In this article, we will try to assess the combat capabilities of the Hood in comparison with the latest projects of German battlecruisers, and at the same time consider the possible reasons for the death of the largest British ship of this class. But before we proceed to the already familiar flight analysis "artillery capabilities - armor protection", a few words should be said about the general tendencies of "shell and armor" in relation to heavy warships of those years.
It is well known that initially the main caliber of dreadnought battleships was represented by 280-305-mm cannons, and the engineering thought of those years was able to oppose them with quite powerful protection, which was possessed, for example, by German dreadnoughts, starting with the Kaiser class. Both they and the "Konigi" that followed them were an original type of battleship, with a defensive bias, armed with very powerful 305-mm artillery systems and provided with armor that very reliably protected against guns of the same caliber and the same power. Yes, this defense was not absolute, but it was as close to it as possible.
The next step was taken by the British, switching to 343-mm caliber, followed by the Americans and the Japanese, adopting 356-mm guns. These artists were significantly more powerful than the good old twelve-inch guns, and the armor, even the strongest, did not protect very well against their projectiles. Only the best of the best battleships could "boast" that their protection somehow reliably protected the ship from such an impact. However, then the British took the next step, installing 381-mm cannons on their battleships and the Germans soon followed suit. As a matter of fact, at this moment a complete imbalance arose between the means of attack and defense of the battleships of the world.
The fact is that the degree of development of fire control systems, including the quality of rangefinders, limited the effective fire distance to a distance of about 70-75 cables. Without a doubt, it was possible to fight at a greater distance, but the accuracy of shooting at the same time fell, and the opponents risked shooting the ammunition, not having achieved a sufficient number of hits to destroy the enemy. At the same time, the British 381-mm cannon, according to the British, was capable of penetrating armor of the same caliber (that is, 381-mm) at a distance of 70 cables when hitting it at 90 degrees, and 356 mm armor - about 85 cable. Accordingly, even the thickest German armor (side belt 350 mm) was permeable to British guns, unless the German battleship was at a fair angle to the direction of flight of the projectile. Thinner armor is out of the question.
All of the above is also true for the German artillery system - its projectile was slightly lighter than the British one, the muzzle velocity was higher, and in general it lost energy faster, but, most likely, at a distance of 70-75 cables, it had armor penetration similar to English projectiles.
In other words, we can say that at some period of the First World War, all battleships, in fact, turned into battle cruisers of the British type - their booking did not provide an acceptable level of protection against 380-381-mm shells. This is a fact, but it was largely blurred out by the poor quality of British armor-piercing shells - as you know, the maximum thickness of armor that they could "master" was only 260 mm, but the German "380-mm" battleships were late for the main battle of the fleets. and subsequently did not participate in serious battles with the British until the very end of the war. I must say that the British after Jutland received full-fledged armor-piercing shells ("Greenboy"), and, probably, one can only be glad that the Hochseeflotte never dared to re-test the strength of the Royal Navy - in this case, the losses of the Germans from the fire of 381-mm cannons could be colossal, and “Bayern” and “Baden”, no doubt, would have said their weighty word.
Why is there such an intolerant state of affairs? First of all, because of a certain inertia of thinking. It is known that subsequently, almost all countries engaged in the design of battleships came to the conclusion that in order to provide reliable protection against a heavy projectile, the armor of a ship should have a thickness equal to its caliber (381 mm from a 381-mm projectile, etc.), but such a level of protection, coupled with the installation of 380-406-mm guns, meant an abrupt increase in displacement, for which the countries were, in general, not ready. In addition, at the first moment, the need for such a radical increase in booking, in general, was not realized. Both British and German naval thought, in essence, evolved in the same way - the use of 380-381-mm guns significantly increased the firepower of the battleship and made it possible to create a much more formidable ship, so let's do it! That is, the installation of fifteen-inch guns in itself looked like a huge step forward, and the fact that this ship would have to fight against enemy battleships armed with similar weapons did not occur to anyone. Yes, ships of the Queen Elizabeth class received a certain increase in armor, but even their thickest 330 mm armor did not provide sufficient protection against the guns mounted on these battleships. Oddly enough, but among the Germans, this tendency is even more pronounced - the last three types of battle cruisers that were laid down in Germany (Derflinger; Mackensen; Erzats York) were armed, respectively, with 305-mm, 350-mm and 380-mm cannons, but their armor, although there were minor differences, actually remained at the level of the Derflinger.
