A and B turrets, HMS Hood 1940
HMS Hood’s forward 15" turrets, with a 4" gun’s crew under training in the foreground.

HMS Hood was the pride of the Royal Navy, she was a massively armed battlecruiser with what was thought to be armour equal to her armaments. To all intents, HMS Hood was considered to be one of the most powerful battlecruisers afloat in World War Two.

HMS Hood was 44,600 tons, had a crew of 1,419 and was faster than the Bismarck with a maximum speed of 32 knots. The Hood had been launched in 1918 and was armed with 8 x 15 inch guns, 12 x 5.5 inch guns, 8 x 4 inch AA guns, 24 x 2 pound guns and 4 x 21 inch torpedoes.

However, the Hood suffered from one major flaw – she did not have the same amount of armour as the Bismarck. The fact that the Hood was faster than the Bismarck by 3 knots was as a result of her lack of sufficient armour for a naval battle fought in World War Two. What had been considered sufficient armour in 1918 when Hood was built, was to prove a fatal flaw in 1941.

On May 24th, 1941, the Royal Navy tailed the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen when they attempted to break out into the Atlantic. If both of these ships had got into the Atlantic, they could have created havoc amongst the Atlantic convoys that were vital to Britain. The Hood relied on information sent back to it by the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk. The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had night time and sea fog on their side and for a while both cruisers lost both German ships.

However, by 02.47 on May 24th, the Suffolk had regained contact with the Bismarck. The information sent back by the Suffolk led the Hood to believe that she would be just 20 miles from the Bismarck at 05.30 on May 24th. At 05.35, the lookout from the Hood made out the Prinz Eugen and the Bismarck at a distance of 17 miles.

Admiral Holland, on the Hood ordered the battlecruiser to turn to the German ships and at 05.45 they were only 22,000 metres apart. At 05.52, the ‘Hood’ opened fire and shortly afterwards was joined by the ‘Prince of Wales’. At 05.54, both the Prinz Eugen and the Bismarck fired their guns primarily against the ‘Hood’.

The Prinz Eugen hit the Hood and set alight some anti-aircraft shells kept on deck. The fire this caused was not particularly dangerous for the ‘Hood’ even though it produced a great deal of smoke. At 06.00 a salvo from the Bismarck hit the Hood. The Bismarck had fired from 17,000 metres and the elevation of her guns meant that the shells that hit the ‘Hood’ had a high trajectory and a steep angle of descent. The Hood had minimal horizontal armour and one of the shells from the Bismarck penetrated the Hood’s deck and exploded in one of her magazines. A massive explosion tore the ‘Hood’ in half. Those who saw the explosion said that the bows of the ‘Hood’ were raised out of the sea before they sank. The ship sank extremely quickly – within two minutes – and 1,416 men out of a total crew of 1,419 died. (historylearningsite)

Pearl Harbor Attack - Sunday 7, December 1941
Panoramic view of Pearl Harbor, during the Japanese raid, with anti-aircraft shell bursts overhead. The photograph looks southwesterly from the hills behind the harbor. Large column of smoke in lower right center is from the burning USS Arizona (BB-39). Smoke somewhat further to the left is from the destroyers Shaw (DD-373), Cassin (DD-372) and Downes (DD-375), in dry-docks at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard.
Observers quote, “This must be the second wave, because of all the flak that’s up. Apparently one of the reasons that there wasn’t a third wave was that American antiaircraft fire had greatly improved in effectiveness on the second wave, and that’s when most of the 29 Japanese aircraft were shot down.”
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-32792
Color by Facundo Filipe

May 23, 1941. Operation Rheinübung

At 0722 hours, German battleship Bismarck and cruiser Prinz Eugen are spotted by British cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk in the Denmark Strait. After HMS Norfolk is almost hit by shellfire from Bismarck, both cruisers retire to a safe distance. They shadow the German warships using radar while battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Hood close in from 300 miles to the South.

Photo: HMS Hood steaming toward the Denmark Strait, on or about 23 May 1941.

Christmas day at Bougainville
A group of RNZAF airmen are being served Christmas dinner by their superior Officers, as is traditional at Christmas time.
Christmas day, 1944
The man serving the drink (extreme right) is Laurie Counsell.
RNZAF Official photo
Colourised by Daniel Rarity

OPERATION ‘BARBAROSSA’
The invasion of the Soviet Union, June 1941
Operation ‘Barbarossa’ - named after the all-conquering Medieval Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I - was launched on 22 June 1941. Over three and a half million German and other Axis troops attacked along a 1,800-mile front. A total of 148 divisions - 80 per cent of the German Army - were committed to the enterprise.
Seventeen panzer divisions, formed into four Panzer Groups, formed the vanguard with 3,400 tanks. They were supported by 2,700 aircraft of the Luftwaffe. It was the largest invasion force to date.
(Colors by Irootoko jr., Royston Leonard, Richard Molloy)

