HMS Hood
Contents
Description
The HMS Hood (51), 1941 was the first of the planned four Admiral-class battlecruisers. The HMS Hood was ordered during World War I, and her keel was laid down on 31 May 1916, the same day as the Battle of Jutland which questioned serious flaws in her design as 3 British battlecruisers were lost. This prompted drastic revisions that resulted in Hood being laid down again on 1 September under a new design. Her sister ships were cancelled after the costly redesign and more appropriate use of labour. Despite the appearance of newer and more modern ships, the HMS Hood remained the world's largest warship for 20 years after her commissioning, and came to symbolise the might of the British Empire itself with the nickname "The Mighty Hood". The two major operations Hood sailed under were Operation Catapult in 1940; sinking the now surrendered French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir preventing it from falling into Axis hands and, more (im)famously at the Battle of the Denmark Strait in May 1941; tasked to intercept the German flag- battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen as they made their way to the Atlantic to attack convoys. The HMS Hood was hit by several shells, exploded, and sank on May 24, 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, killing all but three of her 1,418-man crew. The loss massively affected British morale due to her publicly perceived invincibility and the loss of the Royal Navy's flagship.
Introduced in Update "Danger Zone", the HMS Hood is a powerful ship, but players should not expect it to be able to withstand enemy fire like some other, better-protected battlecruisers and battleships. Keep in mind that HMS Hood is a large ship, so entering objectives that are normally exposed may not be a good idea. The HMS Hood players should keep an eye on her buoyancy, as she tends to take on water much faster than many other ships of her type, as well as wallow and capsize very easily. Players should be cautious of enemy battleships since HMS Hood has relatively weak armour on the upper sections of the ship, making her vulnerable to heavy damage.
General info
Survivability and armour
HMS Hood stands out from other battlecruisers in many ways, but one of the most noticeable is in her armour protection. Typically, a battlecruiser was intended to be faster, but less armoured than the battleships of their generation. Hood instead, has equivalent protection to battleships of its generation, with a 12-inch belt, inclined at 13 degrees to give it equivalent protection to the 13 inches of armour found on the Queen Elizabeths. That is a drastic improvement over both the preceding battlecruisers in the Royal Navy and the battlecruisers of other nations. The battlecruiser IJN Kongo for example, has a measly 8-inch belt in comparison. This does fall to 7 inches and then 5 inches of armour higher on the hull, but the belt itself covers the entirety of the vitals from the foremost to sternmost turrets. The main belt will protect against all but the most powerful guns at typical battle ranges, and the lesser armoured portions of the hull don't have very many crew compartments either, leading the ship to be extremely survivable with its 1418 crew.
The turrets are also well armoured, with 15 inches of armour on the mantlet and 12 inches on the forward half of the turret. The rear half has 11 inches of armour on both the sides and rear, and the roof has 5 inches protecting from plunging fire. This will stop battleship shells at all but point-blank range. The turret barbettes are reasonably protected above the deck with 12 inches of armour above the deck, though this falls below the deck to 6-10 inches. Notably, Hood doesn't have shell rooms in the barbettes like American battleships, lowering the chance of catastrophic fire when hit.
The deck also has multiple layers of armour as is typical on battlecruisers, the upper layer having 1.25 inches of armour to trigger the fuses on shells and bombs, with a second, 0.75-inch layer to stop the blast and splinters. Just in case a shell manages to get past these two layers there is also a third, 2-inch plate above the magazines. Speaking of, the magazines are positioned well below the waterline and should be well protected from enemy fire unless your opponent has Adalbert Schneider as their gunnery officer. Hood also has torpedo protection with up to 250 kg of effectiveness, which should protect against most torpedoes, with notable exceptions like the Japanese Long Lance.
Mobility
The Hood is a fairly fast capital ship, capable of 57 km/h in RB, making her slightly faster than the IJN Kongo, and slightly slower than the Scharnhorst and Kronshtadt. Her acceleration is as can be expected of a ship her size, being quite poor. In addition, her 262 m long hull means she struggles to turn, has an enormous turning radius and bleeds a lot of speed while manoeuvring.
| Mobility Characteristics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Game Mode | Upgrade Status | Maximum Speed (km/h) | |
| Forward | Reverse | ||
| AB | |||
| Upgraded | 67 | 30 | |
| RB/SB | |||
| Upgraded | 57 | 26 | |
Modifications and economy
| Seakeeping | Unsinkability | Firepower | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Armament
Primary armament
The Hood currently possesses the largest guns in the game, with eight 381 mm 15"/42 BL Mark I cannons mounted in four twin turrets, larger than those on the Bayern by 1 mm. She has two rounds available, 15 inch 4crh CPC, a SAPCBC shell, and 15 inch 4crh Mark XIIa APC, an APCBC shell. The SAPCBC shell, while having a smaller filler than the equivalent SAP shells on the Bayern and the Japanese 356 mm, is still the strongest SAP shell in the game, solely due to its penetration. Penetrating 487 mm at point blank, it has very minimal penetration falloff, and it still penetrates 308 mm at 15 km, while the Bayern can only penetrate 170 mm at that range, while the Japanese 356 mm SAP can't even reach that penetration at 1 km. This allows the Hood to smash any battleship designed before "all or nothing" armour schemes came into wide use, as while their main belts may be able to hold up, their weaker upper belts stand no chance, and several of these SAP shells finding their way around the realms of enemy ammunition magazines will have very entertaining results. Due to the high filler, even hits to the upper hull may cause a large enough explosion to detonate ammunition several decks below.
