Wreck
In 2001, British broadcaster Channel 4 commissioned shipwreck hunter David Mearns and his company, Blue Water Recoveries, to locate the wreck of Hood, and if possible, produce underwater footage of both the battlecruiser and her attacker, the Bismarck. This was to be used for a major event documentary to be aired on the 60th anniversary of the ships' battle. This was the first time anyone had attempted to locate Hood's resting place. Mearns had spent the previous six years privately researching the fate of Hood with the goal of finding the battlecruiser, and had acquired the support of the Royal Navy, the HMS Hood Association and other veterans groups, and the last living survivor, Ted Briggs.
The search team and equipment had to be organised within four months, to take advantage of a narrow window of calm conditions in the North Atlantic. Organisation of the search was complicated by the presence on board of a documentary team and their film equipment, along with a television journalist who made live news reports via satellite during the search. The search team also planned to stream video from the remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) directly to Channel 4's website.
After footage of the Bismarck was collected, Mearns and the search team began scanning a 600-square-nautical-mile (2,100 km2) search box for Hood; completely covering the area was estimated to take six days. Areas that Mearns felt were more likely to hold the wreck were prioritised, and the side-scan sonar located the battlecruiser in the 39th hour of the search.
Hood's wreck lies on the seabed in pieces among two debris fields. The eastern field includes the tiny piece of the stern that survived the magazine explosion, as well as the surviving section of the bow and some smaller remains such as the propellers. The 4-inch fire director lies in the western debris field. The heavily armoured conning tower is located by itself a distance from the main wreck. The amidships section, the biggest part of the wreck to survive the explosions, lies inverted south of the eastern debris field in a large impact crater. The starboard side of the amidships section is missing down to the inner wall of the fuel tanks and the plates of the hull are curling outward; this has been interpreted as indicating the path of the explosion through the starboard fuel tanks. It is further supposed that the small debris fields are the fragments from the aft hull where the magazines and turrets were located, since that section of the hull was totally destroyed in the explosion. The fact that the bow section separated just forward of 'A' turret is suggestive that a secondary explosion might have occurred in this area. Other researchers have claimed that the final salvo fired by Hood was not a salvo at all, but flame from the forward magazine explosion, which gave the illusion of Hood opening fire for the last time. This damage, ahead of the armoured bulkhead, could easily have been implosion damage suffered while Hood sank, as a torpedo room that had been removed during one of her last refits approximates the site of the break. However, it was the opinion of Mearns and White who investigated the wreck that this was unlikely as the damage was far too limited in scale, nor could it account for the outwardly splayed plates also observed in that area. Bill Jurens, however, points out that there was no magazine of any kind at the location of the break and that the location of the break just forward of the forward transverse armoured bulkhead suggests that the ship's structure failed there as a result of stresses inflicted when the bow was lifted into the vertical position by the sinking stern section. Furthermore the current position of the plates at the edge of the break only reflects their last position, not the direction that they first moved.
The forward section lies on its port side, with the amidships section keel up. Of interest is the stern section which actually rises from the seabed at an angle. This position clearly shows the rudder locked into a 20° port turn, confirming that orders had been given (just prior to the aft magazines detonating) to change the ship's heading and bring the aft turrets 'X' and 'Y' to bear on the German ships.
In 2002 the site was officially designated a war grave by the British government. As such, it remains a protected place under the Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986.
Read more about this topic: HMS Hood (51)
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