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HMS ''Hood'' (pennant number 51) was the last battlecruiser built for the Royal Navy. Commissioned in 1920, she was named after the 18th-century Admiral Samuel Hood. One of four s ordered in mid-1916, ''Hood'' had serious design limitations, though her design was drastically revised after the Battle of Jutland and improved while she was under construction. For this reason she was the only ship of her class to be completed. As one of the largest and, ostensibly, the most powerful warships in the world, ''Hood'' was the pride of the Royal Navy and, carrying immense prestige, was known as ‘The Mighty Hood’. ''Hood'' was involved in several showing the flag exercises between her commissioning in 1920 and the outbreak of war in 1939, including training exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and a circumnavigation of the globe with the Special Service Squadron in 1923 and 1924. She was attached to the Mediterranean Fleet following the outbreak of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, ''Hood'' was officially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until she had to return to Britain in 1939 for an overhaul. By this time, advances in naval gunnery had reduced ''Hood''s usefulness. She was scheduled to undergo a major rebuild in 1941 to correct these issues, but the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 forced the ship into service without the upgrades. When war with Germany was declared, ''Hood'' was operating in the area around Iceland, and she spent the next several months hunting between Iceland and the Norwegian Sea for German commerce raiders and blockade runners. After a brief overhaul of her propulsion system, she sailed as the flagship of Force H, and participated in the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Relieved as flagship of Force H, ''Hood'' was dispatched to Scapa Flow, and operated in the area as a convoy escort and later as a defence against a potential German invasion fleet. In May 1941, she and the battleship were ordered to intercept the and the heavy cruiser , which were en route to the Atlantic where they were to attack convoys. On 24 May 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, ''Hood'' was struck by several German shells, exploded and sank. Due to her perceived invincibility, the loss had a profound effect on the British people. The Royal Navy conducted two inquiries into the reasons for the ship's quick demise. The first, held very quickly after the ship's loss, concluded that ''Hood''s aft magazine had exploded after one of ''Bismarck''s shells penetrated the ship's armour. A second inquiry was held after complaints that the first board had failed to consider alternative explanations, such as an explosion of the ship's torpedoes. It was more thorough than the first board and concurred with the first board's conclusion. Despite the official explanation, some historians continued to believe that the torpedoes caused the ship's loss, while others proposed an accidental explosion inside one of the ship's gun turrets that reached down into the magazine. Other historians have concentrated on the cause of the magazine explosion. The discovery of the ship's wreck in 2001 confirmed the conclusion of both boards, although the exact reason the magazines detonated will always be a mystery since that area of the ship was entirely destroyed in the explosion. ==Design and description== (詳細はGerman U-boat campaign.〔Roberts 1997, pp. 60–61〕 ''Hood'' was significantly larger than her predecessors of the ''Renown'' class. As completed, she had an overall length of , a maximum beam of , and a draught of at deep load. This was longer and wider than the older ships. She displaced at load and at deep load, over more than the older ships. The ship had a complete double bottom. ''Hood'' had a metacentric height of at deep load,〔Raven and Roberts, p. 67〕 which minimised her roll and made her a steady gun platform. The additional armour added during construction increased her draught by about at deep load, which reduced her freeboard and made her very wet. At full speed, or in heavy seas, water would flow over the ship's quarterdeck and often entered the messdecks and living quarters through ventilation shafts.〔Taylor, pp. 92, 94〕 This characteristic earned her the nickname of "the largest submarine in the Navy".〔Taylor, p. 92〕 The persistent dampness, coupled with the ship's poor ventilation, was blamed for the high incidence of tuberculosis aboard.〔Taylor, p. 123〕 The ship's complement varied widely over her career; in 1919, she was authorised 1433 men as a squadron flagship; in 1934, she had 81 officers and 1244 men aboard.〔Taylor, p. 231〕 The propulsion system consisted of 24 Yarrow boilers, connected to Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines driving four propellers. The battlecruiser's turbines were designed to produce , which would propel the ship at , but during sea trials in 1920, ''Hood''s turbines provided , which allowed her to reach . She carried approximately of fuel oil,〔Roberts 1997, pp. 76, 79, 80〕 which gave an estimated range of at .〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「HMS Hood」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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