The Hood Fights On!

 On May 24, 1941, HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy and the British Empire, once the largest warship in the world, explodes and sinks after a short duel between the battlecruiser and the newest German battleship, Bismarck. As her wreck settles to the deep and Bismarck sails on to her own eventual fate, the world assumed the Hood's guns had fallen silent for the final time, but this would not be the last time the great warship's guns would boom in defense of the British Empire against the Germans. Half an ocean away from her final resting place, Hood would still stand against Nazi aggression.

HMS Hood (pennant number 51) was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy. Hood was the first of the planned four Admiral-class battlecruisers to be built during the First World War. Already under construction when the Battle of Jutland occurred in mid-1916, that battle revealed serious flaws in her design, and despite drastic revisions, she was completed four years later. For this reason, she was the only ship in her class to be completed, as the admiralty decided it would be better to start with a clean design on succeeding battlecruisers, leading to the never-built G-3 class. Despite the appearance of newer and more modern ships, Hood remained the largest warship in the world for 20 years after her commissioning, and her prestige was reflected in her nickname, "The Mighty Hood".

Hood was involved in many showing-the-flag exercises between her commissioning in 1920 and the outbreak of war in 1939, including training exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and a circumnavigation of the globe with the Special Service Squadron in 1923 and 1924. She was attached to the Mediterranean Fleet following the outbreak of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935. When the Spanish Civil War broke out the following year, Hood was officially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until she had to return to Britain in 1939 for an overhaul. By this time, advances in naval gunnery had reduced Hood's usefulness. She was scheduled to undergo a major rebuild in 1941 to correct these issues, but the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 kept the ship in service without the upgrades.

When war with Germany was declared, Hood was operating in the area around Iceland, and she spent the next several months hunting for German commerce raiders and blockade runners between Iceland and the Norwegian Sea. After a brief overhaul of her propulsion system, she sailed as the flagship of Force H and participated in the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Transferred to the Home Fleet shortly afterward, Hood was dispatched to Scapa Flow and operated in the area as a convoy escort and later as a defense against a potential German invasion fleet. In May 1941, Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales were ordered to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen en route to the Atlantic, where they were to attack convoys. On May 24, 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank with the loss of all but 3 of her crew of 1,418.

But this was not the end of her service. In the interwar years, the Hood was subject to various refits as time, money, and her schedule allowed. Two of Hood's 5.5-inch guns were removed during a refit at Malta in 1935, to be replaced with 4.5 guns dual purpose weapons capable of engaging aircraft and surface targets. These were shipped to Ascension Island, an isolated volcanic island 7°56′ south of the Equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is about 960 miles (1,540 km) from the coast of Africa and 1,400 miles (2,300 km) from the coast of South America. It was an important refueling station for ships and aircraft and a base for antisubmarine operations. Here, they were installed in Fort Bedford as a shore battery in 1941, sited on a hill above the port and main settlement, Georgetown,

The Ascension Island guns saw action only once, on December 9, 1941, when they fired on the German submarine U-124 as it approached Georgetown on the surface to shell the cable station or sink any ships at anchor. No hits were scored, but the submarine crash-dived and retreated. U-124 would, however, be lost in 1943 with all hands.

After the Falkland War, these guns were restored by members of the Royal Air Force. These guns remain today as a tourist attraction and a memorial. In 1984, the Ascension Island Historical Society assumed this care and maintained Fort Bedford.