Even worse was to follow. The HOOD was the first to open fire, at 5.52 a.m., and, for reasons that will never be clearly known, she made the fatal error of concentrating her fire on the PRINZ EUGEN, and did so throughout the battle. The mistake in identification was bad enough, but no worse than the standard of her gunnery: the PRINZ EUGEN emerged from the action unscathed.
The BISMARCK and PRINZ EUGEN, consequently, were free to bring their entire armament to bear on HMS FLOOD, who, because of her approach angle, could only reply with her two fore turrets. True, the PRINCE OF WALES had now opened up also, but the blunt and bitter truth is that it didn't matter very much anyway: her first salvo was more than half a mile wide of the target, the second not much better, and the third also missed. So did the fourth. And the fifth.
The Germans did not miss. The concentrated heaviness of their fire was matched only by its devastating accuracy. Both were on target — the HOOD — almost at once, the PRINCE EUGEN'S 8-inch shells starting a fire by the HOOD'S mainmast within the first minute. The BISMARCK, too, was hitting now, the huge 15-inch projectiles, each one a screaming ton of armour-piercing steel and high explosive, smashing into the reeling HOOD and exploding deep in her heart. How often the HOOD was hit, and where she was hit we will never know, nor does it matter.
All that matters, all that we do know, is what was seen by the survivors of that battle at exactly six o'clock that morning, as the fifth salvo from the BISMARCK straddled the HOOD. A stabbing column of flame, white and orange and blindingly incandescent, lanced a thousand feet vertically upwards into the grey morning sky as the tremendous detonation of her exploding magazines almost literally blew the HOOD out of existence. When the last echoes of the great explosion had rolled away to lose themselves beyond the horizon and the smoke drifted slowly over the sea, the shattered remnants of the HOOD had vanished as completely as if the great ship herself had never existed.
So, in the twenty-first year of her life, the HOOD died. This, the first naval engagement of her long life, had lasted exactly eight minutes, and when she went down she took 1,500 officers and men with her. There were three survivors.
PART TWO
The destruction of the HOOD, the invincible, impregnable HOOD, came as a tremendous shock both to the Navy and the country at large. It was incredible, it was impossible that this had happened — and the impossible had to be explained away, both verbally and in print, with all speed.
As details of the action were at that time lacking, no mention was made of the HOOD'S suicidal angle of approach to the enemy, the fatal mistake in identification that led to her firing on the PRINZ EUGEN instead of the BISMARCK, or of the fact that the standard of her gunnery was so poor that she failed to register even one hit throughout the entire engagement. Perhaps it was as well that these things were not known at the time.
The reasons that WERE advanced at the time — and the source of inspiration of these reasons is not far to seek — were that the HOOD, of course, had been no battleship but only a lightly-protected battle cruiser, and, even so, that the 15-inch shell that had found her magazine had been one chance in a million. These explanations were utter nonsense.
True, the HOOD was technically classed as a battle cruiser, but it was just that, a technicality and no more: the fact is that with her 12-inch iron and steel sheathing extending over 560 feet on either side and with her total weight of protective metal reaching a fantastic 14,000 tons, she was one of the most heavily armoured ships in the world. As for the one chance in a million shell, senior naval architects had been pointing out for twenty years that the HOOD'S magazines were wide open to shells approaching from a certain angle, a danger that could easily have been obviated by extra armour plating. The HOOD'S design was defective, badly defective, and the Admiralty was well aware of this.
No such thoughts as these, it is safe to assume, was in the mind of Captain Leach of the PRINCE OF WALES as the smoke and the dust of the awesome explosion cleared away and the HOOD was seen to be gone. The PRINCE OF WALES was fighting for her life now, and her captain knew it. Both the BISMARCK and the PRINZ EUGEN had swung their guns on him as soon as the HOOD had blown up and already the deadly accuracy of their heavy and concentrated fire was beginning to have its effect. Captain Leach summed up the situation, made his assessments and didn't hesitate. He ordered the wheel to be put hard over, broke off the engagement and retired under a heavy smokescreen.
'The ship that ran away'. That was what the PRINCE OF WALES was called then, the coward battleship that turned and fled: it is an open secret that ship, officers and men, during the remainder of the PRINCE OF WALES's short life, were henceforward treated with aversion and cold contempt by the rest of the Navy and this opprobrium ended only with the death of the ship and the gallant Captain Leach a bare seven months later under a savage Japanese aerial attack off the coast of Malaya. The opprobrium was more than unjust — it was grotesquely and bitterly unfair. Once again, the Admiralty must shoulder much of the blame.
In fairness, it was completely unintentional on their part. The trouble arose from their official communique on the action, which was no better and no worse than the typical wartime communique, in that it tended to exaggerate the damage sustained by the enemy while minimizing our own.
Two statements in the communique caused the grievous misunderstanding: 'The BISMARCK was at one time seen to be on fire' and 'The PRINCE OF WALES sustained slight damage'. Why in all the world then, people asked, hadn't the ship which had received only slight damage closed with the one on fire and destroyed it. What possible excuse for running away?
Excuse enough. The fire on the BISMARCK, while demonstrable testimony to the occasional liveliness of official imaginations, had, in actual fact, consisted of no more than soot shaken loose from her funnel. As for the PRINCE OF WALES's 'slight damage', she had been struck by no fewer than three 8-inch shells and four of the BISMARCK'S great 15-inch shells, one of which had completely wrecked the bridge, killing everyone there except Leach and his chief yeoman of signals. Furthermore, one of the PRINCE OF WALES's big guns was completely out of action, repeated breakdowns in the others led to their firing intermittently or not at all and the jamming of 'Y' turret shell ring had put the four big guns of that turret — half of Captain Leach's effective armament — out of commission. The PRINCE OF WALES, far from being slightly damaged, was badly crippled: to close with her powerful enemy, to expose herself any longer to the murderous accuracy of these broadsides would have been no mere act of folly but quick and certain suicide.
The BISMARCK made no attempt to pursue and engage her enemy. With the HOOD destroyed and the PRINCE OF WALES badly hurt and driven off in ignominious defeat, she had already achieved success beyond her wildest dreams. A magnificent victory, a tremendous boost to the prestige of the German Navy and, in Goebbels' hands, a new-forged propaganda weapon of incalculable power — why risk throwing it all away by exposing herself to a lucky salvo that might destroy her turrets or bridge or fire control directors — or might even sink her? Besides, her primary purpose in breaking into the Atlantic was not to engage the Home Fleet — that was the last thing Admiral Lutjens wanted — but to annihilate our convoys.