The Mighty Hood The Battleship that Challenged the Bismarck

by Bradford, Ernle

• ISBN13: 9781497637931
• ISBN10: 1497637937
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-08-19
• Publisher: Open Road Media

Summary

The story of the HMS Hood, the last great warship of the British Royal Navy, told by the bestselling author of Hannibal.

When it was launched in 1918, the HMS Hood was the flagship of the Royal Navy. As a battle cruiser, “The Mighty Hood” was fast enough to evade enemy cruiser ships and powerful enough to destroy them. But for all the Hood’s might, it had one fatal flaw: armor had been sacrificed for speed.
 
In 1941, the Hood confronted the legendary German warship Bismarck. A salvo from the enemy penetrated the Hood’s ammunition magazine, destroying the British ship and killing all but three of its crew. The brutal defeat marked the end of the Royal Navy’s dominance. But it also inspired Winston Churchill’s vow to sink the Bismarck—a vow that in time was fulfilled.
 
Through oral history and documentary research, Ernle Bradford chronicles the Hood’s career from design to demise, with colorful insight into life aboard the ship as well as its broader historical significance.

Author Biography

Ernle Bradford was born in 1922 and died in 1986. He was a noted British historian specializing in the Mediterranean world and naval topics. Bradford was an enthusiastic sailor himself and spent almost thirty years sailing the Mediterranean, where many of his books are set. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, finishing as the first lieutenant of a destroyer. Bradford lived in Malta for a number of years. He did occasional broadcast work for the BBC, was a magazine editor, and wrote many books, including Hannibal, Paul the Traveller, Julius Caesar: The Pursuit of Power, Christopher Columbus, and The Mighty Hood.

Table of Contents

• Epigraph
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 – “H.M.S. Hood Will Proceed…”
• Chapter 2 – Birth of a Ship
• Chapter 3 – Her Ancestry
• Chapter 4 – Mediterranean Cruise
• Chapter 5 – Politicians and Others
• Chapter 6 – The Sea Life
• Chapter 7 – One Day in 1922
• Chapter 8 – Start of the World Cruise
• Chapter 9 – “Leviathans Revealed….”
• Chapter 10 – To the New World
• Chapter 11 – The Spanish War
• Chapter 12 – The Guns of the Ship
• Chapter 13 – North Sea, 1939
• Chapter 14 – Mers-el-Kebir
• Chapter 15 – Mediterranean, 1940
• Chapter 16 – Watch in the North
• Chapter 17 – Battleship Bismarck
• Chapter 18 – Into the Arctic Circle
• Chapter 19 – The Denmark Strait
• Chapter 20 – Enemy in Sight
• Chapter 21 – “Prepare for Action!”
• Chapter 22 – Death of a Giant
• Chapter 23 – Revenge
• Chapter 24 – Post-Mortem
• Envoi
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Bibliography