For educational purposes
Sixty years after the loss of two of the greatest battleships ever launched, Channel 4 mounted an ambitious expedition to locate and film HMS Hood and Bismarck.
Both were sunk several miles under the sea - too deep even for nuclear submarines to reach.
In the first of two feature-length documentaries, extraordinary evidence is provided by the expedition into the mystery of Hood's sinking.
Sixty years after the loss of two of the greatest battleships ever launched, Channel 4 mounted an ambitious expedition to locate and film HMS Hood and Bismarck.
Both were sunk several miles under the sea - too deep even for nuclear submarines to reach.
In the first of two feature-length documentaries, extraordinary evidence is provided by the expedition into the mystery of Hood's sinking.
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00This is the story of two massive warships, one British, the other German, which were sunk in the North Atlantic 60 years ago.
00:00:18Over three and a half thousand men died. Only 118 survived.
00:00:30This year a Channel 4 expedition set out to find those ships and unravel the mysteries behind their sinkings.
00:01:00On the 24th of May 1941, the mighty HMS Hood, the biggest ship in the Royal Navy, faced the legendary German battleship, Bismarck.
00:01:22Their encounter was one of the last great battleship confrontations.
00:01:32Witnesses were aghast at the scale of the destruction. Captains of nearby ships were ordered to sketch what they saw.
00:01:42HMS Hood, the undisputed Master of the Seas, was hit by Bismarck. Moments later she was renting to by a towering explosion 600 feet high.
00:01:57She sank in less than two minutes. In the history of naval battles it was by far the most cataclysmic sinking ever.
00:02:07And the loss rocked the British people, for HMS Hood, for HMS Hood was no ordinary ship.
00:02:20The Hood was the most loved of all the ships in the Navy.
00:02:39She'd shown the flag round the world and she was the biggest ship and the most beautiful ship in the Navy.
00:02:45You see, the Hood was an icon, the awful modern word, an icon. The Hood was the mighty Hood, she was called.
00:02:54And the idea of the Hood being vaporised in about two and a half minutes was ghastly.
00:03:07HMS Hood was a household name for 20 years. Now she's a distant memory.
00:03:13But for some, the sinking of HMS Hood will never be forgotten.
00:03:26On the anniversary of the catastrophe, the Hood Association meet at the Little Norman Church at Boulder in Hampshire.
00:03:32Former sailors who served on Hood, the families and friends who lost loved ones, they all meet to remember HMS Hood and her crew.
00:03:45Amongst them is Ted Briggs.
00:03:58Out of a ship's crew of 1,418, only three men escaped as the ship plummeted to the seabed.
00:04:17Ted is the only one alive today.
00:04:26They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
00:04:32The age shall not wear them, nor the years come down.
00:04:38At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.
00:04:44We will remember them.
00:04:45We will remember them.
00:04:47We will remember them.
00:05:04Like the families of the men who died, Ted has many unanswered questions.
00:05:08Like the families of the men who died, Ted has many unanswered questions.
00:05:15How could a ship as big and heavily armoured as Hood sink so quickly?
00:05:20An Admiralty inquiry admitted the evidence was contradictory and inconclusive.
00:05:26It's been said that her design was flawed, that her steel was brittle,
00:05:31that the Admiral on board made a wrong decision.
00:05:35Experts now believe that somehow Hood's own rear magazines, her ammunition stores, were hit, exploded and broke the ship in two.
00:05:46But Ted has another question, which has haunted him for 60 years.
00:05:53Why did he and only two other men survive?
00:05:59The Portsmouth Naval War Memorial.
00:06:05The year 1941 is born.
00:06:09The year 1941 is born.
00:06:12But Ted has another question, which has haunted him for 60 years.
00:06:16The Portsmouth Naval War Memorial.
00:06:26The year 1941 is dominated by the lost sailors of Hood.
00:06:46The Portsmouth Naval War Memorial.
00:07:06The Portsmouth Naval War Memorial.
00:07:13These are all High Branch, Sigelman, Sigelman, etc.
00:07:22Tuxworth is there.
00:07:26We were going into action.
00:07:28He said, if you remember, in the Exeter, there was only one Sigelman saved.
00:07:36I said, well, if there's only going to be one Sigelman saved here, it'd be me.
00:07:39I was just joking.
00:07:41That's what happened.
00:07:55I can see it.
00:07:56I can see it all happening again.
00:07:58And the main part I remember is the bowels, standing like that, going down.
00:08:06Not another soul inside anywhere.
00:08:10Not even the other two.
00:08:11I didn't see them until it was all over.
00:08:13But I just couldn't get over it.
00:08:16I just couldn't believe it.
00:08:26Sixty years on, there's now hope of some answers for Ted and the families of those who died.
00:08:32American-born David Mearns is a director of Blue Water Recoveries.
00:08:44He has a rare expertise to locate and investigate shipwrecks which lie at the outer limits of deep ocean research.
00:08:51In his career, he's found over 40 wrecks for cargo companies and governments.
00:08:57His dream is an expedition that many have said is impossible.
00:09:01To find and film the wreck of the mighty HMS Hood.
00:09:05For six years, David trawled through admiralty papers at the public records office.
00:09:16Finally, he found the vital clues he needed.
00:09:20Transmissions sent from a British ship which was shadowing the battle, HMS Norfolk.
00:09:25This is the received wireless transmission from Norfolk.
00:09:32Actually, we have two here.
00:09:35When I finally stumbled across these two pages, it really gave me the confidence that we could find Hood.
00:09:41I mean, these were the key things.
