HMS Hood (Dinky Toys 50a)
| Past Exhibit |
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HMS Hood (Dinky Toys 50a).jpg) (i)
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| location: |
| Arch Two , Area 25 The Legend of Hornby |
| Shelf 3 |
A diecast waterline 1:1800 -scale model of Battle Cruiser Hood (Dinky Toys 50a), introduced in 1934.
Work started on Hood in 1916, and the ship entered service in 1920. The ship was sunk during World War 2, on 24 May 1941, in an an encounter with the German battleship Bismarck.
Battle Cruiser Hood (1920-41) was the first ship of its class, but the slightly dated design required an ongoing series of updates and retrofits, and by the time that these were completed, the Navy's priorities had changed, and Hood remained the only completed member of the class. As a "one-off", Hood was a high-profile ship that was well known to the British public, and when she was sunk in 1941 while engaging the Bismarck, it was a major blow to British morale.
After the sinking, Dinky continued to sell the model, but removed the name "Hood" from the model's underside.
Catalogue image
The Sinking of HMS Hood
Although HMS Hood was reckoned to be one of the most impressive battleships afloat, it had been designed around the tactics of WW1. Hood's fatal problem (with hindsight) was that while it was armoured to withstand an attack from the sides, it didn't have much in the way of deck armour to withstand an attack from above (a consideration that became much more important with the development of aerial warfare).
In the event, it wasn't an aircraft that sank the Hood, but a shell from the German Bismarck ... apparently one of the Bismarck's more flamoyant gunners disobeyed standard procedures (which involved shooting at the ship's heavily-armoured sides), and instead tried a more ambitious "trick shot", using a high-aimed trajectory that resulted in the shell coming down onto the Hood's deck at a steep angle, penetrating the deck, entering a munitions storage area, and blowing the ship in two.
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