For a very long time, there has been a perception that the death of the Hood was the result of the general weakness of its armor, inherent in the class of British battlecruisers. But this, in fact, is a misconception - oddly enough, "Hood" at the time of construction, probably had the best armor protection not only among all British battle cruisers, but also among battleships. In other words, "Hood", at the time of entry into service, was perhaps the most protected British ship.
If we compare it with similar German ships (and bearing in mind that the battlecruisers Erzats York and Mackensen practically did not differ in armor), then formally both the Hood and Erzats York had an armor belt of almost the same thickness - 305 and 300 mm respectively. But in fact, the Hood's onboard protection was much more solid. The fact is that the armor plates of the German battlecruisers, starting with the Derflinger, had a differentiated thickness of the armor plates. At the last 300 mm the section had a height of 2.2 m, and there is no information that it was higher on the Mackensen and Erzats York, while on the Hood the height of 305 mm of armor plates was almost 3 m (most likely in total, we are talking about a height of 118 inches, which gives 2.99 m). But, besides this, the armored belts of the German "capital" ships were located strictly vertically, while the British belt also had an angle of inclination of 12 degrees, which gave the Hood interesting advantages - however, and disadvantages too.
As follows from the above diagram, the Khuda belt, 3 m high and 305 mm thick, was equivalent to a vertical armor belt 2.93 m high and 311.8 mm thick. Thus, the basis of the Huda's horizontal armor was 33.18% higher and 3.9% thicker than on German ships.
The advantage of the British cruiser lies in the fact that its 305 mm armor was stacked on top of the side of increased thickness - the skin behind the main armor belt reached 50, 8 mm. It is difficult to say how much this increased the armor resistance of the structure, but this, without a doubt, was a much better solution than laying 300 mm armor plates on 90 mm wooden lining, as was the case on German battlecruisers. Surely the teak lining was laid on top of the so-called "board shirt", the thickness of which on the German battle cruisers, unfortunately, is unknown to the author: but for the battleships "Bayern" and "Baden" this thickness was 15 mm. Of course, it would be wrong to just take and add the thickness of the British plating to the armor plate - they were not a monolith (spaced armor is weaker) and structural steel, after all, this is not Krupp's armor. It can be assumed that, taking into account the slope, the total armor resistance of the armor plate and the side ranged from 330 to 350 mm of armor. On the other hand, it is completely unclear why the British resorted to such a thickening of the skin - if they had installed 330 mm armor plates on an inch skin, they would have received almost the same weight, with significantly improved armor resistance.
True, the "Hood" was significantly inferior to the German battlecruisers in terms of the upper belt. Its height at Erzats York was, most likely, 3, 55 m, and its thickness varied from 270 mm (in the region of 300 mm of the area) and up to 200 mm along the upper edge. The English armor belt had a 178 mm thickness and a height of 2.75 m, which, taking into account an inclination of 12 degrees, was equivalent to a thickness of 182 mm and a height of 2.69 m. It should also be borne in mind that the "Hood" had a greater freeboard than German battlecruisers, so the same "Erzats York" had a 200 mm upper edge of the armor belt adjacent directly to the upper deck, but the "Hood" did not. The second armor belt "Huda" continued with the third, 127 m thick, which had the same height as the first (2.75 m), which gave approximately 130 mm of reduced thickness at a height of 2.69 m. But it must be borne in mind that for armor-piercing shells of the second (for a British ship - the second and third) belts do not pose any serious obstacle - even 280 mm of armor, a 381 mm shell can penetrate at a distance of up to 120 cables. Nevertheless, the greater thickness gave the German ship a certain advantage - as the practice of firing with Russian shells (tests on the battleship Chesma and others, later) showed, a large-caliber high-explosive projectile is capable of penetrating armor half its caliber thickness. If this assumption applies to German and British shells (which is more than likely), then German land mines, when hitting the sides of the "Hood" above the main armor belt, could penetrate them, but British shells from the armor of German battle cruisers could not. However, the 150 mm armor of the casemates, where the Germans had their anti-mine guns, was also quite penetrable for the British high-explosive shells.
