Bismarck vs HMS Hood: Part 1

Bismarck vs HMS Hood: A Battle of Titans

Beginnings-Part One

  On November 16th, 1935, a contract from the German Navy was sent to the ship-

building company of Blohm and Voss in Hamburg, Germany. They were to build a

battleship of staggering proportions and incredible firepower, that once completed,

would be the largest warship in the German Navy.

  It's dimensions were enormous starting with an overall length of eight hundred

and twenty four feet from bow to stern. The widest point of the ship, its beam,

stretched one hundred and ten feet. Its three turbine engines, powered by twelve

huge boilers, produced one hundred and fifty thousand horsepower that would propel

this behemoth at sixteen knots with a range of over nine thousand nautical miles.

  Its main firepower consisted of eight fifteen inch guns that were designed to fire a

eighteen hundred pound shell over twenty miles with deadly accuracy. These guns

were the most powerful ever mounted on a German warship. These barrels could

fire armour piercing shells that could penetrate the thickest decks of enemy warships

and explode deep in a ships interior, causing horrible carnage to its equipment and

its crew.

  This ship would carry twenty-two hundred sailors and would become the Nazi's

latest super weapon. It would be called the Bismarck.

(to be continued)