00:09:43Our confidence is largely based on the quality of these positions.
00:09:48They're first source.
00:09:50They're from a ship, you know, right on the heels of the battle.
00:09:54They've updated their position.
00:09:55They've checked their position.
00:09:57They had great motivation to try and get the most accurate position because they knew lives depended on it.
00:10:03And so it couldn't get really any better than that.
00:10:14Back at his office in Midhurst in Sussex, David took all the clues he'd found and plotted them onto naval charts.
00:10:23So this is essentially my manual re-navigation of the action, all the ships involved, and all the primary and secondary clues for the sinking position.
00:10:35You know, there's no such thing as a treasure map with an X on it and you go there and that's where the treasure is or that's where the wreck is.
00:10:43They don't exist.
00:10:44All the factors that influence the accuracy of that position, the size of the vessel, the stability of the vessel, what the weather was like, you know, these are approximate.
00:10:54There's error involved in that, whether it's potentially three miles, five miles, ten miles, and we make a judgment on what we feel the error is.
00:11:04And on the basis of that, we sort of draw up what we call our search box.
00:11:11Hood lies in treacherous Arctic waters between Greenland and Iceland.
00:11:17She is also nearly two miles below the surface.
00:11:21To find and film Hood would be a major achievement.
00:11:28Unlike commercial wrecks, battleships are not open to salvage.
00:11:31After lengthy negotiation, David finally received British government permission to film HMS Hood.
00:11:44But he also wanted the blessing of the family and friends of the lost men.
00:11:51I've always said if the HMS Hood Association or Ted Briggs were unhappy with our plans and said,
00:11:56you know, we don't want you to do this, we would stop immediately.
00:12:02But, you know, hopefully this will make sure that the memory of Hood and all those people who were lost on Earth is never forgotten.
00:12:12I have to say I'm very pleased to be here again, six years later, from the first time I was invited to this reunion dinner.
00:12:24And so I'm very pleased to be here to say that this year we will mount an expedition to locate Hood and to film her.
00:12:34Like quite a few people, I thought, no, she's a war grave and she should be treated as such.
00:12:40And it wasn't until my own chum said to me afterwards, he said, what's your objection?
00:12:48And I said, well, you know, war grave and all that type of thing.
00:12:53And he said, well, if you went into a graveyard and took a photograph of your mother's grave, would you regard that as a desecration?
00:13:04And it was a result of that that I thought, well, hang on a minute.
00:13:09It is quite, it is really a good thing.
00:13:14Shall we go upstairs?
00:13:17The stage was set for a remarkable historic event.
00:13:20Channel 4 agreed to fund David Mearn's deep ocean search for the Hood.
00:13:29But it soon became clear that this super high-tech multi-million pound expedition would not be complete without catching a glimpse of the other sunken giant at the heart of this story.
00:13:40Bismarck.
00:13:41The biggest German warship ever built.
00:13:50Bismarck has been found before in 1989 when underwater video technology was relatively crude.
00:13:59But locating her again won't be easy.
00:14:01The original expedition took two years to find her and kept her location secret.
00:14:08She is three and a half miles down and in treacherous terrain, somewhere in the middle of an underwater mountain range.
00:14:15Summer 2001, Cork Island.
00:14:28David Mearns mobilized an international team of deep ocean experts and some of the most advanced underwater search technology in the world.
00:14:35The plan is to first scan the ocean floor with sonar to locate the wrecks.
00:14:42Then a remote-controlled vehicle, the ROV, will descend five times beyond the reach of a nuclear submarine.
00:14:50At these huge depths, it will film each ship.
00:14:54These are very expensive expeditions.
00:14:58A lot of people invest a lot of time and effort into going out and, first off, being successful in finding it.
00:15:05That's one thing.
00:15:06I can sit here today and say I have a fantastic track record and be very confident in finding it,
00:15:13but there is no guarantee to that.
00:15:15I can't put my hand on my heart and say it's actually going to happen.
00:15:18What started as a dream six years ago at last gets underway at midnight as David's research vessel,
00:15:30the Northern Horizon, slips her mooring in Ireland and heads out into the vast expanse of the North Atlantic.
00:15:42This is a voyage of over 3,000 miles.
00:15:45It's goal is to gaze once more upon the last great battleships.
00:15:59May 1941 was a dark time for Great Britain.
00:16:03The whole of Europe was in the hands of Nazi Germany.
00:16:07Dunkirk had fallen.
00:16:08America was still neutral.
00:16:10Hull Harbour was months away.
00:16:12The citizens of London, Liverpool, Hull and Coventry were suffering the worst ever nights of the Blitz.
00:16:27Britain's only lifeline was the North Atlantic convoys from Canada and the USA.
00:16:33But these ships carrying vital food and materials were under constant attack.
00:16:37German U-boats and warships had destroyed 700,000 tons of merchant shipping in April alone.
00:16:45Britain's survival hung in the balance.
00:16:48Today, the Northern Horizon search vessel is crossing those same shipping lanes where the battle in the Atlantic was fought.
00:17:06On board is renowned naval historian Dr Eric Grove.
00:17:12He's an expert on World War II, an era when control of the sea was central to Britain's war effort.
00:17:18It costs the same to transport one tonne of coal from Australia to England as it does to transport it from the port to the power station.
00:17:32That gives you some impression of the enormous advantages of transporting things by sea.
00:17:38And so, therefore, if you could control that mode of transport, particularly if you're fighting a maritime empire like Britain in the 1940s, you've got your fingers on the enemy's jugular.
00:17:50And that's what the Battle of the Atlantic was all about.
