructure, the secondary armament is more likely to have been used to the modernised Hood etc etc...

What do you thin?

Additionally, let's not forget, one of the POW's quads that morning had an electrical failure, so her broadside wouldn't have been all That spectacular. More so as it was, if I recall, her Forward quad that was stuck and couldn't move, which was part of what held her back. That said, the fight in that case, with the diminished threat, would have been Bismarck vs Hood, as Lutjens in all likelyhood would have engaged the clearly visible threat and targetted Hood until she disengaged or sank, before potentially coming after the Prince. Engage the soft yet aggressive target first, and Then you go for the cripple.

A more professional estimate of the chances of Bismarck being completely defeated by an efficient KGV class battleship and the Hood in the type of engagement that was shaping up that morning is probably given by the fact that the normally cautious Lutjens chose not to immediately disengage even though he could and engaging two nominally comparable capitalships at once would exceed his orders. In reality Bismarck's chances are even better than Lutjens could have known, because he faced the green POW with unprepared main armament, not the efficient and worked up KGV like he thought.

THis doesn't mean Lutjens necessarily expects to conquer and annihilate two opposing British capital ships. But it does suggest Lutjens believe his chances of being overwhelmed is slight and his chances of turning the situation to his advantage and continuing with his main mission is good.

As an aside, what I find interesting is that it seems to be generally accepted that a surviving Hood would emerge heavily damaged out of an engagement with Bismarck that essentially was a draw or better for the Germans.

Why is that, I wonder? Hood was hit at a precarious moment. 5 Minutes later, the Germans would have faced two full battleship broadsides - my money would be on Admiral Holland. The real question is whether he would have managed to outright sink the Bismarck or whether she would have made some sort of escape after releasing Prinz Eugen.

Therefore I would suggest that a Hood coming home from Denmark Strait would be bathing in the glory of a victorious engagement - with an utterly devastated boat deck, though.

Jorit

Let me express my perplexity about the choice of 5"/38 guns: they were in short supply (Delhi's experiment wasn't repeated on other cruisers for that reason, but we could suppose that production managed to exceed demand :thumbs_up_1: ) and, if you plan to embark 19 of them, that would impose a major weight penalty, considering that the weight of each twin mount was no less than 49000 kg for the lighter model.
I also find that, from the aesthetic point of wiew (please don't crucifige me :big_grin: ) the 5" twin mount was not really the most attractive. I think that, for such a fine ship, the british 4.5"/45 Mark II BD could be more appropriate.

I have always asked myself "What if?" and now we have a place I can ask someone other than myself :woo_hoo: This one I have on and off tangled with and here is sort of the scenario I came up with.

The engagement goes just as history tells us but starts to branch off at the famous "lucky" hit, the Hood get's hit and suffers severe damage. The hit causes major structural damage and one of her smaller magazines to cook off which in turns damages her power plant. With a total loss of fighting capability the Hood drifts out of the fight leaving POW to continue the fight, here my scenario kind of goes back in line with history as far as the duel between POW and the German fleet only difference being instead of retiring POW doubles back to aid the Hood and takes one more hit damaging her slightly more. Upon return to England, the two ships are evaluated as to their repairs needed and it is found that the POW will be able to refit and get back into action via British yards but the Hood is deemed to be almost a near loss. Churchill needing to maintain the pride and morale of the British navy and people, works it out for her to repaired so that she can make the journey to the states for total repair. Motives being political as well as propoganda, it is kept top secret and to the British people the Hood has been repaired and has been dispatched to the Far East to help counter the Japanese threat looming on the horizon to British interests. She arrives in the states for her repairs and due to her supposed quick repair and deployment she is not modernized in interests of getting her back into service as quickly as possible. She is repaired from June to November of 41' and returned to service with minimal modifications and joins the home fleet again by December. While she was in the states, she was heavily evaluated with the US Navy even drawing up their own plans for how to improve the ships fighting capability. The war goes on and the Hood serves proudly and she gets some radar and AA upgrades but no further modernization, never seeming to get into much frontline action as the RN is affraid of a repeat of the Denmark strait action but she does get the distinction of being the flagship of the British fleet present at the Normandy landings. With Germany's surface fleet no longer a threat by the end of 1944 and with losses mounting in the Pacific due to Japan's new terror weapon the Kamikaze, the US pressures the RN to start moving units to the PTO to help with the drive into the home islands of Japan. Operation Olympic plans for capitol ship losses prompts the US to look at ways of providing relief so that damaged ships can return to repair facilities and to just have enough firepower to protect the troop landings and the fast carriers. They turn to their findings of the Hood and due to her size and speed, it's determined that a 8 month overhaul would produce a ship by the end of 1945/beggining of 1946 that would be able to help cover casulaties of the operation. After seeing the appauling actions taking place on and around Iwo Jima and Okinawa to come, the US worked a joint venture with the RN to modernize her by US standards and maintain her British status as a symbol of the Royal Navy's pride and strength. By March of 1945 the Hood was in US hands.

