WASHINGTON -- The same type of steel that cracked open when the Titanic struck an iceberg also may have doomed the pride of the Royal Navy -- the battlecruiser HMS Hood -- the largest and most powerful warship of the era, U.S. researchers say.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the ship was considered the pre-eminent symbol of British imperial power. Nicknamed "The Mighty Hood," it was frequently used for glamorous "show-the-flag" cruises around the world. And like the Titanic, Hood was perceived as unsinkable.But on a cold May morning in 1941, the aging ship was virtually pulverized in an engagement with the new German battleship Bismarck off the coast of Greenland. Of Hood's crew of 1,418, only three survived one of the worst disasters in British naval history.
Naval enthusiasts are seeking to exploit the current global interest in underwater exploration generated by the film "Titanic" to mount an expedition to locate and film the wreck of the Hood. It lies 1 1/2 miles below the Denmark Straits, some of the most inhospitable waters on Earth.
The Titanic sank off Newfoundland on April 15, 1912, soon after it struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from England to New York. More than 1,500 people perished.
Researchers have found evidence that the liner sank because the impact popped apart the luxury liner's dangerously fragile hull plates and rivets.
In contrast, the cause of the Hood's disintegration remains unclear, but the speed with which the 46,000-ton, 860-foot battlecruiser broke apart has led experts to theorize that a fire spreading from the deck to her magazines may have sparked an explosion, which in turn overstressed the hull.
Timothy Foecke, a metallurgist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., said the ships' steel -- although state-of-the-art at the time -- was "very strain-rate sensitive." In other words, he said, like Silly Putty, it will stretch if pulled apart slowly but it will snap if it is pulled quickly.
"If the Hood's hull was disassembled very quickly by an explosion, then the steel may have indeed behaved very brittlely," said Foecke, who conducted extensive tests on metal fragments from Titanic.