24 de Maio de 1941.

In the North Atlantic, the German Battleship Bismarck sinks the HMS Hood killing all but three crewmen on what was the pride of the Royal Navy. On 24 May 1941, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, she was found travelling through the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland and engaged by a British force led by the battlecruiser Hood and the newly commissioned battleship Prince of Wales. The latter was newly completed and still being worked up (indeed, she sailed to meet Bismarck with dockyard workmen still on board completing her fitting out).

Hood was built as a fast battleship rather than a battlecruiser but still had relatively weak deck armour. Rather than let the inexperienced Prince Of Wales take the lead, she closed with the Bismarck to reduce the range - closer in, the Bismarck's gunfire would not have come down directly onto Hood's deck. Hood took one of the Bismarck's first salvos amidships. Moments later she was consumed by an explosion, splitting the hull into two sections which then sank rapidly with the loss of the complete crew of 1,418 bar three survivors. Hood was a modern design with the lessons of Jutland incorporated so a main magazine explosion was unlikely. It is possible that either the torpedo warheads on the mountings amidships or a secondary ammunition magazine had exploded and taken the main magazine with it.

Without the Hood the deputy commander ordered the Prince of Wales, all but one of her main guns out of action (due to mechanical failure rather than battle damage), to disengage and she escaped under a smokescreen. Her gunfire had struck Bismarck three times, one hit causing water to be introduced into fuel storage. This had the effect of reducing the range of the ship, from then on Bismarck kept at only 20 kts to conserve fuel, and leaving an oil slick trail. Bismarck headed for St Nazaire's dry dock in France for repairs, and although she continued to be shadowed by Norfolk, Suffolk and Prince of Wales, she eventually broke away and Prinz Eugen detached. With the intention of facilitating a quick recovery, the Bismarck never refueled — a decision that would later come back to haunt her. The result of the battle with Hood showed the effect of deploying a battlecruiser against a battleship, a role for which it was never designed.

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