HMS Hood was a British battlecruiser, laid down in 1916, launched in April 1918 and commissioned into the Royal Navy in May 1920. The ship was 262 m long, 32 m wide and had a displacement of 48,400 tons in 1941. HMS Hood had a maximum speed of 28–32 knots. Her main armament at the start of World War II was eight 381 mm guns in four twin-barreled turrets. Additional armament consisted of 14 102 mm guns, 24 40 mm guns and 4 533 mm torpedo tubes.
HMS Hood was the only Admiral-class ship to enter service with the Royal Navy. She was also the only battlecruiser commissioned after the end of World War I. Moreover, throughout the interwar period, it was the largest ship in the world, as British diplomats had specifically agreed upon at the Washington Conference of 1921-1922. Despite its large size, HMS Hood at the time of its launch had similar artillery armament to other battleships of the Royal Navy. However, it had significantly weaker armor, which was to be compensated for by its considerable speed - which was the case in the 1920s. However, by the beginning of World War II, German, Italian and Japanese battleships were at least as fast as HMS Hood, but had much better armor. HMS Hood was built at the John Brown shipyard in Clydebank. From the moment of commissioning, it was part of the British Atlantic Fleet, quickly becoming a kind of showcase for the Royal Navy as the largest ship in the world. Between 1920 and 1939, she made numerous representative and occasional cruises, for example, in 1924-1925 she made a circumnavigation of the globe. With the outbreak of World War II, she served in the North Atlantic, and in 1940 was ferried to Gibraltar and took part in Operation Catapult, the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. In May 1941, she was sent with the battleship HMS Prince of Wales against the German battleship Bismarck. During a collision with her in the Denmark Strait, she was sunk on 24 May 1941.