00:17:58From the outset of war, Britain had been worried about Bismarck.
00:18:01Launched in 1939, this hugely powerful ship was a potentially fatal threat to the Atlantic lifeline.
00:18:15Bismarck was 790 feet long.
00:18:19She had eight massive 15-inch guns, 13-inch thick armor, and a top speed of 30 knots.
00:18:26She was alleged to be unsinkable.
00:18:28She was certainly the most powerful military weapon in the world.
00:18:33But she'd yet to become operational.
00:18:36The British watched and waited.
00:18:43Then, on the 20th of May 1941, intelligence from Sweden and Norway confirmed their worst fears.
00:18:50Bismarck had been sighted heading towards the Atlantic.
00:18:53Bismarck had to be found before she got to the shipping lanes.
00:18:59With her speed and firepower, she could decimate merchant shipping before the Royal Navy had a chance to respond.
00:19:05The British went on to a high state of alert.
00:19:17One young naval lieutenant who took part in the pursuit of Bismarck was the broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy.
00:19:23I mean, the Bismarck was a wonderful ship, absolutely wonderful.
00:19:29I mean, majestic in her appearance.
00:19:35Threatening, menacing, powerful, enormously powerful.
00:19:40But with this, one of these wonderful lines.
00:19:44And she was the best, biggest, and most wonderful ship I've ever seen.
00:19:49And I think most people who saw her thought of that as well.
00:19:53But she had to be destroyed.
00:20:00I mean, if she got out in the Atlantic, I mean, I don't say we were finished, but we'd been up against it.
00:20:07For two days, British ships and aircraft scoured the Norwegian coast for Bismarck.
00:20:13A long-range RAF Spitfire spotted her in a fjord and took this photograph.
00:20:18But Bismarck slipped away in the night.
00:20:21Tension was high.
00:20:23The problem for the British Navy was guessing where Bismarck would enter the Atlantic.
00:20:32There were four possible routes.
00:20:35Groups of British cruisers, smaller, faster ships, were sent to patrol the farthest routes.
00:20:42If they sighted Bismarck, they were to follow her and call in the big guns.
00:20:47The home fleet, based in the Orkneys, would cover the other two.
00:20:54The Navy's giant battlecruiser, HMS Hood, along with the brand new battleship, the Prince of Wales,
00:21:00were sent to take up station south of Iceland, ready to engage Bismarck, if she was spotted.
00:21:0621st of May, we left Scapaflum, and there were strong rumours going around about a battleship being home.
00:21:20We weren't unduly impressed because we'd had so many false alarms.
00:21:25Not only were the crew unperturbed, they were also supremely confident in HMS Hood, not least Ted Briggs.
00:21:33At the age of 13, he'd marvelled at the sight of the Hood and dreamt of serving on her.
00:21:38Well, she was the pride of the British fleet, and she was the all-and-end-all, as far as the Navy was concerned.
00:21:47But Hood's formidable reputation was earned in peacetime.
00:21:55For years, Hood had toured the world as a symbol of British naval power.
00:21:59Since her launch in 1918, she had reigned supreme in an era of battleship diplomacy.
00:22:08At over 860 feet long, she was the Navy's biggest ship, and the emblem of their global might.
00:22:15From 1923 to 1924, she voyaged throughout the empire, travelling 40,000 miles and receiving over 700,000 visitors.
00:22:38But behind the fun and games on deck, Hood was a subtle reminder of who ruled the waves.
00:22:45If you wanted something to appear on a cigarette card, on the front of a magazine, in a film or something,
00:22:59if you wanted a symbol of Britain's remaining naval supremacy, at least as top equal with the United States, then HMS Hood provided it.
00:23:09Imperial symbol she may have been.
00:23:12But by 1941, she was old technology.
00:23:16She was designed in the First World War, and construction began on her in Glasgow in 1916.
00:23:23But suddenly the work was halted.
00:23:26Three British battlecruisers had just been sunk at the Battle of Jutland by the Germans.
00:23:31As the Admiral at the scene commented, there seemed to be something wrong with the design of British ships.
00:23:37What was wrong with the British ships was that they had insufficient deck armour.
00:23:50For decades, warships had heavy steel side or belt armour.
00:23:54But over the years, as guns got more powerful and could be fired over longer ranges, shells were now plunging down from greater heights.
00:24:03Bill Jurens is a forensic expert and advisor to the US Navy.
00:24:12On board the Northern Horizon, he explains why navies started to get worried by high plunging shells.
00:24:18Plunging fire is anything that is going down steeply enough so that it's not really intercepting any of the belt armour before it hits the decks.
00:24:28That's the stuff that's dangerous, because that goes right through into the magazine areas and right through into the engineering spaces.
00:24:34Hood was quickly redesigned, but crucially, only the front half of the ship was given extra deck armour, in a bid to keep the weight down.
00:24:46The intention had always been to have her in for a refit and strengthen the back part of the ship, particularly over the back ammunition magazines.
00:24:54Somehow, with all her diplomatic goodwill missions, there never seemed to be the right time.
00:25:04Hood and the Prince of Wales crept along the south side of Iceland, ready to engage Bismarck.
00:25:17On board Hood was Admiral Lancelot Holland.
00:25:21His orders were to quickly get in close to enemy ships.
00:25:27At short range, enemy shells would hit Hood's thick side armour.
00:25:31Holland knew he must not expose Hood's weak upper armour to long-range plunging shells.
00:25:39But would Hood be able to get in close?