What would happen if the main armor belt was pierced by an armor-piercing projectile? In fact, nothing good for either the German or the British ships. For the Germans, for 300 mm of armor, there was only a vertical 60 mm anti-torpedo bulkhead, "stretched" to the very armored deck, and for the British, behind the given 311, 8 mm of armor + 52 mm of steel plating - only 50, 8 mm bevel of the armored deck. Here again it is possible to take advantage of the experience of domestic artillery tests - in 1920, a shelling of structures was fired, simulating the compartments of battleships with armor protection of 370 mm, inclusive of 305-mm and 356-mm guns. The experience gained by domestic naval science was, without a doubt, colossal, and one of the results of the shelling was an assessment of the effectiveness of the bevels behind the armor belt.
So, it turned out that a 75 mm thick bevel is able to withstand the rupture of a 305-356-mm projectile only if it exploded at a distance of 1-1.5 m from the bevel. If the projectile explodes on the armor, then even 75 mm will not protect the space behind the bevel - it will be hit by shell fragments and armor debris. Without a doubt, the British 381-mm projectile was not inferior to the 356-mm Russian (the content of explosives in them was approximately the same), which means that with a high degree of probability, when such a projectile bursts in the space between the main armor belt and the bevel (anti-torpedo bulkhead), then neither the British 50, 8 mm, nor the German 60 mm most likely would not have kept the energy of such an explosion. Again, the distance between these two types of protection was relatively small, and if the projectile had penetrated the main armor belt, then most likely it would have exploded on impact on the bevel (anti-torpedo bulkhead), which neither one nor the other clearly could not withstand.
This, of course, does not mean that the bevel and the anti-torpedo bulkhead were useless - under certain conditions (when the projectile hits the main armor belt not at an angle, closer to 90 degrees, but smaller), the projectile, for example, might not pass through the armor in the whole form, or even explode when the armor passes through - in this case, additional protection, perhaps, could keep the fragments. But from a projectile that overcame the armor belt as a whole, such protection was useless.
Alas, roughly the same can be said about the armored deck. Strictly speaking, in terms of horizontal protection, the Hood significantly surpassed the German battlecruisers up to Erzats York inclusive - we have already said that the total thickness of the Hood decks (armor + structural steel) reached 165 mm above the artillery cellars of the bow towers, 121-127 mm above the boiler rooms and engine rooms and 127 mm in the area of the aft towers of the main caliber. As for the decks of the Erzats York, they reached their maximum thickness (most likely 110 mm, although perhaps 125) they reached above the cellars of the main caliber guns. In other places, its thickness did not exceed 80-95 mm, and it should be noted that the specified thickness had three decks in total. To be fair, we will also mention the presence of a casemate roof located on the upper deck: this roof was 25-50 mm thick (the latter was only above the guns), but the casemate itself was relatively small and located in the center of the deck - thus, "attach" its roof to other horizontal protection could only be possible in the case of longitudinal firing at a German ship - when enemy shells fly along its center line. Otherwise, a projectile hitting the roof of the casemate at typical combat distances would not have such an angle of incidence at which it could reach the lower armored deck.
However, in stating the advantages of Hood, we must remember that “better” does not mean “enough”. So, for example, we have already said that a 380-381-mm caliber projectile was able to penetrate the second armor belts of the German and British battle cruisers without any problems. And now, let's say, the 178-mm belt of "Hood" was broken - what next?
