Denmark Strait (May 1941): My grandfather was on HMS Prince of Wales when the German battleship Bismarck sunk HMS Hood...
My granddad was in the Royal Navy man-and-boy. He passed away many years ago now, but I well remember the tale he told me about the sinking of Her Majesty's Ship (HMS) Hood.
The three main ships in this story are the two British warships HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales, along with the German battleship Bismarck.
Launched on 22 August 1918, the battle cruiser HMS Hood was the pride of the British fleet. With more horsepower and less armor, battle cruisers were faster than traditional battleships and were designed to outrun and outgun enemy ships. By comparison, HMS Prince of Wales was a more modern King George V-class battleship that was commissioned on 19 January 1941.
The German battleship Bismarck, which was launched on 14 Feburary 1939, is one of the most famous warships of the Second World War. Displacing more than 50,000 tons fully loaded, the Bismarck was the largest warship then commissioned. In addition to its extremely strong armor, the Bismarck was equipped with large, powerful guns and was considered to be more-or-less invincible.
In the early part of WWII, America was shipping vital supplies to Britain across the Atlantic Ocean. Without these supplies Britain would have fallen and the war would have been lost. On 19 May 1941, the Nazi ships Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were ordered to set sail to cut the British supply route from America.
On the evening of May 23, the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Norfolk reported that Bismarck had been sighted in the Denmark Strait, where the battle cruiser Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales were waiting.
The Hood and the Prince of Wales engaged the Bismarck the following morning. My granddad was a Leading Seaman and head of "A" Gun Turret. Less than ten minutes after the start of the battle, a plunging shell from the Bismarck struck the Hood from above, penetrating her relatively weak deck armor and detonating her aft ammunition magazines with devastating results (only three men survived out of a crew of 1,418).
My grandfather told me that: "One second we were sailing alongside a huge battle cruiser ... and the next second there was nothing to see but a hole in the water." In fact, the official record states that it took around three minutes for the Hood to sink beneath the waves, but in the heat of battle I'm sure that things were more than a little confused and everything was probably moving in "fast motion" as far as my granddad was concerned.
Postscript: Having received seven large-caliber hits and with most of her weaponry out of action, the Prince of Wales disengaged under cover of a smokescreen. During the battle, she had struck the Bismarck three times causing sufficient damage to force the Bismarck to head for France for repairs.
On 25 October 1941, the Prince of Wales was dispatched to Singapore, where she became the flagship of the Eastern Fleet. On 10 December 1941, without any air cover, both the Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were attacked and sunk by 86 Japanese bombers and torpedo bombers. My grandfather survived this sinking and went on to ... but that's a story for another time!
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