00:25:51At 7.22 on the evening of Friday the 23rd of May,
00:25:55Abel Seaman Newell on board the British cruiser HMS Suffolk got the shock of his life.
00:26:01HMS.
00:26:01I could not get in close to any ship.
00:26:08Within minutes Suffolk's sister ship, HMS Norfolk,
00:26:11was transmitting this message to the fleet.
00:26:14Emergency.
00:26:15One battleship, one cruiser bearing 330 degrees.
00:26:19Range, 7 miles.
00:26:20Newell had sighted Bismarck, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prince Eugen, trying to
00:26:30slip into the Atlantic via the Denmark Strait.
00:26:35Suffolk and Norfolk started to shadow her, broadcasting her position to Hood and Prince
00:26:40of Wales.
00:26:41Admiral Holland did not reply.
00:26:52He simply set an interception course.
00:26:54By maintaining radio silence, he hoped to come upon the Germans, unawares.
00:27:01Up on the Hood's Bridge, things started to happen.
00:27:04The 18-year-old signalman Ted Briggs was so excited, he risked punishment by asking a
00:27:10senior officer a question.
00:27:13Well, the enemy report came through, and I said to the flag attendant, what is actually
00:27:24happening?
00:27:24He said, well, we've got the enemy report, and we shall be in action within the next few
00:27:30hours.
00:27:31And it was then that we realized that, yes, we were going into action, and it wasn't
00:27:38just a rumor.
00:27:40But at midnight, Suffolk lost the Bismarck in a snow squall.
00:27:55Without her radio updates, Hood was sailing blind.
00:27:59By 2 a.m., Holland knew the Germans must be agonizingly close.
00:28:07Then, at 2.47, the radio crackled into life again.
00:28:11It was Suffolk reporting she regained contact.
00:28:14Holland's navigators sprang into life, trying to plot the best possible interception.
00:28:18Bismarck and Prince Eugen were only 15 miles away, but they were slightly ahead of the Hood
00:28:32and Prince of Wales.
00:28:34Holland tried to narrow the gap.
00:28:37Both forces were going virtually flat out, upwards of 30 knots.
00:28:41At 5.37 in the morning, Holland made his move.
00:28:55He had his ships turn and race in at full speed, straight at the Germans.
00:29:00He was desperate to get in close to avoid plunging shells.
00:29:03The ideal situation for the British would have been to do this, that is, cut in front of Bismarck
00:29:10and then being able to fire with all of their guns while Bismarck could only engage with one
00:29:14or two of her forward guns.
00:29:16In reality, the Germans, having seen this becoming a possibility, could just simply turn this way
00:29:24and negate that.
00:29:25So, that's a tough one.
00:29:28Holland ended up coming up like this, in a kind of pursuit curve, trying to catch Bismarck from behind.
00:29:40At 5.53 a.m., the British opened the firing.
00:29:48But because they were trying to get in close, the British ships were charging straight at the Germans.
00:29:53Only their front guns had an unimpeded view of the target.
00:29:59Admiral Holland had to judge exactly when he was close enough to avoid plunging enemy shells.
00:30:04Then he could safely turn side-on and have all his guns fire.
00:30:10He was only seconds away from this ideal position.
00:30:16Holland was closing the range as rapidly as he could.
00:30:20Both ships are quite fast, keep in mind.
00:30:22And he was just at the stage where he felt that he was in close enough now that he could turn a little bit more broadside too
00:30:33and open up the arcs of his after guns.
00:30:37And it was just as that turn was being started or completed that the fatal shell hit the hood.
00:30:44Witnesses disagree about this crucial turn to port.
00:30:47Some say she was in the middle of the hit.
00:30:49Others say it never happened.
00:30:53If Hood had completed it, her side armour would have taken the brunt of the hit and she would have survived.
00:30:59But it wasn't to be.
00:31:05This is the actual film taken from the German cruiser Prince Eugen of the Bismarck firing at HMS Hood.
00:31:11Each time she fired, a salvo of eight shells, each weighing over a ton, left the guns at nearly twice the speed of sound.
00:31:20They had over ten miles to travel, the journey time was under 30 seconds.
00:31:27It was as we turned that the last salvo hit, we were thrown off our feet and all I saw was a whacking great sheet of flame that shot round the compass platform.
00:31:49Ominously, according to witnesses, the hit was somewhere on the back half of the deck, exactly the area that was under armoured.
00:32:04Immediately, the hood began to sink.
00:32:07People started to get out towards the starboard door of the compass platform.
00:32:30It was as I got there, Commander Warrens, navigating us, stood to one side and a polite little gesture, just like that.
00:32:49And that sticks out.
00:33:00Ted Briggs and many others, like Commander Warrens, just managed to get out of the top decks.
00:33:12But they were instantly dragged down by the enormous suction as the ship sank rapidly.
00:33:22I'd given up.
00:33:23I'd lost all the terror and all the fright.
00:33:26I was just accepting it.
00:33:29My lungs had got to bursting for it, I think.
00:33:35And I just...
00:33:39That was when I showed up.
00:33:42At the very point of death, Ted Briggs was suddenly propelled to the surface.
00:33:49And quite how, to this day, no one knows.
00:33:52I was about 50 yards away from them.
00:33:55It was a towering, towering way above.
00:34:05On that terrible day in 1941, Ted Briggs thought he'd be the last person ever to see the mighty hood.
00:34:11The last resting place of HMS Hood is halfway between Greenland and Iceland.
00:34:27David Mearns and his team on board the Northern Horizon arrive in near-perfect weather.
00:34:31They will need it.
00:34:32They will need it.
