Greatest RN ship From 1900-1945

[ddp]

dave, the hood is not a battleship but battlecruiser, 2 different class of ships. i'm for warspite which i'm slowly building in 1/144 scale.

[Dave Wooley]

Opps you are quite right "Put it down to a senior moment" should have known that !
Dave Wooley

[Laurence Batchelor]

Well technically will all the extra armour worked into the design she was the worlds first Fast Battleship when completed in 1920, so your both right!

[Dave Wooley]

Now that's an interesting point . never saw it that way before. Hood "fast battleship" good one ! Gets the purists talking .
Dave Wooley

[Laurence Batchelor]

Dave this idea has been touched on in the literature, I forget where so many Hood books!

So I take no credit for advancing a new idea!

[Werner]

Yes, I think it is generally agreed that the Hood as completed was the first "fast battleship". She was certainly superior to the other early examples, Dunkerque or Scharnhorst, neither of which would fit into the old battleship or battlecruiser category.

[Filipe Ramires]

Allow me to disagree with some points here.
Hood as the first fast battleship: Well, is she so different from the Kongos in performance in the first place? I mean, Kongos are different but they are battlecruisers which could do the same speed as Hood and with 8 main guns (14' instead of 15') and most likely to have a similar armour scheme.
Second how close is Hood's armour to a Queen Elizabeth or R class battleship or any "modern" true battleship of her time? Weapons are surelly the same type and Hood is faster, longer and with more tonnage but armour scheme doesn't fit equally. Do recall that armour is one of the things that makes the difference between a battleship and a battlecruiser second by speed.
Thirdly: Scharny brothers and Dunkerque are not battlecruisers? What are they then? Heavy cruisers!?!?!?!?! Don't forget that Germany wasn't allowed to build capital ships for more then a decade therefore they lost pratically the "know how" to build big ships. Deutschland class pocket-battleships are nothing less then modern pre-dreadnoughts and S & G are no less then advantaged but carefully studied ships of a type of ship that no longer had much use on the 30's....the battlecruiser (how many battlecruisers are built after WWI!?!?!? Very few). Germany had the need to have powerful and modern ships urgently and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were ideal intermediate ones before the Bismarck class becomes operational. Besides those 2 battlecruisers proved to be more of a nightmare then many battleships together in WWII.
Dunkerque herself was merely a measure to fight the Deutschlands and Richelieus got later to face S & G and the italian battleships.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Hood as originally laid down in 1915 was a battlecruiser designed to counter the non-existent German 15inch gunned battlecruisers then on the drawing board. Wrong intelliengence suggested these were being built in German yeards and so the Royal Navy designed this Admiral class to counter them. When it became known the Germans were not building their ships the other 3 of the class were cancelled as construction was in its very early stages, but Hood was so far gone it was more economical to complete her.

After Jutland and the subsequent boards of enquiry she was heavily uparmoured and the design heavily revised. By 1920 when she commissioned she was basically a 30knt version of the 25knt QE class battleships, same number of guns though admittively the 15" Mk2's.

Hood is widely considered the first real attempt to merge the classes of Battleship and Battlecruiser into one. (some would argue its the QE class, but I would argue they were not as they were designed as a fast squadron of the Grand Fleet able to attack the High Seas 'on its Van' or whatever the term was!) I have everything technical worth its salt on Hood and she is widely considered a fast battleship and not a battlecruiser as built. The overall % of her tonnage given over to protection is Battleship standards of the day and not Battlecruiser. She has the same number of guns as a QE, admitively a weaker secondary battery as 5.5 inch guns compared to their 6inch, but they are a deck higher and better in any kind of sea-state.

Her armour is very similar to a QE in real terms, its just the problem she is a much bigger ship to protect and of course the disposition of her armour is highly questionable.

What isn't questionable though is she is most certainly closer to a fast battleship than a battlecruiser when commissioned for some of the reasons I state above.

I would have to agree with Filipe, Dunkerque, Strasbourg, Scahrnhorst & Gneisenau are battlecruisers. They have to be seen in the context of their time and not be judged by Fisher era Battlecruisers. Though you cannot dish the French & German ship designers too much at their attempts they had been 'out of the loop' for some time, and rather than attempt to deisgn the ideal warship they for political reasons just kept designing ships to outdo each other and the Italians.

Cheers

[Gone Asiatic]

Warspite for her record. Ark Royal IMO a distant second. At least in terms of this poll. The absolutely important ships in the RN in both wars IMO were the little ships. The destroyers and other ASW vessels that guarded the convoys that without which Britian would of have been strangled.

You are absolutely correct Sir!!

http://www.cahood.com/BOOK1335.htm
http://www.historynet.com/air_sea/naval ... 36916.html

[Gone Asiatic]

Warspite for her record. Ark Royal IMO a distant second. At least in terms of this poll. The absolutely important ships in the RN in both wars IMO were the little ships. The destroyers and other ASW vessels that guarded the convoys that without which Britian would of have been strangled.

