John Ash unpicks the key numerics defining the short life of arguably the Royal Navy’s greatest warship
Britain’s 860ft giant
The Royal Navy’s battlecruisers were typically longer than its battleships. However, at 860ft 7in and 47,430-tons full load, few realise just how big Hood was. On commissioning Hood was the largest, most powerful warship afloat – if one walked around her three times, they’d cover a mile. She cost more than £6,000,000 (£222,482,000 today), and the late Rear Admiral Philip Wilcocks, as president of the HMS Hood Association, wrote: "She was, in the interwar years, the iconic figure for the Royal Navy, for the country, and in those days for the Empire."
Excluding the 955ft, 56,551-ton linerturned-training ship Caledonia, Hood was the largest vessel in the Royal Navy. She was also its largest warship by length for 97 years, until the 932ft, 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth entered service in 2017. The only British warships to displace more than Hood are the Queen Elizabethclass and Audacious-class carriers, and the battleship Vanguard. Even today, in the age of the supercarrier, just 20 warship classes have measured longer than Hood.
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