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Your are exaggerating how unlucky the Hood was to be destroyed in her engagement with the Bismarck.

The Hoods armoured scheme (post-Jutland extra armour worked in at the last minute into what was essentially a lightly armoured battle cruiser design) was essentially inadequate to not be seriously vulnerable to an opponent with battleship scale armament, apart from potentially at close range were the thin deck armour would be less likely to be exposed.

And even close in the Hood would have still been disadvantaged by its inferior protection.

Fighting a Scharnhorst or Kongo class would have been very risky, fighting any more heavily armed and armoured opponent was always more likely than not to end badly for the Hood.

Their was a degree of a lucky/unlucky shot that the Hood was lost as she was but likely she would have taken fatal damage in a sustained long-range plunging-fire engagement with the Bismarck; her deck armour simply wasn't up to the task. An ironically a more sustained fight may have also cost the Prince of Wales.


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