You are absolutely correct Sir!!

http://experts.about.com/e/f/fr/Frederi ... Walker.htm
http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/3948.html
http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/wildgoose.html

[bengtsson]

All interesting comments on HMS Hood . I once saw an hour long television program about the Hood on one of the history channels. Seems to have been a British production with alot of personal accounts of the ship. It was talked about that the Hood recieved alot of up armouring due to Jutland lessons. One result THEY mentioned was that Hood carried alot of weight she had not been designed for. One former Hood sailor said Hood was know as the largest Submarine in the Royal Navy. And they showed a number of film clips of Hood at sea which seem to back that notion up. I mean she was going nearly all the way under! She seemed more to dig into the sea than to ride over the fairly heavy seas in the film clips. Any comments on Hoods weight as regards to her sea keeping qualities? I know a big ship doesn't ride the seas like a Corvette or a good Destroyer. Never served on any large ship, so can't compare any personal experience to the scenes of Hood 3/4s submerged in the film clips.

Bob B.

[Laurence Batchelor]

All very true Bob the literature on Hood discusses this alot.

Throughout the 20s & 30s she was known as the largest submarine in the Navy. Her quarterdeck was always awash even in moderate seas as from all the armour packed onto her the designers kind of miscalculated the amount of freeboard that took of her especially amidships and aft. The probelm was still there even after the 5.5" guns were taken off

In moderate seas the crews couldn't even go onto the quarterdeck for fear of being washed off her! X & Y turret barbettes also leaked water there. All the large rectangular scuttles along the aft superstructure had to be closed and generally for such a large ship she had poor sea keeping qualities as with most battlecruisers a long narrow hull isn't ideal in rough seas.

[bengtsson]

All very true Bob the literature on Hood discusses this alot.

Throughout the 20s & 30s she was known as the largest submarine in the Navy. Her quarterdeck was always awash even in moderate seas as from all the armour packed onto her the designers kind of miscalculated the amount of freeboard that took of her especially amidships and aft. The probelm was still there even after the 5.5" guns were taken off

In moderate seas the crews couldn't even go onto the quarterdeck for fear of being washed off her! X & Y turret barbettes also leaked water there. All the large rectangular scuttles along the aft superstructure had to be closed and generally for such a large ship she had poor sea keeping qualities as with most battlecruisers a long narrow hull isn't ideal in rough seas.

Thanks Laurence
Well, that seems to confirm then, the television program I saw. They got it right for once! Amazing! Seriously though, I was amazed at the film footage of Hood at sea. Her quarterdeck was awash to say the least and her bows sort of plunged into oncoming waves. It is very true that the long lean hull will give you that sort of thing. Imagine the extra weight added and it added up to the 'Largest Submarine in the Royal Navy', What does that say about the armour belt she would present to enemy fire in even a moderate seaway? Could that be a factor in her loss? Also, they mentioned perhaps some structural weakness due to weight loading of the hull form. ??
My destroyer experience was that our long narrow hull did have us plunging into a seaway. It was important not to have too much weight forward in the design of a DD. My last ship, a destroyer escort DE1025, was very small and had a flared bow, very seaworthy in the Bering sea. But it did slam at bit with so much water hitting the flare. I believe the problem with German WWII destroyers was too much weight forward on the long narrow hull, thus they could not operate in cases where a RN destroyer would be little impaired.

Bob B.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Hoods height of her belt at full load was another major flaw in her design, only a proportion of it was above sea level due to her reduced freeboard.

Yes thats right German Destroyers which mounted the twin 5.9" mounting found there was too much weight over the bows and made their ships very heavy forward and impaired their fighting efficiency

[Werner]

Yes thats right German Destroyers which mounted the twin 5.9" mounting found there was too much weight over the bows and made their ships very heavy forward and impaired their fighting efficiency

So did the USN with the Sumner/Gearings. The preferred FRAM I arrangement removed mount 52.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Yes thats right German Destroyers which mounted the twin 5.9" mounting found there was too much weight over the bows and made their ships very heavy forward and impaired their fighting efficiency

So did the USN with the Sumner/Gearings. The preferred FRAM I arrangement removed mount 52.

Yes, but I take no interest in the USN Werner, sorry

[Werner]

So did the USN with the Sumner/Gearings. The preferred FRAM I arrangement removed mount 52.

Yes, but I take no interest in the USN Werner, sorry

Your loss. bengtsson's escort was a USN Dealey type. Very handy in several European navies, too, The Italians, Norwegians and Portugese also built the type.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Yes, but I take no interest in the USN Werner, sorry

Your loss. bengtsson's escort was a USN Dealey type. Very handy in several European navies, too, The Italians, Norwegians and Portugese also built the type.

Yes even Filipe cringe's at those.

Sorry but there is only one Navy in my heart and with the other European Navies and Japan I have a fleeting interest (pun intended! )

Cheers

[bengtsson]

That's right Werner, my last ship was of the Dealy class. We were homeported in Seattle as a reserve fleet destroyer. We had a nucleus crew and took aboard reserves for weekend and two week training cruises. A very small ship indeed! I think around 1,200 tons maybe?
We operated mostly north off of the Alaskan coast and in winter it doesn't get much worse! But the two week crusies took us down the coast to warmer waters. My favorite memory is of spending off watch time out on that little helicopter deck that the failed DASH system had us carrying, and watching the Canadian destroyers we operated with in ASW exercises showing their keels 3/4 of the way aft before they plunged down into the next trough. A wild ride and the galley closed for the duration. Crackers and water were the mainstay until our return, when steaks were put on as soon as we got inside the straights!

Bob B.

[H.A. Baker]

Without a doubt H.M.S. 'AJAX' of River Plate fame. But there again I'm biased.

HAB