00:34:33Hood is a needle in a haystack.
00:34:36David's search area is over 600 miles square.
00:34:40This ambitious search will start by scouring the ocean floor with sonar.
00:34:50This is no ordinary sonar.
00:35:00It will travel to a world as hostile to human life as outer space.
00:35:05It will operate in freezing pitch-black water at immense pressures that would crush normal submarines.
00:35:11Its journey is to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, nearly two miles below.
00:35:22It's a relief that that's done.
00:35:25Now, you know, it's just a matter of driving the ship straight.
00:35:29And, you know, we should know our answer in about, well, four and about six to seven hours, whether we're right or not.
00:35:37The ship will travel up and down the search area in parallel lines.
00:35:46Behind it, it will pay out over four miles of steel cable.
00:35:52When the sonar is floating just above the seabed, it will send up a continuous stream of images.
00:35:59As the sonar descends, David, Eric and Bill prepare themselves for what they might see.
00:36:10But isn't it possible that the foretop was...
00:36:12They want to find evidence to confirm the idea that the shell from the Bismarck penetrated the rear ammunition magazines.
00:36:18If so, they should find the ship split in two at that point.
00:36:22A 15-inch round going through the foretop probably wouldn't have intercepted the ship at all.
00:36:28Right, probably in at least two pieces and there could even be a third piece, a large piece.
00:36:33Whatever the case, there is going to be a lot of debris on the seabed.
00:36:38Because, you know, she suffered a catastrophic, you know, sinking.
00:36:46And she sank very fast.
00:36:48So, in that sort of instance, you would expect just by the violence of the sinking,
00:36:54a lot of her deck equipment could be, you know, sort of washed away.
00:37:00Railings will be ripped off, the funnels could be gone, the superstructure could be gone.
00:37:03We don't know whether she's turned over or not.
00:37:06If she has, it's extremely likely that all of the turrets have come out.
00:37:14The sonar is now at its operational depth, 350 metres above the seabed.
00:37:20As the ship crawls along the centre line of the search area,
00:37:24David is transfixed by the slowly passing, almost featureless image of the sea floor far below.
00:37:33My speciality is interpreting images.
00:37:37And, you know, I have a background in geology,
00:37:40so if you want to tell the difference between a wreck and a rock,
00:37:43it's good to know what a rock looks like.
00:37:45As a geologist, that helps.
00:37:46The search area is massive, much bigger than a major city.
00:37:54Every line through the search area takes ten hours.
00:37:58The first ends at 1.20 in the morning without a single trace of hood.
00:38:03The ship then has to turn around.
00:38:06That takes another five hours because of the four miles of cable it's dragging behind.
00:38:10Line two starts at 6.30 the next morning.
00:38:15Everyone is determined to stay at their posts.
00:38:20Then something starts to break out of the desert-like sea bottom.
00:38:25Holy shit.
00:38:29I can't believe it.
00:38:33Yeah, we've got it.
00:38:36I mean, there's a shadow there.
00:38:37It could be... we have to let this play out.
00:38:39It feels too big and it has some signs that...
00:38:44It's a false alarm.
00:38:46David's geological experience tells him
00:38:49what the others may think is a likely target is in fact a rocky outcrop.
00:38:54No.
00:38:56No, I don't think it's... I don't think it's us.
00:38:58Whales track the ship on the port bow for half an hour.
00:39:11They turn out to be a good omen.
00:39:12For on only line three out of a possible fifteen, the sonar picks up something.
00:39:18Man-made.
00:39:20Two pixels wide, isn't it?
00:39:23A bit of good?
00:39:25It's too early to say because we haven't seen anything else, but it's definitely extremely hard.
00:39:29This red here means that it's essentially returning a hundred percent.
00:39:36That scale there is his intensity scale.
00:39:38He's looking at a different set of colors than we are.
00:39:41And red is a hundred percent.
00:39:44So that thing is as hard as you could possibly measure with the sonar.
00:39:47This could be, you know, the first bit of debris and there's, you know, the wrecks on the other side of it
00:39:53or we're going to start seeing things coming up.
00:39:55But it's definitely the type of thing we're looking for as a clue, the first clue.
00:39:59But it's not the hull or anything like that.
00:40:02It also could be just an isolated piece of man-made debris or a rock that's fooling us,
00:40:08but it looks a bit more like the real thing.
00:40:11It does.
00:40:12The ship turns and starts line four.
00:40:19Another 14 hours go by, but no one wants to go to bed when the goal is in sight.
00:40:39That's a piece of something.
00:40:43I think this is it.
00:40:46Two pieces.
00:40:48Here's the second one coming with a shadow.
00:40:51Right down the middle.
00:40:58That's it.
00:41:00That's Hood.
00:41:05After 60 years hidden from the world, it looks as though Hood has now been found.
00:41:09The only way to confirm the find is to send down the eyes of the mission, the ROV, the remote controlled submersible.
00:41:20Until then, celebrations are on hold.
00:41:22I don't know what to do with myself now.
00:41:27I'll have a drink of water, I think.
00:41:32The final high-definition sonar image is a unique map of a battle-strewn landscape hidden from human eyes for generations.
00:41:44It's both revelatory and puzzling.
00:41:45It shows not two, but four large pieces and a mass of smaller debris, all spread over an area two miles wide.
00:41:58The largest part is most likely Hood's main hull, but when David measures the sonar image on the computer, he gets the impression Hood is lying on her side.
00:42:08We might not see the beauty of the ship as she once was.
00:42:14Yeah, it's a bit worrying, because the breadth of the vessel out here would be about 33 meters.
