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[Martin (Admin)]

The rudder frame, belonged to the British battlecruiser HMS Hood.
 

[Colin Bishop]

And a study of the wreck showed that it had been turned to bring the ship's guns to bear on Bismarck immediately before Hood was fatally hit and blew up.

Her recovered bell is now preserved at Portsmouth and it was quite  poignant to see it on display a while back.

Colin

[gingyer]

The forge that made it is now a shopping centre near to where I stay. 
It has old pictures like this hung at the entrances
I’m sure this is one of them. Next time I’m in I will see
If there are others

[Mark T]

I see engineering like this and realise what our country has lost - How do we get the government and young engineers in the UK to get back to ship building?  Why has cost become the be all and end all.

[ballastanksian]

This and the stern and Stem posts were feats of superb engineering, sometimes single piece structures and sometimes made in tow or more parts depending on the capacity of the builder or supplying company.

[Geoff]

Have a look at how armour and big guns were made, quite amazing. A big gun would typically take a year to build - lots of machinery to build them 10 or 20 at a time!!


Cheers


Geoff

[Martin (Admin)]

 

HMS Hood  just before her launch

[ballastanksian]

Bless her 

[ballastanksian]

Putting the job of machining her rudder pintle into perspective. Comparing this with turning 15inch gun barrels and turret rings etc, the pintle would not even have been a challenge.

[dodes]

Nothing to do with Hood, but an interesting moment in time. Not long before closure of HMDYd Chatham. At the nuclear refit dock they built a fixed base crane to lift out heavy lifts from the subs. The crane needed a solid forged hook weighing 12 ton. The yard blacksmiths said they could manufacture it, but the government said no and offered out to contract. No one in U/K could make it so it was offered oversea, but still no reply. Eventually the yard blacksmiths said let us have a go as you have nothing to loose. So the blacksmiths went to work on a very old steam hammer, an yes they succeeded and the hook stayed on the crane until its demolition when the yard was closed, the firm given the task to develop the yard for commercial purposes systematically destroyed all the work shops in the yard and scrapped all the caissons for the dry docks and started to build houses instead. No1 blacksmith shop had 2 steam hammers and was built in 1765, with an earthen floor, they also made all the small chain quick release system for all RN boats on ships and out behind it they  had a peg board with pins to hammer out the frames for all the subs built there to 1/4" tolerance, plus oven for heating the steel and steel lates going back to about 1865 and a frame for hammering steel plate into the desired shape for fitting to hulls,

[Colin Bishop]

Just a further point on Hood's rudder. For years there was controversy as to whether Hood had turned to bring her full broadside to bear on Bismarck immediately before she was blown up. An inspection of the wreck found that her rudder had indeed turned to port to bring her aft turrets to bear on the target.

[dodes]

Colin, when a ship disintegrates like she did there would be no pressure in the system to hold the rudder in any fixed position and i would expect sea pressure as it drops and hitting the seabed would have more effect. What an eye witness told me and a televised  report of a survivor stated her last 30 minutes or so was one huge fire ridden wreck lurching along at speed out of control.

[Colin Bishop]

What an eye witness told me and a televised  report of a survivor stated her last 30 minutes or so was one huge fire ridden wreck lurching along at speed out of control.

I don't think that can be correct given that whe whole engagement lasted only around six minutes. There were only three survivors from Hood. She was initally hit on the boat deck, probably by Prinz Eugen, which set off the ready use ammunition and caused an ongoing fire which is unlikely to have led to the loss of the ship - lots of references online including the data on the HMS Hood Association Website with various eyewitness accounts including from two of the Hood's survivors:

http://www.hmshood.org.uk/

This video is interesting as it represents some of the latest thinking on Hood's loss. She sank within four minutes of the final explosion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY

Colin

[raflaunches]

What always surprised me after reading and watching the in depth documentary about the engagement was the amount of salvos actually fired was far more than I thought especially if you believe the various people and film makers of the 1950s who would have you believe it was within the first opening salvos from Bismarck. Hood had actually bracketed Bismarck and got the range as the she was ordered 30 deg to port to allow the after turrets to engage. One can only imagine the change in circumstances would have been if Hood had survived the turn to port.

[ballastanksian]

Possibly in a worse state than she was historically, but maybe bad enough to force her back to port? Two major naval units trapped in Norwegian fjords would have taken some silencing 

[Colin Bishop]

The German ships have been massively overhyped over the years. Despite looking impressive, most of them had serious design defects. Bismarck had a similar man battery to the much earlier Queen Elizabeth and R class RN ships and her main armour belt was thinner. She had separate secondary and tertiary guns when the RN and USN were fitting dual purpose batteries. Her tertiary anti aircraft guns didn't work well. She had the advantage of sheer size but was still taken apart by the older HMS Rodney.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were one of the better designs but under armed for their size and unseaworthy until fitted with 'Atlantic' bows. They did not handle very well.Great looking ships though.

The Hipper class cruisers were much bigger than the RN County class but carried the same main armament. Their high pressure steam plants were unreliable.

The 'pocket battleships' wer ingenious designs but their diesels were unreliable and their side armour did not stand up to 8 imch gunfire as expeceted.

The light cruisers were weakly built and unable to stand up to bad weather.

The triple screw  arrangements on the larger ships introduced a constructional weakness which meant that the sterns had a tendency to fall off when put under stress.

The big destroyers attempted too much on the dislacement with impractical 5.9 inch guns and were unseaworthy.

Colin