by Dugald » Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:18 pm
Doonunda, I had a good look at the 'Hood' site you recommended and found it very interesting. I wrote the following text on an anniversary of the sinking of H.M.S. Hood, and while there is nothing new in it, I thought it might give an indication of what the feelings were in Glasgow about the disaster, back in 1941.
On a Saturday afternoon, exactly 65 Years ago this day, I was playing in front of 65 Uist St. in Govan, when I heard a school classmate of mine shouting something at me out of his three-storey high tenement window. I stopped what I was doing and listened carefully to what he was shouting. What I heard stunned me and filled me with shock and disbelief. I knew the boy responsible for the grim tidings well, and knew he wouldn't be pulling my leg. He told me the British battle cruiser, H.M.S. Hood, had just been sunk in a battle with the German battleship "Bismark" and the heavy cruiser "Prinz Eugen", somewhere out in the North Atlantic.
The "Hood", the mighty "Hood", the Clyde-built 45,000 ton, eight-15"-gun, battle-cruiser, was the pride of the Royal Navy. The thought of this great ship being sunk by the "Bismark" disturbed me greatly, and I went home to find out what I could about this unmitigated disaster. There was more bad news associated with this sinking. The news informed us that she had gone down almost immediately and there were very few survivors. It proved to be the single largest loss of life for the Royal Navy during World War II... 1,415 were lost out of a crew of 1418.
The British had received information from sources in Scandinavia that the German battleship "Bismark", accompanied by the heavy cruiser "Prinz Eugen", had passed through Norwegian waters, around the North Sea, and out into the North Atlantic. Such ships roving around the Atlantic would have played havoc with Britain's already hard-pressed trans-Atlantic convoys.
The "Hood" accompanied by the new battleship "Prince of Wales", set out from Scapa Floe to hunt down the German ships. They eventually made contact with them, and the 'Hood' opened fire on what she thought was the 'Bismark', but was in fact the 'Prince Eugen'. In the short exchange of fire which followed, the 'Hood 'was hit by a shell from the 'Bismark' which pierced its magazine and she blew up immediately and disappeared very quickly. In this exchange of fire the 'Prince of Wales' was also damaged.
Notwithstanding the loss of H.M.S. Repulse and H.M.S. Prince of Wales off the Malayan coast later the same year, it is my feeling that the loss of the "Hood" was the most damaging loss, with regard to its affect on public morale, suffered by the Royal Navy during WWII. I recall very well the public reaction to this naval loss, and it seemed to me to have been felt much more than other Royal Navy losses. The 'Hood' was looked upon as the mightiest of all the mighty ships in the world ( despite being 22 years older than the 'Bismark'!), and here she was, sent to the bottom by Hitler's super battleship!
The British propaganda machinery got into high gear, and before many more days had passed, the hunt for the 'Bismark' was brought to the attention of all the whole world; the loss of the 'Hood' took second place in our minds to the hunt for the 'Bismark', involving all the major units of the British Home Fleet. Our minds were directed from our tragic loss, and focused directly on the chase to catch the "Bismark".
The 'Bismark' was caught and pounded mercilessly until it sank with great loss of life. Churchill told parliament that the 'Bismark' had got down 500 miles west of Brest. The "Prinz Eugen" reached the safety of the French coast. The whole affair now got a touch of the "Dunkirk treatment"... the sinking of the 'Bismark', overshadowed the loss of the 'Hood', and the 'Bismark'/ 'Hood' battle acquired the aura of a great British naval victory.
Well, who won this great naval battle? How do we determine a winner? Count the number of deaths? The dead numbered approximately the same for each ship; however, I think we won, because the 'Bismark' had been a much greater threat to us than the 'Hood' had ever been to the Germans. There are those however, who point to the fact that in terms of cost, it was much more costly to the British than to the Germans. It is pointed out that the 'Prince of Wales' had also been badly damaged, and after the great 'chase' many of Britain's capital ships were in dire need of major repairs. H.M.S. Rodney for example, in firing her 16" guns, had loosened so many rivets in her hull that she had to go into dry-dock in America for major repairs.
Sixty-five years after the sinking of H.M.S. Hood, I can still feel a touch of the great sorrow I felt over this great loss, that sunny Saturday on Uist St. in Govan.