Perhaps the only thing that his sailors can hope for is the process of normalizing the trajectory of the projectile when it penetrates the armor plate: the fact is that when the armor passes at an angle other than 90 degrees, the projectile "strives" to turn in such a way as to overcome the armor in the shortest possible way, that is, as close as possible to 90 degrees. In practice, it may look like this - an enemy projectile, falling at an angle of 13 degrees. to the sea surface, hits the 178-mm armor of the "Hood" at an angle of 25 degrees. and pierces it, but at the same time turns it by about 12 degrees. "Up" and now flies almost parallel to the horizontal part of the armored deck - the angle between the deck and the trajectory of the projectile is only 1 degree. In this case, there is a good chance that the enemy projectile will not hit the armored deck at all, but will explode above it (the fuse will be cocked upon breakdown of 178 mm of armor).
However, given that the Hood's armored deck is 76 mm thick only above the main battery cellars, the energy of the explosion and fragments of a 380-mm projectile can be more or less guaranteed to be kept only there. If an enemy projectile explodes above the engine and boiler rooms, which are protected by only 50.8 mm of armor or in other places (38 mm of armor), then the armor-plated space may well be hit.
We are talking about the vulnerability of the battle cruiser Hood, but one should not think that the British battleships were better protected from such a hit - on the contrary, here the protection of the same Queen Elizabeth-class battleships was worse than that of Hood, because the second armor the battleship's belt was only 152 mm of vertical armor (and not 182 of the reduced armor of the "Hood"), while the armored deck was only 25.4 mm.
As for the protection of the artillery, it was surprisingly well booked at the Hood - the forehead of the towers was 381 mm, the barbets were 305 mm. Ersatz York looks a little better here, so, with slightly less armor of the towers (forehead 350 mm), it had barbets of the same thickness, that is, two inches thicker than the British ones. As for the armoring of the barbets below the level of the upper deck, the British had an aggregate thickness of protection (the armor of the side and the barbet itself) was 280-305 mm, and the Germans had 290-330 mm.
And again - the numbers seem to be quite impressive, but they do not represent an insurmountable obstacle for 380-381-mm artillery at the main battle distances. In addition, an enemy 380-mm projectile could well have hit the deck near the tower - in this case, he would have had to penetrate first 50.8 mm of the Hood's horizontal deck armor (which he was quite capable of), and then it would only be prevented by 152 mm barbet armor. By the way, it is possible that this is how the "Hood" died … Alas, the picture of "Erzats York" is even worse - it would be enough for a British shell to penetrate a 25-30 mm deck and a 120 mm vertical barbet behind it. For Queen Elizabeth, by the way, the thickness of the deck and barbette in this case would be 25 and 152-178 mm, respectively.
Thus, we can once again state the fact - for its time, the "Hood" was really excellently protected, better than the same "Queen Elizabeth", and in a number of parameters better than the German battlecruisers of the latest projects. However, despite this, the armor of the last British battle cruiser did not provide full protection against 380-381 mm shells. Years passed, the artillery business stepped far forward, and the 380-mm cannon of the Bismarck became much more powerful than the artillery systems of the same caliber during the First World War, but the armor of the Hood, alas, did not become stronger - the ship never received a single serious modernization.
Let us now see what happened in the battle of May 24, 1941, when the Hood, Prince of Wells, on the one hand, and Bismarck and Prince Eugen, on the other, clashed in battle. It is clear that a detailed description of the battle in the Danish Strait is worthy of a separate series of articles, but we will limit ourselves to the most cursory review.