00:42:22And at best we're measuring that target about half that.
00:42:28And it could be that what we're seeing, that measurement across the target face there, is this measurement here, which would be closer to that.
00:42:41So I think we have to be prepared for that, unfortunately.
00:42:50Which would be a bit of a disappointment.
00:42:55Because we wanted to find her upright, proud and defiant to the end.
00:43:11The Magellan ROV is an ultra-deep-sea remote-controlled submersible, bristling with state-of-the-art video cameras and high-powered lights.
00:43:24It's attached by a 100-foot-long umbilical cord to the depressor, a separate unit that houses all its support systems.
00:43:33Together the whole system is connected to the ship by two miles of steel cable, inside which are power and fiber optics.
00:43:41The journey time to the bottom is two and a half hours.
00:44:04Okay, 810 on the bottom.
00:44:11Yeah, Dave, everything around us, uh, we're covered up. I'm on a 225-foot range now.
00:44:23Okay, I think in the sort of, um, big, uh, scheme of things, we should try to see if we're in one of these debris fields, because if we are, then we know the wreck is to the south.
00:44:35Yeah, roger that. I mean, just by looking at the...
00:44:39...sonar right now, we're in... somebody's debris field.
00:44:42Yeah, okay.
00:44:43Okay.
00:44:46The ROV heads towards the largest piece of the wreck.
00:44:50On the way is an underwater landscape littered with debris.
00:44:54It's hard to identify any particular part.
00:44:58Unusually for these depths, there is a high current.
00:45:02It's stirring up silt and is affecting visibility.
00:45:04You're gonna see a lot of that, twisted metal.
00:45:12Then, out of the murk comes an extraordinary sight.
00:45:17A towering cavern of metal, the end shorn clean off.
00:45:21Jesus, look at that. Whatever that is, is...
00:45:25...absolutely just folded and...
00:45:28...thrust up.
00:45:30It's like... peeled open like a can opener.
00:45:38That's... that's the side of the ship.
00:45:43There it is.
00:45:45That's HMS Hood.
00:45:46David Mearns and his team gaze in awe at the very first video pictures of a sleeping giant.
00:46:00This is the former pride of the British Navy.
00:46:04The mighty HMS Hood.
00:46:06And now David has promised to make a phone call.
00:46:22PHONE CALL
00:46:39Hello?
00:46:41Yeah, Ted, can you hear me? It's David.
00:46:44David, hello. David, how are you?
00:46:46Everything's going very well, Ted.
00:46:47And... and I just thought you'd like to know...
00:46:50I've... I've just spent the last hour...
00:46:53...looking at pictures...
00:46:55...live from the seabed...
00:46:56...of your ship.
00:46:58Oh, God bless you.
00:47:02So... so we found her, Ted.
00:47:04Good.
00:47:06Well done.
00:47:08We're here looking at the ship, and...
00:47:10...you know, we know what it means...
00:47:12...to a lot of people, but we certainly know what it means to you, so...
00:47:15Indeed, yes.
00:47:16All right, David.
00:47:19Thank... thank you very much.
00:47:21All right, very good.
00:47:22Bye-bye.
00:47:23Bye-bye now.
00:47:24Bye-bye.
00:47:29Yep.
00:47:31He's done it well and truly.
00:47:46Ted Briggs is the sole remaining survivor of the Hood. He came into the Channel 4 newsroom to see those pictures of the ship on which he served as a teenaged, ordinary seaman on that appalling day 60 years ago.
00:48:10Despite the emotions, Ted is soon caught up in the remarkable success of David's mission. The first underwater pictures are beamed back via satellite.
00:48:21It's an event of historic proportions and makes the headlines the next day.
00:48:30As the world hears about the incredible discovery of his ship, Ted packs to leave for Iceland.
00:48:36The expedition will take him back to where it all began 60 years earlier.
00:48:43What we're doing is, hopefully it's a great thing, but it's not an easy thing. The easy route would be for him to stay home and fare home and have a look at the video pictures by himself. So I think what he's doing is a terribly brave thing.
00:48:59It's a very brave thing.
00:49:29It's a very brave thing.
00:49:36With only their fifth shot ever fired in combat, the gunners of Bismarck hit and sank HMS Hood at a distance of 10 miles.
00:49:47How did they achieve such deadly accuracy so quickly?
00:49:50The film, taken from the German cruiser, Prince Eugen, shows how both sides in this battle were trying to sink an enemy ship which, to the naked eye, was just a tiny dot on the horizon.
00:50:09The huge pall of smoke is the sinking Hood.
00:50:12The tiny flash to the left is gunfire from Hood's escort, the brand new battleship, Prince of Wales.
00:50:18Geoffrey Brook was a gunnery officer on HMS Prince of Wales.
00:50:31On board the only surviving World War II British warship, HMS Belfast, he explains how ships at the time were able to hit moving targets at long distance.
00:50:40Until about 1908 or so, all the guns were fired, laid and fired, and everything from actually at the guns.
00:50:52This wasn't very satisfactory, because in the middle of an action when there's smoke and shells and water spouts and God knows what not, it's very hard for the men controlling the guns to concentrate.
00:51:05So somebody had the bright idea of shoving a director very high up in the ship.
00:51:12On the gun directors were mounted range finders, two huge telescopes mounted 30 feet apart.
00:51:18With both telescopes pointing at the target, the angle between the two would give the range.
00:51:27But getting the two telescopes to point at the target was down to the skill of the operator.
00:51:32Our own range finders were just the same as you have in, for instance, an old Leica camera.
