Monday, August 17, 2015 - 06:02 PM UTC
74 years after her sinking, the bell of the battlecruiser HMS Hood has been recovered. Following a successful expedition led by billionaire Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, it will now be shown at National Museum of Royal Navy in Portsmouth.
HMS Hood is the largest Royal Navy vessel to have been sunk, causing the largest loss of life suffered by any single British warship and the recovery was fully supported by the HMS Hood Association whose members include veterans who served in the ship before her final mission in 1941, and relatives of those lost with her.

After being at war for more than 18 months, Brittain's loss of the Hood occurred on May 24th, 1941 from shell fire form the German battleship Bismarck while the Royal Navy was on a mission to sink the German commerce raider. The fifth salvo from Bismarck's guns hit the Hood’s magazine resulting in a catastrophic explosion, which tore her in half, and sank in less than three minutes. Only three of its 1,418 crew survived the sinking during the what became known as the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

The 18-inch high bell of Hood, which was cast for the previous battleship of the same name, will now be restored and displayed at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Three years ago Mr Allen was thwarted in his efforts to pick up the bell by the weather in the waters between Iceland and Greenland. But he returned this summer with his yacht Octopus and its state-of-the-art robot submarine from the same firm, Blue Water Recoveries, which found the Hood’s wreck back in 2001, and recovered the bell on August 7 from a depth of 2,800 meters (9,186 feet).

After the conservation process, which is likely to take around 12 months, the bell will be reunited with the bell of HMS Prince of Wales, which took part in the same Denmark Strait action with the Bismarck but survived, only to be sunk at the end of the year by the Japanese in the South China Sea.

Here are several links to news services with more images and details on the recovery effort.

Daily Mail

BBC News

The News

USNI News

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