Admiral class (1918)

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Admiral- class
HMS Hood
HMS Hood
Overview
Type Battle cruiser
Order 1915
Launch 1918
1. Period of service flag
Commissioning 1920 ( Hood only )
Whereabouts Total loss of the only ship in its class
Technical specifications
displacement

45,200 t

length

262.3 m

width

31.8 m

Draft

10.1 m

crew

were planned around 2000

speed

31 kn

Armament
  • 8 × 15 in (381 mm) cannons
  • 12 × 5.5 in (140 mm) cannons
  • 8 × 4 in (102 mm) flak
  • 24 × 2 pdr (40 mm) flak
  • 20 × .50 (12.7 mm) cal machine guns
  • 4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes

The Admiral-class refers to a group of four Royal Navy battlecruisers that were developed during World War I to counterbalance the German Mackensen- class , which was built at the same time. Originally the class was to consist of the ships HMS Anson , HMS Howe , HMS Rodney and HMS Hood . When the German naval command stopped the construction of the Mackensen class, a construction freeze was also ordered for the British ships. Only the construction of the HMS Hood was so advanced that the decision was made to complete the construction. The Hood was then used in World War II .

Building history

In 1915 the British government decided to commission a successor class to the Queen Elizabeth class . The director of the Royal Navy , Sir Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt , was given the task of drawing up plans for a new and fast combat ship. The new ships should be designed in such a way that all previous experiences of the war should flow into the construction. The requirement was to equip the class with a maximum speed of at least 30  kn (55 km / h) and with 15 inch (381 mm) guns .

In early 1916, the United Kingdom Naval Command had a choice of two different EL Attwood designs. In April 1916, the Admiralty had made its choice: the ships should be 860 feet (262 m) long, have a water displacement of 36,000 tons and only be lightly armored, so that a maximum speed of 32 kn (59 km / h) was possible. The order for the first three ships followed in May 1916; the fourth ship was ordered a little later.

The loss of three British battlecruisers in the Skagerrakschlacht in 1916 had a sobering effect on the use of lightly armored, fast ships like the previous Battlecruisers . Therefore a further change of the construction was decided. This included increased horizontal and vertical armor and changes in armament.

The additional weight of the armor strengthened the keel, so that due to these changes, construction was delayed by several months and even started in September 1916. The new water displacement was now 42,100 tons.

In order to complete the ship as quickly as possible, the construction work was pushed ahead quickly. The changes made the Hood theoretically the fastest and most powerful combat ship. In fact, however, she was armored as much as the Queen Elizabeth- class ships , only that she could be driven at a slightly higher speed.

The halt in construction of the German Mackensen class meant that there was no longer any rush to complete the four planned ships. At the same time, the United States also set itself the goal of confronting the Imperial Navy with superior ships by building battlecruisers of the Lexington class and battleships of the South Dakota class . The Royal Navy, previously the undisputed leading power in the construction of heavy ships, saw its own leadership role threatened, looked for stronger ships than the Admiral class and began planning and building the heavily armored and heavily armed battleships of the N3 class and battlecruisers the G3 class, which was not built due to the restrictions decided at the Washington Naval Conference and the Nelson class was built instead .

However, since the construction of the Hood was already well advanced, it was completed while the further construction of the other three ships was stopped and the hulls that had already started were demolished.

Sinking of the HMS Hood

On May 24, 1941, an association under Vice-Admiral Lancelot Holland, consisting of HMS Hood and HMS Prince of Wales , got into a gun battle with a German association under the orders of Admiral Günther Lütjens in Denmark Street (see also: Company Rhine Exercise ) . At 5:52 a.m. the battle between the HMS Hood and the German battleship Bismarck began .

At 6:00 a.m. Admiral Holland gave the order to turn so that the aft towers of the Hood could also be used. Until then, the Hood had only fired with the front turrets, as the rear turrets had no clear field of fire to the front due to the superstructure.

During the rotation, a 38 cm shell from the Bismarck hit the aft ammunition chamber of the Hood at 6:01 a.m., striking through the relatively weak deck armor . The hood was torn in three parts by the massive explosion that followed and sank in less than three minutes. When the foredeck of the Hood sank vertically into the tide with the bow up, one last volley was fired in the forward tower - probably as a result of an electrical short circuit. 1,415 men died in the explosion; only three members of the crew survived the explosion and sinking. In this respect, the Hood's fate was similar to that of its three predecessors during the Skagerrak Battle.

Ships of this class

HMS Hood

HMS Anson , HMS Howe , HMS Rodney

  • Keel laying: 1916
  • Construction abandoned: March 1917
  • Construction cancellation: October 1918

literature

  • Robert Gardiner (Ed.): Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922-1946 . Conway Maritime Press Ltd, London 1980, ISBN 0-85177-146-7 , pp. 9 .
  • Robert Gardiner (Ed.): Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921 . Conway Maritime Press Ltd, London 1985, ISBN 0-85177-245-5 , pp. 41 .

Web links