28 November 1941: the BIG E leaves Pearl Harbor
Today, 80 years ago…USS Enterprise (CV 6) sails from Pearl Harbor for Wake Island to ferry Marine aircraft to the island. A delay due to weather on her return trip, the “BIG E” would not be at Pearl Harbor as scheduled on 6 December leaving no carriers left during the Japanese attack on 7 December.
This luck would hinder the Japanese for the rest of the war as USS Enterprise would become the most decorated WW2 ship in United States Naval History and fight the Japanese in just about every major engagement in the Pacific.
On three occasions during the war, the Japanese announced that she had been sunk in battle, inspiring her nickname “The Grey Ghost”. By the end of the war, her planes and guns had downed 911 enemy planes, sunk 71 ships, and damaged or destroyed 192 more. She is the one and only BIG E.

5/3/1945
A BF-109-E was successfully grown from root stock.

November 13 1941. Battle of the Atlantic

The Aircraft Carrier Ark Royal was launched on April 13th, 1937 by Lady Maud Hoare, wife of Sir Samuel Hoare, then First Lord of the Admiralty. The bottle of champagne thrown against Ark Royal’s bows did not smash until the fourth attempt. She was commissioned on December 16th, 1938.

Displacing 22,352 tons standard and 28,143 tons fully equipped and capable of 31 Knots, she had the capacity to carry 60 to 72 aircraft. Ark Royal’s armament was designed with anti-aircraft warfare in mind, as aircraft were expected to be the main threat.

On November 13th, 1941, while returning to Gibraltar after taking aircraft replacements to Malta, she was attacked by German submarine U-81. The torpedo ripped a huge hole in Ark Royal’s hull and she immediately began to take on water, with a list to starboard, reaching 18° from centre within 20 minutes. The crew were ordered to abandon ship and although it was towed the list reached 45° before Ark Royal capsized and sank at 06:19 on 14 November. Able Seaman Edward Mitchell was the only fatality, killed when the torpedo from U-81 struck the ship.

Photo: Imperial War Museum. Colourised by DB Colour

March 28, 1941. Battle of Cape Matapan

In late March 1941, as British ships of the Mediterranean Fleet covered troop movements to Greece, Mavis Batey, a cryptographer at Bletchley Park, made a breakthrough, reading the Italian naval Enigma for the first time. The first message, the cryptic “Today’s the day minus three,” was followed three days later by a second message reporting the sailing of an Italian battle fleet comprising one battleship, six heavy and two light cruisers, plus destroyers to attack the merchant convoys supplying British forces. As always with Enigma, the intelligence breakthrough was concealed from the Italians by ensuring there was a plausible reason for the Allies to have detected and intercepted their fleet. In this case, it was a carefully directed reconnaissance plane.

At the same time, there was a failure of intelligence on the Axis side. The Italians had been wrongly informed by the Germans that the Mediterranean Fleet had only one operational battleship and no aircraft carriers. In fact the Royal Navy had battleships, while the damaged British aircraft carrier (HMS Illustrious) had been replaced by HMS Formidable.

On 27 March, Vice-Admiral Pridham-Wippell, with the cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Gloucester, HMS Orion and HMAS Perth and a number of destroyers, sailed from Greek waters for a position south of Crete. Admiral Cunningham with HMS Formidable, HMS Warspite, HMS Barham and HMS Valiant left Alexandria on the same day to meet the cruisers.

On 28 March, 150 miles west of Crete, an IMAM Ro.43 floatplane launched by Vittorio Veneto spotted the British cruiser squadron at 06:35. Italian cruisers Trieste, Trento and Bolzano close in and open fire at 08:12 from 13 miles without success, then battleship Veneto joins in at 10:55 from 14 miles but cause little damage to 4 Allied cruisers as the Italians experienced trouble with their rangefinding equipment. Torpedo bombers from HMS Formidable attack Veneto at noon and again at 15:09, hitting a propeller and causing flooding which stops her for 90 minutes. Admiral Cunningham immediately orders the Mediterranean fleet to close on the damaged Italian battleship. Torpedo bombers from HMS Formidable and from Crete (815 Squadron) attack at 19.36, crippling Italian cruiser Pola. Cruisers Zara and Fiume remain to help Pola while Vittorio Veneto and the other ships run for cover at Taranto. After dark, battleships HMS Barham, HMS Valiant and HMS Warspite close to 2 miles unnoticed by the Italian ships (which have no radar). They open fire at 23:30, sinking 2 Italian cruisers Fiume and Zara and 2 destroyers Alfieri and Carducci while destroyer Oriani escapes with heavy damage.
Photo: The battleship Vittorio Veneto firing upon the Allied cruisers during the action off Gavdos

June 13 1944

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