Initially, the British ships were ahead of the German ones and were sailing on almost parallel courses in the same direction. "Hood" and "Prince of Wells" were heading 240 and when at 05.35 German ships were discovered (according to the British, following the same course 240). The British admiral turned to cut the German detachment first by 40 and almost immediately - by another 20 degrees, bringing his ships to the course of 300. It was his mistake, he was too hasty to join the battle - instead of "undercutting" the Bismarck and "Prince Eugen", in order to reach the intersection of their course, acting with artillery from the entire side, he trusted too much on the Germans. As a result of this mistake of the English commander, the Germans gained a significant advantage: during the approach, they could fire with their entire side, while the British could only use the bow towers of the main caliber. Thus, in the outset of the battle, the artillery of British ships was halved - out of 8 * 381-mm and 10 * 356-mm, only 4 * 381-mm and 5 * 356-mm could shoot (one of the guns of the four-gun bow turret "Prince of Wells" could not shoot for technical reasons). All this, of course, made it difficult for the British to zero in, while the Bismarck was able to aim, as in an exercise.
At 05.52, the Hood opened fire. At this time, the British ships continued to go on a course of 300, the German ones went on a course of 220, that is, the detachments approached almost perpendicularly (the angle between their courses was 80 degrees). But at 05.55 Holland turned 20 degrees to the left, and at 0600 he turned another 20 degrees in the same direction in order to bring the aft towers of the main battery into battle. And it is possible that he did not trust - according to some reports, Holland only raised the appropriate signal, but did not start the turn, or just started the second turn when the Hood received the fatal blow. This is also confirmed by the subsequent maneuver of the Prince of Wells - when the Hood exploded, the British battleship was forced to turn away sharply, bypassing the place of its death on the right. If "Hood" had time to make his last turn, then he most likely would not have been in the way of "Prince of Wells" and would not have had to turn away.
Thus, the angle between the courses "Hood" and "Bismarck" at the time of the fatal hit was, most likely, about 60-70 degrees, respectively, the German shells hit at an angle of 20-30 degrees from the normal side armor, and the most likely deviation is exactly 30 degrees.
In this case, the reduced thickness of the Hood's armor in relation to the trajectory of the 380-mm Bismarck projectile was slightly more than 350 mm - and this is not counting the angle of incidence of the projectile. In order to understand whether a Bismarck projectile could penetrate such armor, one should know the distance between the ships. Alas, there is no clarity on this issue in the sources - the British usually indicate that the distance from which the Hood was dealt the fatal blow is about 72 cables (14,500 yards or 13,260 m), while the surviving artillery officer of the Bismarck »Müllenheim-Rechberg gives 97 cables (19,685 yards or 18,001 m). British researcher W. J. Jurens (Jurens), having carried out a lot of work on modeling the maneuvering of ships in that battle, came to the conclusion that the distance between the Bismarck and the Hood at the time of the explosion of the latter was about 18,100 m (that is, the German artilleryman is still right) … At this distance, the speed of the German projectile was approximately 530 m / s.
So, we do not set the task to reliably determine where exactly the shell that destroyed the "Hood" hit. We will consider the possible trajectories and locations of impacts that could lead the pride of the British Navy to disaster.
Oddly enough, even the main armor belt of the "Hood" could be pierced, though it is doubtful that after that the German shell would have energy left in order to "pass" into the cellar. Hitting a 178 mm or 127 mm armor belt would cause the loss of the ballistic tip and a decrease in its speed to 365 or 450 m / s, respectively - this was quite enough to fly between decks and hit the barbet of the aft tower of the main caliber "Hood" - 152 mm armor of the latter would hardly be a major obstacle. In addition, such a projectile, exploding from a blow into a two-inch armored deck, could pierce it, and even if he himself did not pass through it in its entirety, its fragments and pieces of armor could cause a fire and subsequent detonation of ammunition mine artillery cellars.
It should be noted here that the British artillery ammunition cellars had additional, individual booking - 50, 8 mm on top and 25, 4 mm on the sides, however, this protection could not withstand. It is known that during experimental firing at the battleship Chesma, a 305-mm armor-piercing projectile exploded when it hit the 37 mm deck, but the energy of the explosion was so strong that shell and armor fragments pierced the 25 mm steel deck below. Accordingly, a 380-mm projectile could well penetrate the upper armored belt, strike a horizontal armored deck or bevel, explode, breaking through it, and the fragments (at least theoretically) could penetrate 25.4 mm of the walls of the "armored box" covering the artillery cellar, cause fire or detonation.
