Anniversary

Today is the 70th anniversary of the sinking of HMS HOOD in her engagement with the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. After a single hit by a 15" armour piercing shell from Bismarck penetrated her main armour belt, Hood's aft magazines blew up, she split in two and sank within three minutes with the loss of all bar three of her crew of 1415 men at 0600 GMT on this day, 70 years ago.

Ted Briggs, Bill Dundas and Bob Tilburn survived, to be rescued by the destroyer HMS Electra a couple of hours after the Battle of the Denmark Strait had finished with Hood's consort, HMS Prince of Wales breaking off the action after a series of hits and mechanical failures had degraded her ability to fight.

Much has been written about the technical details of the battle and about the unfitness for line-of-battle combat of a World War I vintage battlecruiser conceived by Jackie Fisher to "hit hard and hit fast" against German commerce-raiding cruisers when pitted against a modern, fast and heavily armoured battleship engaged, ironically, on exactly the same mission in a later war.

What interests me more are the command decisions taken by Vice Admiral Lancelot E Holland CB who died on the bridge of the Hood as the icy waters of the Denmark Strait closed rapidly over the superstructure of the broken-backed battlecruiser. Why did he not break his self-imposed radio silence to co-ordinate a simultaneous attack by the shadowing 8" cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk of the 1st Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Wake-Walker? Why did he not confirm the lead ship in the German formation was the capital ship before concentrating his fire on that target? Above all else, why did he not order Prince of Wales to remain at long range while he took Hood through the danger zone in which plunging fire threatened Hood's weak deck armour?

By ordering Captain Leach to steer a separate course instead of accompanying Hood in close formation, he would have allowed PoW to open her 'A'-arcs (i.e., bring all guns to bear) earlier and would have complicated the fire control solution for Bismarck, requiring her to engage two capital ships with widely diverging ranges and bearings. Ultimately, this open engagement tactic was adopted by Admiral Tovey when Bismarck was engaged and sunk by avenging units of the Home Fleet, HMS Rodney and HMS King George V, five days later, so did VADM Holland consider it and, if he did, why did he reject it?

We shall never know because the Admiral paid the same price as his men for the decisions he did or did not take and, though legitimate, it feels a little churlish to ask these questions while ruminating in a comfortable armchair thousands of miles and days from the action.

On another level this is one aspect of naval combat that remains unique and fascinating. By World War 1, the Generals were safely ensconced in their Châteaux many miles behind the front and did not share the fate of so many of their subordinates during the course of their meat-grinding battles of attrition. Even up to the Falklands conflict, naval flag officers and their men still found themselves literally in the same boat, potentially to sink or swim together.

The manner in which men were selected, trained, indoctrinated and tempered in earlier battle to make command decisions during those early and vastly disruptive years of the Second World War remains a subject that fascinates me the more I research it, and as you can see, I've read much around the subject, though there is little written about the men themselves, or above all, their thought processes in exercising command.