“Unsinkable gun platforms” was his requirement. This, as has been said, was easier for the Germans to accomplish than for the British. Nonetheless, the provision of adequate deck armor was equally possible for the British ships. It had little or no bearing on their inhabitability.

When the Hood was launched the future of the capital ship was very uncertain. Torpedoes, zeppelins, and aircraft now constituted a threat to sea power such as had never existed before. As long ago as 1918 there were many who maintained that the capital ship was doomed and that, in the future, warfare would be entirely determined by airborne missiles. It was not until the close of World War II that the death of the heavy ship was finally announced.

Historians prefer to record fact alone, maintaining that only recorded fact can be relied upon to give an indication of the history of man. Throughout her life, though, the Hood, symbolized the greatness of her country, sea power, and might used benevolently. Those who are not professional historians may prefer to see in the history of her life and death not only the

record of an inanimate creation of armored steel, but an expression of a world and of a way of life that has gone forever.

Even before she was first commissioned, the critics of heavy ships had filled their pens and—in the manner of retired military and naval men when the war is over—expressed those opinions which, until then, they had been compelled to keep to themselves. Ships like the Hood were under attack not only from exofficers of the Royal Flying Corps and the Army, but even from Admirals of the Fleet.

 

May 1920, when the Hood was first commissioned, was no time for defenders of the capital ship to gain a fair hearing or—which was more important—to secure their point that more money should be allocated for them. As late as 1929 it was necessary for a defender of the battleship to adopt a forthright and pugilistic tone:

It is a mistaken notion of an uninformed section of the Press and public that the battleship is a warship of a settled type and that, by reason of new forms of attack, this type is now, in great measure, obsolete. Actually the term “battleship” implies the “predominant surface ship,” a warship which can hit harder, and better withstand all forms of attack than any other ship afloat. Logically, therefore, if the battleship is doomed any less powerful type of warship is doomed, because speed, the only quality in which lesser ships may be superior to the battleship, is obviously not an all-sufficient defense. If the battleship cannot keep the sea owing to the menace of the submarine or the aircraft, then neither can the cruiser, the destroyer, the aircraft carrier, nor patrol and escorting vessels. This can only lead to the conclusion that in a future war all surface vessels, especially unprotected merchant ships, are helpless, in which case the fate of the British Empire is already sealed. In reality this is very far from being the case, and the conception of the battleship as a senile leviathan retained by a conservative Admiralty is ridiculous. The battleship of today is the lineal descendant of the ship of the line of the sailing ship era, just as the cruiser is that of the frigate. Her

business is to fight in company with ships of her own class, and the battle fleet is really the fulcrum on which the whole of sea power hinges; remove it, and the value of a surface fleet will be negligible in the face of an enemy with more powerful warships.*

 

*William J. Berry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition (1929). when Director of Naval Construction, Admiralty, 1929; also Director of Warship Production, 1917-23. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

 

 

World War II confirmed this viewpoint. In both the Mediterranean and the Pacific, the battleship’s role was an important one and her function was far from being no more than a matter of containment of the enemy fleet. The invasions of Sidly, Anzio, and Salerno were facilitated by the bombardment power of capital ships. In the case of Salerno, the turning point of a fiercely opposed landing was largely due to the firepower of the fleet

The Hood, then, throughout her nineteen years of peacetime life, was not a floating anachronism, but a potent weapon of war. She had the advantage over the nuclear rockets, now poised uneasily on their launching pads, in that she represented not only destruction, but also security for those who pass on the high seas “upon their lawful occasions.”

The great advantage of the warship as a symbol of power was the fact that warships were manned by men—and men must eat, and drink, and go ashore, and meet other men. The role of the Hood during the interwar years was very much that of an ever-traveling ambassador. In this respect she was more successful than some of the constantly “on-the-wing” politicians and statesmen of recent years. The Foreign Secretary who arrives by air in another country lives only at V.I.P. level and meets only those of a similar caliber. The officers and men of a fleet or a great warship meet their foreign neighbors at every level from the dockyard tavern to the sports ground and the Ambassador’s residence. The success of “showing the flag” cruises can be judged by one fact alone, that our relationships with South American countries have never been so friendly, nor so easy, since they came to an end.

Even more terribly than the Hood, the hidden rocket and the supersonic H- bomber represent power.