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Ted Briggs, 85, was one of only three of 1,418 crew that survived the sinking during the Battle of the Denmark Strait.

Mr Briggs, from Fareham in Hampshire, passed away at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth on Saturday night.

He was boy signalman aged 18 when the fifth salvo from the Bismarck hit the ship's magazine resulting in a catastrophic explosion. It tore the ship in half and it sank in less than three minutes.

The flagship of the fleet was part of a force ordered to engage the Bismarck and her escort cruiser Prinz Eugen off Greenland.

Mr Briggs was near the bridge when the warship began to roll and he was sucked under by the sinking ship before being propelled back up.

He was soon joined by the only two other survivors; midshipman William Dundass, who died in 1965 and able seaman Bob Tilburn who died in 1995.

The trio spent three hours on the freezing sea before they were picked up by the destroyer HMS Electra close to death.

Briggs, who was president of the HMS Hood Association, described what he saw in the aftermath:

"When I came to the surface I was on her (the Hood's) port side...I turned and swam as best I could in water 4" thick with oil and managed to get on one of the small rafts she carried, of which there were a large number floating around.

"When I turned again she had gone and there was a fire on the water where her bows had been. Over on the other side I saw Dundas and Tilburn on similar rafts. There was not another soul to be seen.

"We hand-paddled towards each other and held on to one another's rafts until our hands became too numb to do so."

In the days after the sinking, Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the Bismarck found and sunk.

On May 27, the battleship was finally sunk after several days of attacks by Royal Navy ships and the Royal Air Force.

Peter Heys, chairman of the HMS Hood Association said: "He was a humorous man but he did not like to be reminded of the sinking as he had to pulled out of the freezing water."

Mr Briggs left the navy in 1973 at the rank of lieutenant and he then became a manager of an estate agents in Fareham. He was awarded the MBE in 1973.

The wreck of HMS Hood was discovered in 2001 and Mr Briggs lay a bronze plaque naming all those who died.

source

Lt Briggs will once again be sailing with his friends and crew members on the Hood.

RIP Ted.



Thanks for the post.

Always curious about what made Hood a battlecruiser and, say, KGV (41) a battleship. The armour/armament/speed trade wasn't much at all, and Hood was the heavier ship.

Hood was heavier (48,000T versus 42,000T) than the George V because she was bigger (860' length and 104' beam; versus 745' length and 103' beam). But like any battle cruiser design, she was not designed to stand up to the very guns she carried, and no battle cruiser was ideally suited to face off against a real battleship. Battle Cruisers were designed to be as fast as cruisers and destroyers, something no battleship design before WWII could ever manage.

The defensive armor in the two classes was very different.

Hood had 305mm main belt, while George V had 374mm main belt, almost 23% more protection.

The deck armor, which proved to be Hoods Achilles heel, was very much different. Hood had main deck armor of 76mm over it's magazines, while George V had 136mm main deck armor over it's magazines, almost 79% more protection.

KGV was perhaps the wrong example. There were battleships at the time with similar belt armour and identical guns (QE class and Revenge class). But the deck armour may be the thing that defines it. I read that her battlecruiser status is somewhat controversial though.

http://www.hmshood.com/history/construct/design.htm

Battlecruisers were supposed to be able to easily sink anything they could catch and easily avoid anything that could sink them. The intention was to use them as "super cruisers", not really battle line ships. Even in a large surface engagement they were supposed to help screen the battle line, not go toe-to-toe with enemy battleships.

Unfortunately, the designers intentions are rarely followed by the actual users of a new type of weapon, and they generally found themselves used as "light battleships" not "super cruisers". At Jutland the British battlecruisers fared very badly when going up against the German battlecruisers and battleships.

Still most of the navies continued battlecruiser development after WWI until the Washington Naval Treaty decided to lump them in with battleships. Noone wanted to lose battleship tonnage to battlecruisers, so they pretty much canceled the programs or made them into aircraft carriers (a la the Lexington Class).

Some of the few existing battlecruisers at the time were updated with better armor schemes between the wars, including the Japanese Kongo class. The concept somwhat resurfaced in the 1930's with concept of "fast" or "pocket" battleships in Germany and France. At least in Germany's case, these were envisioned as convoy raiders and were not really intended to take on the British fleet.

Ironically, Hood was scheduled to receive another refit in 1941, but the war intervened and Hood did not survive. God bless Mr. Briggs and all the other sailors who ran into trouble on the seas.

There are many controversial issues surrounding the Hood. She was a horrible design for a good many reasons, and was commissioned when the rest of her class were canceled for economic reasons. Civilians making decisions for the military based on the bottom line and not the end user's needs is a time honored tradition that almost invariably produces catastrophic results.

Also ironic (and tragic) that when ships are defined by role, they used the Hood to go toe-to-toe against Bismarck, ie in the role of a battleship.