Now at this point, I have not finalized what her apperance and finial configuartion would be. This is based on the A-bombs either not being successful or never happening. I figure we would be looking in the area of the armament of at least the Pearl Harbor rebuilds, one configuration I have been batting around would mount 8x15in,19x5/38,10x40mm quad and probably 25-35 20mm twins. Her weight would be compensated by heavily cuting down her superstructes and adding to her buldges on her hull still allowing her to make 27 knots and be able to operate with the North Carolina and South Dakota class BB's. I will see if I can finalize this theory if anyone is interested.

Matt

Concerning the quarterdeck being raised... it was cut down on Suffolk and Cumberland to gain some extra tons, so it might be the wrong thing to do to Hood. I'm guessing it would make the quarterdeck less wet but the rest of the ship a bit more, like Scharnhorst?

I can't help with the sensors, at least not now, as I'm accross the country and don't have a single reference with me BUT I'm guessing Hood already had most of the sensors she would have by 1942 after a refit. This might be a good starting point: http://www.dragonmodelsusa.com/dmlusa/prodd.asp?pid=LNRLE700155

Marco

I can feel a what if model coming on very strongly now, I'm thinking retain her basic outline, clean up the boat deck, revise the AA, dump those stupid UP's, loose the torpedo tubes, update radar/ directors but not sure what type to use, any suggestions???

How would an overhaul of her machinery bring back the lost knots? And how much would bulges affect that?

I'm camping and I only have with me "British Battleships - 1939-45 (1)", covering the Queen Elizabeth and Royal Sovereign classes, but there's no mention of how much speed these ships lost when they received their anti-torpedo bulges. I think we're talking about a know at worse.

Increasing the draught by building up the quarterdeck might have the same effect of speed loss, while the bulges would at lease contribute greater buoyancy?

BUT in a what-if scenario, it might be interesing to see how it would look for Hood to have a raised quarterdeck, removing Y turret, with X now being where it should be to be flush with the deck. Keeping both turrets with a raised quarterdeck doesn't look good: they would look far too tall and too close to the stern.

Concerning the bridge, I think a KGV one would be lighter. Looking at the huge conning tower in Hood, a tower bridge could be built around it, but my main concern is the large mast and top. It does pain me to imagine Hood without it... that's my favourite bridge structure.

Marco

Hi Marco, yep, raising the quarterdeck would be purely to make her dryer, I know it would increase weight. I suggested 7 to 8 inches for the decks as most battleships were in the region of 6 inch to counter 500 pound bombs/15 inch shells, by '41 bombs of 1,000 lbs and 16 inch shells were more common so to my thinking, if your going to increase the decks, you might as well make them as bomb/shell proof as possible. Personally ( I may be wrong) I dont think a tower bridge such as KGV's would save much weight at all as communications/Directors/rangefinders etc would still need to be armoured. You'd still have pretty much the same number of levels as a Tripod, all that would be missing would be the actual legs. If you widen the bulges, she would loose speed, which was already well down by '41. To remain a formidable unit, she would need to be able to reach 30 plus knots to keep up with the Carriers and the German heavy units. To be able to do that with a full rebuild she would probably need at least 175,000 SHP, her existing 144,000 SHP wouldn't be up to the job.