The APCBC shell is fairly strong with ~20 kg of TNT effective filler and decent penetration statistics, making it quite handy for punching deep into the internals of an opposing capital ship and bypassing most, if not all armour that it comes across while in regular battle ranges.
| Penetration statistics | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm) | |||||
| 1,000 m | 2,500 m | 5,000 m | 7,500 m | 10,000 m | 15,000 m | ||
| 4crh CPC | SAPCBC | 487 | 462 | 427 | 399 | 377 | 345 |
| 4crh Mark XIIa APC | APCBC | 644 | 597 | 528 | 470 | 422 | 357 |
| Shell details | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Velocity (m/s) |
Projectile mass (kg) |
Fuse delay (s) |
Fuse sensitivity (mm) |
Explosive mass (TNT equivalent) (kg) |
Ricochet | |||||
| 0% | 50% | 100% | ||||||||||
| 4crh CPC | SAPCBC | 752 | 871 | 0.035 | 26 | 58.6 | 48° | 63° | 71° | |||
| 4crh Mark XIIa APC | APCBC | 752 | 871 | 0.025 | 26 | 20.68 | 48° | 63° | 71° | |||
Secondary armament
The Hood has the standard British secondaries of seven twin 102 mm 4"/45 Mark XVI cannons. These guns do barely any damage to cruisers or capital ships and, although the SAP shell can do work on opposing destroyers, they are most useful in the role of AA batteries. Unlike other British ships using the same gun, Hood's secondaries do not get the much superior HE-VT shell, since she was sunk before the shell was developed in reality. The time-fused shells have a habit of exploding after passing behind an aircraft rather than next to it or simply just not close enough to do damage, but it is still better to have a flak field than not.
| Penetration statistics | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm) | |||||
| 1,000 m | 2,500 m | 5,000 m | 7,500 m | 10,000 m | 15,000 m | ||
| 4 inch HE | HE | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| 4 inch SAP | SAP | 102 | 85 | 64 | 48 | 38 | 30 |
| 4 inch HE-TF | HE-TF | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Shell details | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition | Type of warhead |
Velocity (m/s) |
Projectile mass (kg) |
Fuse delay (s) |
Fuse sensitivity (mm) |
Explosive mass (TNT equivalent) (g) |
Ricochet | |||||
| 0% | 50% | 100% | ||||||||||
| 4 inch HE | HE | 811 | 15.88 | 0 | 0.1 | 1,550 | 79° | 80° | 81° | |||
| 4 inch SAP | SAP | 811 | 17.35 | 0.015 | 5 | 600 | 47° | 60° | 65° | |||
| 4 inch HE-TF | HE-TF | 811 | 15.88 | 0 | 0.1 | 1,550 | 79° | 80° | 81° | |||
Anti-aircraft armament
Unlike the swarms of light AA guns that can be seen on other WW2-era capital ships, Hood's AA only consists of seven mounts due to the ship accidentally becoming an oversized reef before anti-air spam came in vogue. However, three of those mounts are the glorious octuple 40 mm 2pdr QF Mk.VIII, which can spew a lovely cloud of 40mm shells into the general direction of an oncoming aircraft. The other four mounts are the more lacklustre quadruple 12.7 mm Vickers Mk. V, which are essentially just there for moral support.
However, the true moral support comes in the form of five 20-barreled UP (Unrotated Projectile) rocket launchers, designed to hurl rockets which lay airborne tripwires attached to mines at enemy aircraft. While they are indicated as 'Auxiliary calibre guns' in-game, since testing proved them as useless in-game as in real life, they were unfortunately not implemented.
Additional armament
The Hood has twelve 533 mm Mk.IV torpedoes, the same seen on HMS Marlborough, in four launchers, two per side, near the back of the superstructure. The torpedoes are awful, slow, hard to aim, and worst of all, unlike other WW1-era ships, these launchers and their reserve torpedoes are located above the waterline in very exposed positions, meaning they are prone to explode when hit. It is not advised to take them.
