#40: HMS Hood: The Pride of the Royal Navy Destroyed in Minutes
On May 24, 1941, a shell from the German battleship Bismarck penetrated HMS Hood's deck armor and detonated her aft magazine. The resulting explosion broke the 860-foot battlecruiser in half, and she sank in under three minutes. Of her crew of 1,418, only three men survived, one of the most catastrophic losses in Royal Navy history.
For 20 years before that fatal morning in the Denmark Strait, Hood was considered the most powerful warship afloat and the embodiment of British naval supremacy. At 42,670 tons and armed with eight 15-inch guns, she was the largest warship in the world from her 1920 commissioning until the Bismarck and Yamato arrived. She had toured the globe as a symbol of the Empire, and her sudden destruction shocked Britain to its core. Her loss made avenging Hood a matter of national honor, the Royal Navy hunted Bismarck with everything it had and sank her three days later.
