The 3 Minutes That Killed 1,400 Men (HMS Hood)

WW2, from the records. https://warshelf.com/ May 24, 1941. At 5:35 in the morning, lookouts on Prince of Wales sight two ships coming out of the Denmark Strait: Prinz Eugen, and behind her the Bismarck. Just ahead steams HMS Hood, for twenty years the largest warship in the world and, to most people, the Royal Navy itself. She also carries a flaw the navy has known about since Jutland: thin deck armour, and a rebuild that kept being put off. Vice-Admiral Holland turns head-on to close the range fast, with only his forward guns able to bear, and opens fire on the wrong ship. Both Germans aim at Hood. A cruiser shell starts a fire on her boat deck. At about six o'clock, halfway through a turn that would finally bring all eight of her guns into the fight, Bismarck's fifth salvo comes down. A column of flame rises higher than her masts. In about three minutes she is gone. Of roughly 1,418 men aboard, three come out of the oil alive, kept awake in the freezing water by a seventeen-year-old midshipman singing the popular songs of the day.