Usage in battles
The HMS Hood is a strong ship on the seas of War Thunder, however, her captains should not expect to be capable of tanking enemy fire like some other, more extensively protected capital ships. The Hood does have a similar main armour belt thickness, but her belt is much smaller than other capital ships, a trade-off for her superior speed. In battle, this means that Hood is much more versatile than traditional battleships, as at 57 km/h (31 kn), she is roughly 15 km/h faster than the average speed of most battleships in-game. Keep in mind that Hood is very large, so it may not be advisable to enter capture points which are usually exposed, but at least she can reliably keep up with the cruisers and capture the objective in a pinch. Captains of HMS Hood should keep a close eye on her buoyancy, as she has a tendency to take on the water much more rapidly than many other ships of her class, and will have a tendency to wallow and capsize very easily as well.
As for notable enemies, SMS Bayern and Parizhskaya Kommuna are both ships that will consistently be seen in battles and can do considerable damage very quickly. Bayern can be dealt with by a hit to the front ammo rack with a salvo of SAP shells, and will usually be relatively easy to deal with so long as she isn't at an angle. The Parizhskaya Kommuna can be more difficult to defeat, so it is recommended to attempt to disable turrets before attempting to deal a fatal blow. Both Bayern and Parizhskaya Kommuna will reload faster than Hood, so her captains need to be careful when aiming, as a mistake in aim can lead to rapid retaliation from the enemy.
The main opponent, though, is the Kronshtadt, which is faster than the Hood, highly survivable and possesses fast-firing 305 mm cannons with capable HE and AP shells that are on roughly par with the Hood's AP shells. It is recommended to aim for the ammunition behind the frontal turrets and hope they will show enough broadside at a close enough range that your own AP can get through the side armour.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Features eight 381 mm (15 inches) cannons with powerful shells to choose from
- Good top speed for her size
- Sufficient armour protection on the critical section of the ship
- Large profile allows the ship to absorb a lot of shells and contain the damage
Cons:
- Extremely huge, can be easily spotted and hit
- Relatively weak armour plating on the upper section of the ship
- Very poor agility due to hull size, makes dodging bombs and torpedoes difficult
- Extremely slow main turret traverse speed, inability to fire reactively
- Low secondary and anti-air defence for such a large ship
History
Devblog
The British Admiral-class battlecruisers date back to 1915 when an original battleship design with characteristics similar to the Queen Elizabeth-class was converted into 30 knot battlecruisers. In 1916, the project was approved and orders were placed at the shipyards, but the Battle of Jutland, which showed the full omissions in the defence of the British battlecruisers, required new improvements to the project, which dragged on until August 1917.
Although four Admiral-class battlecruisers were ordered and laid down in shipyards, only one would be completed. The one ship of the class that would see completion would become HMS Hood, named after an 18th-century British admiral. The ship was laid down in the John Brown & Company shipyard in Scotland in September 1916. Following its launching in 1918 and subsequent fitting-out, HMS Hood was commissioned into the ranks of the Royal Navy in May 1920, thus also becoming the largest warship in service at the time.
Upon entering service, HMS Hood took part in several showing-the-flag and training exercises in the interwar period. In November 1923 the ship set out to circumnavigate the globe as part of The Empire Cruise, visiting ports in South Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States before returning to British waters in September 1924.
At the outbreak of WWII, the recently overhauled HMS Hood was operating in the area around Iceland, hunting for German vessels. After the Fall of France, HMS Hood took part in Operation Catapult - the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in July 1940, with HMS Hood briefly duelling French battleship Dunkerque and crippling her with four hits that would have sunk the vessel had she not been close enough to the shore to beach herself. However, HMS Hood's most famous and final engagement would become that of the Battle of the Denmark Strait in which the warship, along with HMS Prince of Wales clashed with the German battleship Bismarck and the accompanying heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Suffering a lethal strike to one of its magazines shortly after the start of the engagement, HMS Hood blew up and sank within three minutes with catastrophic losses and only 3 survivors. Due to its popularity among the British at the time and its tragic loss during the vessel's fateful last engagement, HMS Hood retains its legendary status and is to this day one of the most well-known British warships.
Media
- Skins
See also
Links to articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:
- reference to the series of the ship;
- links to approximate analogues of other nations and research trees.
External links
| John Brown & Company | |
|---|---|
| Destroyers | |
| Daring-class | HMS Diamond |
| Light Cruisers | |
| Emerald-class | HMS Enterprise |
| Town-class | HMS Southampton |
| Tiger-class | HMS Tiger |
| Battlecruisers | |
| Renown-class | HMS Repulse |
| Admiral-class | HMS Hood |
| Battleships | |
| Queen Elizabeth-class | HMS Barham |
| Britain battlecruisers | |
|---|---|
| Invincible-class | HMS Invincible |
| HMS Queen Mary* | |
| Renown-class | HMS Renown · HMS Repulse |
| Courageous-class | HMS Glorious |
| Admiral-class | HMS Hood |
| * Unique ship | |