00:51:39You saw a picture that you were looking at and it was in two halves.
00:51:43And the top half was not immediately above the lower half.
00:51:49You could get them to coincide like that by twisting a knob at the side.
00:51:53And when you'd done it, you looked at the little window, which is also worked by the knob, and it said range 080 or something, which is 8,000 yards.
00:52:04But getting the range of the target was only the first problem.
00:52:08In addition to knowing the range to the target reasonably accurately, you had wind conditions to take into account,
00:52:15and temperatures, powder temperatures, gun elevation angles, wear of guns, all sorts of other things like that,
00:52:22that would make your first couple of shots generally fall in a different place than one expected anyway.
00:52:36To deal with all those variables, navies turned to a high-tech solution.
00:52:41Well, here we are in the transmitting station, TS for short, which is the, if the director was the brains of the gunnery system,
00:53:00the TS is really the heart.
00:53:02I haven't been in a thing like this for 59 years.
00:53:10This is a very early type of mechanical computer.
00:53:17If you could see inside it, this thing is absolutely solid to the ground with differentials and cams and electric motors and cogwheels and heaven knows what not.
00:53:25And they all answer, they all are worked by these things, they're all, they can't do it because they're clapped shut,
00:53:34but there are men standing all round here putting on various parameters.
00:53:40This early mechanical computer was fed various data, the range to the enemy, their course, the wind speed and air temperature.
00:53:52Operated by eight men, it constantly calculated the exact angle the guns had to be set at to hit the target.
00:53:59It was very, very reliable, it must have cost millions.
00:54:06But whatever the technology, battleships were never at rest.
00:54:11Firing from a moving, rolling, pitching platform was immensely difficult.
00:54:17Either side would still only be able to get around one in a hundred shells on target.
00:54:22Getting shots on target is very largely a matter of luck, that Prince of Wales got several hits and Hood got none,
00:54:33where Hood was a fully worked up ship, fully experienced and Prince of Wales was full of new people,
00:54:39indicates exactly how sporadic and erratic the whole thing is.
00:54:43Good gunnery counts in the long run, statistically, but in the short run of engagements like that,
00:54:52it depends very much on how the gods are feeling that day.
00:54:56It's the fog of war.
00:55:03Timing in this clash of titans was crucial.
00:55:06Only seconds before Hood could turn her 10-inch thick side armour towards the German ships, she was hit.
00:55:16The Bismarck's crew were probably among the most accurate gunners afloat.
00:55:21But the fact remains that even they were incredibly lucky to score a lethal hit with only their fifth shot.
00:55:28I mean, that, that, this is obviously a broken end. We don't know whether it's the bow is broken,
00:55:40or the, er, we know the stern, the after end is broken, but whether the bow in addition is a broken.
00:55:46On board the research vessel Northern Horizon, David Mearns and his team are amazed by the devastation they are seeing to Hood's main hull.
00:55:53A wreck is a very appropriate thing to call this while we're looking out, because it is a wreck.
00:56:04It's just, you know, a very sad sight.
00:56:08But the ROV survey of the wreck is starting to yield answers to 60-year-old mysteries.
00:56:15Hood's stern, her back end, is missing from the main hull.
00:56:19This confirms the major explosion was in the back part of the ship.
00:56:25There's also a lot of damage right along the hull caused by the pressures of sudden sinking.
00:56:30As the hull went up and submerged, the engineering spaces imploded, and then the, the hull girder, which is usually a very large thing, gets really squashed down into like a piece of rope, and then it just twists off.
00:56:49That's a sign of a catastrophic implosion, a truly catastrophic implosion.
00:56:58It's, it's like being crushed in a giant fist.
00:57:02And then when the plating gives way, the general result is instantaneous.
00:57:07The water does not come in like, in a flood, like you picture somehow, sort of, water pouring in your watertight door.
00:57:14The water comes in, it's like a slug, it's almost like a solid piece of steel.
00:57:18It just takes everything in its path.
00:57:21So, as I say, the end is, is very quick. It's very merciful.
00:57:25But the confusion below decks must have been off.
00:57:29Laying in some odd position in a ship that's now vertical.
00:57:33Lights are out, strange things are coming off the bulkheads and falling all around you.
00:57:39And there's this horrible noise, probably louder than you can tolerate.
00:57:44And the pressure in the compartment is going up as, as it's being squeezed.
00:57:49And then, in the wink of an eye, it's over.
00:57:55The giant steel hull of Hood is now a huge piece of torn and twisted metal.
00:58:02But this at least lays to rest one old theory.
00:58:06Hood steel was not brittle. It bent considerably before cracking.
00:58:12Then, as the ROV gets to the front end of the hull, there's another surprise.
00:58:17Not only has the back of the ship been blown off, so has the front.
00:58:25The ROV sets off through the debris field to try and locate the lost ends of the ship.
00:58:32On the way are reminders that this was once a living, working warship.
00:58:39Torpedoes.
00:58:41Electrical equipment.
00:58:42And most poignantly, sailors' workboots.
00:58:45And most poignantly, sailors' workboots.
00:58:48In a heap of tangled metal is the very heart of the ship's life.
00:58:55The rallying call for her crew.
00:58:58Hood's bell.
00:58:59Sticking vertically out of the seabed, emerges one of the largest, most recognisable and evocative images.
00:59:10The stern.
00:59:12The back end of the ship.
00:59:13On this very flagstaff, Hood proudly bore her white ensign as she toured the world.
00:59:28And then, there is the most compelling discovery.