I don't think the quarterdeck being raised would help all that much as it would have to be compensated with the higher placing of the rear turrets (or has been suggested, the removal of one), plus, most of it would not contribute to buoyancy as it would be above the waterline, pushing the ship lower in the water with consequences to her speed and performance.

I wouldn't consider ther low quarterdeck a design flaw. It's the same measure we see in Japanese cruisers and even on the Yamato. If the quarterdeck should be raised, I believe it would indeed demand the removal of one of the turrets. I can live with that, but all that steel being placed there would still leave the ship with little space available for extra armour.

I would hack away the shelter deck, � l� Repulse and tranfer the tons into armour. I would also increase her bulges to contribute buoyancy and rolling problems with the loss of perhaps a knot or two, and that would leave some more extra displacement available for armour.

In extremis, one of the turrets might go, but it's the bridge and mast that I'm more concerned about. A KGV style one would save a lot of tonnage.

Last but not least, 7 to 8" is too ambitious. Rodney had 6" deck and the KGV's had a bit over 5" if I'm right. I would go along with that and simply make the scheme more comprehensive.

Marco

I suppose the main problem goes back to Hood's weight. To justify the cost and time involved in upgrading her deck armour, you would really need to go to 7 or 8 inches on the decks to counter 1,000 pounder's, which would add at least a thousand plus tons minimum, putting her even lower in the water. As she was, she barely had 6 feet freeboard at the quarterdeck break, so therefore it would mean either ripping out the machinery and replacing with lighter, higher pressure equipment, or raising the quarterdeck, maybe even making her a flush deck, which in itself would increase weight and probably put her back to square one. The simplest way to get her out of the water a bit would be to lenghten, not widen, the torpedo bulges, thus giving her some extra bouyancy whilst retaining her lenght/beam ratio. Even if that only gave a couple of feet reduction in draught it would reduce underwater drag on the hull and possibly (with a thorough overhaul of existing machinery) bring her speed back up to about 30 knots. That would make her a very usefull unit, probably as a very powerfull high speed escort for a Carrier Battlegroup.

But do imagine for a second that the shot that detonated her magazines would have stopped short of doing so. Wouldn't the admiralty increase her armour once and for all?

It's not good having a valuable ship if you fear it will blow up the next time it gets hit. I just wonder if the admiralty would realize the danger might come from a plunging shell or a bomb... in reading about Glorious' career, the RN was depreciating the potential of carrier-borne aircraft for sinking ships, with damage "incurred" during exercises consistently devaluated.

We all know how that turned out for the Prince of Wales and Repulse. I wonder... might Hood have gone to the Indian Ocean instead of Repulse?

Marco

The more I think about it, the more I am sure Hood would have had been patched up and sent back out again. In spite of her shortcomings she was too important as a relatively fast platform for moving heavy guns around to have out of action except for any longer that absolutely necesary (Thinking about her actual refits during the 1939-41). The level of the refit would have depended on what / where was damaged / destroyed.

The level of damage is where the speculation comes in, if the bridge had suffered heavily, then it may have been expediant to fit a new bridge structure, albiet i would imagine much simplified, otherwise I seriously doubt it would have been modernised,

This is the real enjoyment of what-if you can come up with an event sequence to allow for almost any scenario, with a bit of imagination.

It is good to see some varried and well argued opinion on this topic.

Si

I'll add to what Aidan said, what secondo explained: the admiralty was fully aware of Hood's vulnerabilities.

A patched up Hood would remain a vulnerable but very valuable ship. Should she have been hit by exactly the same shots, she would have had a very close shave and the admiralty would either leaver her unrepaired or they might just as well fix her most serious problems and modernize her.

The Brits did spend a whole lot of effort repairing and refitting other battleships. In 1941 and even in 1942 they needed them.

Marco

Possibly from the point of view that PoW would be a fairly straight forward repair, ie, being new, no overhauling was required, DoY was due to complete in a few months, KGV was fully operational, and Renoun and Repulse were fully operational, so that would give the RN 5 fast ships to counter Tirpitz and Bismarck (if she survived) by the end of '41, allowing more time for a full rebuild of Hood, but I still think Hood would have had a lesser rebuild and be re asigned to convoy/Carrier escort.