Another possibility is described by Jurens - that the projectile pierced a 178 mm armored belt, passed through the deck over the engine rooms, and exploded in the space between the main and lower decks at the bulkhead of the aft group of cellars, while the death of the ship began with the detonation of ammunition in the mine-caliber cellar.
The fact is that eyewitnesses of the tragedy described the following sequence of events immediately before the explosion of the ship: first, at 05.56, a 203-mm projectile hit from the "Prince Eugen" caused a massive fire in the area of the mainmast. Oddly enough, there turned out to be a fairly decent amount of gasoline (we are talking about hundreds of liters) that caused a fire, and since the fire covered the fenders of the first shots of 102-mm anti-aircraft guns and UP anti-aircraft guns, which immediately began to explode, it was difficult to extinguish it. Then the "Hood" was hit at intervals of a minute by a shell from the "Bismarck" and then from the "Prince Eugen", which did not cause him threatening damage, and then a catastrophe occurred.
The fire on the deck seemed to subside, the flames went out, but at that moment in front of the mainmast a narrow high column of flame shot up (like a jet from a giant gas burner), which rose above the masts and quickly turned into a mushroom-shaped cloud of dark smoke, in which debris were visible ship. It hid the doomed battle cruiser - and that one broke into two parts (rather, even into one, since the stern, in fact, ceased to exist as a whole), got up on the priest, raising the stem to the sky, and then quickly plunged into the abyss.
There is even such an extravagant version that the death of "Hood" was caused by the 203-mm projectile of "Prince Eugen", from which a strong fire began: they say, during the explosions of ammunition, the fire eventually "went down" into the mine-caliber cellar along the supply shafts ammunition. But this version is extremely doubtful - the fact is that just from such penetration of the cellar "Huda" were very well protected. To do this, the fire should first penetrate into the ammunition supply shaft to the deck installations, which led into a special corridor, then spread along this corridor (which is extremely doubtful, because there is nothing to burn there), get to the shaft leading to the artillery cellar and "go down" also along him, despite the fact that the overlap of any of these shafts stops the fire completely reliably. Moreover, as later experiments showed, the fire does not very well undermine the unitary ammunition that was in that cellar. Of course, all sorts of absurdities happen in life, but this one is perhaps beyond the bounds of the probable.
Jurens suggests that the explosion in the mine-action cellar caused a 380-mm Bismarck projectile hit, a fire started (that very narrow and high tongue of flame), then the cellars of the aft towers were detonated, and all this looks like the most probable cause of the Hood's death … On the other hand, the opposite is also possible - that the detonation of the 381-mm cellars led to the explosion of anti-aircraft ammunition in the adjacent anti-mine cellar.
In addition to the above possibilities, there is a fairly high probability that the Hood killed the 380-mm Bismarck projectile, which struck the underwater part of the ship. I must say that the Prince of Wells received a similar hit - a shell hit it at an angle of 45 degrees, and pierced the skin 8, 5 m under the waterline, and then - 4 more bulkheads. Fortunately, it did not explode, but such a hit could well have killed Hood. True, there are some doubts about the fuse, which in a number of cases should have worked before the projectile reaches the cellars, but Yurens's modeling showed that the trajectories at which the projectile gets to the cellars and detonates already there, without going beyond the possible range for German heavy slowdown projectiles are quite possible.
Without a doubt, "Hood" died very scary and quickly, without causing any harm to the enemy. But it should be understood that if any other British battleship of the First World War had been in its place, the same thing would most likely have happened to it. For its time, the last British battle cruiser was a superbly protected battleship, and at the time of construction it was one of the most protected ships in the world. But, as we said above, his armor only to a very limited extent protected against the projectiles of 380-381-mm artillery systems modern to him, and, of course, was very little designed to counter weapons created almost 20 years later.