00:59:43One of the four large pieces of debris turns out to be Hood's front lookout platform.
00:59:50The conning tower.
00:59:52A giant 600-tonne cylinder from just in front of the main bridge.
00:59:57Mysteriously, it has been blown over one and a half miles away from the hull.
01:00:03The team suddenly wonders, could there have been more than one explosion?
01:00:11Is it possible in any way that after this aft 15-inch and 4-inch went up, that somehow, while it was still connected, that was enough to somehow ignite something in the forward section.
01:00:24That once she submerged, it actually did explode again.
01:00:27The ROV's images strongly suggest that there was an explosion in the front part of the ship.
01:00:33This immediately drives Dr Eric Grove to re-examine the historical evidence.
01:00:38I've been looking again at some of the evidence at the inquiry.
01:00:42And one or two sailors on Prince of Wales said they thought they saw outward and visible signs of an explosion taking place in B-Tarrot.
01:00:51Which would be actually more or less under the bit of ship we've just seen blown by some force or other, a very long way from the rest of the wreck.
01:01:03So I'm just beginning to think that perhaps that explosion, which seems almost certainly now to have begun in the after magazines, where there were over a hundred tons of low explosive of cordite, seems to have vented forwards, coming upwards through the vents by the main must, through the engineering spaces, through the boiler rooms, and into B Magazine.
01:01:26The amazing conclusion of the expedition is that Hood didn't just blow up once, but twice.
01:01:33The back ammunition magazine started a huge inferno that set off the front.
01:01:39But when you think about it, that's 200 tons of explosive going up. That's a huge explosion. Almost like a small nuclear weapon.
01:01:53And again, this accounts for one of the mysteries that we did come out to solve. Why was it that only three people survived?
01:02:04Well, if you have the entire ship exploding, no wonder only three people survived.
01:02:10Hood's sole living survivor, Ted Briggs, starts his journey to Iceland, from where he will sail out to the northern horizon.
01:02:32But as he boards his plane, without warning, the ROV submersible is hit by a complete technical failure.
01:02:41Yeah, we've just had a GFI on the ROV. That's a ground fault interrupt. And you can see all of our video cameras are blank.
01:02:56And so they were recovering the vehicle in that process when it happened. And it's always a worrying thing. It just went out without any warning. We have no hint of what happened.
01:03:10And hopefully it's not a serious problem, but that could always be a serious problem. If anything, it's going to be a nasty recovery.
01:03:21Because now they've got to do a dead vehicle recovery and the weather's not good.
01:03:27But Ron Schmidt, head oceaneering engineer, is more cautious.
01:03:33I'm generally concerned whether there's anything on the end of the string. The possibility is always there. You put something in the water,
01:03:39you never know if you're going to get it back. Every recovery is dangerous. And this one probably more so than others.
01:03:46A, because we're dealing with a pretty good sea state, pretty good swell out there. And B, because we've got a vehicle we can't control right now.
01:03:58It's essentially a clump weight. Therefore, when we get it to the surface, we can't drive it around on the surface. We can't control it in any means possible.
01:04:10Without the ROV, there will be no more filming. Ted's plans to lay a memorial to his former comrades will be impossible to achieve. Without the ROV, the expedition will be over.
01:04:23Ted Briggs, the only living survivor of HMS Hood, arrives in Iceland and transfers to an ocean-going tug.
01:04:32It will take him the final 250 miles to where he last saw his sinking ship.
01:04:37003 feet fast.
01:04:56003 feet invent the Russia-HMS Hood
01:04:59Sixty years ago, Ted Briggs and his two fellow survivors,
01:05:11midshipman Bill Dundas and seaman Bob Tilburn,
01:05:14spent over three hours in the freezing water.
01:05:25I didn't think I was going to have to come through.
01:05:27Because we're getting colder and colder and bitterly cold and the sea was not good.
01:05:41Dundas, who was sitting up on his raft, said,
01:05:44there's a destroyer over there.
01:05:48I managed to look up and I could see this H-27.
01:05:54And, of course, I knew they'd got...
01:05:57I started going, Electra, Electra, and we were splashing the water.
01:06:05I think it was the chief person's mate.
01:06:07He threw a rope down, which I managed to catch hold of.
01:06:13And, er, he called and I said, don't you let go of that.
01:06:19I think it was just, you bet your bloody life I won't.
01:06:24By the time H-M-S Electra arrived, they were close to death from hypothermia.
01:06:32They were also caked in engine oil from the hood.
01:06:36It may have kept them fractionally warmer and saved their lives.
01:06:40Let's get about 30, 40 feet on deck, Troy.
01:06:51Fix that.
01:06:57Ease up, ease up.
01:06:58With Ted just over a day away, the ROV finally emerges from the Atlantic, but only just.
01:07:04The end of the two-mile-long cable has nearly unscrewed itself from the depressor, the ROV's support module.
01:07:15Easy, coming right.
01:07:19Once we got on deck, we found this, which is the main umbilical that the vehicle hangs by.
01:07:25And what happened was, see, there's such a strong current down there, it's causing the depressor to spin around.
01:07:33And, er, it started to unscrew the termination.
01:07:37Which has never happened in 12 years with this system.
01:07:40So, it just spun it until it ripped it right in half.
01:07:44And, er, another three turns and, er, we lost the whole shooting match.
01:07:48But, we got it back on deck, and we made some modifications to the termination, so it won't unscrew.
01:07:54So, everything should be good now.
01:07:58Hi, Melissa, how are you?
01:08:02Yeah, everything's well.
01:08:04I just wanted to, um, see how everybody made the trip and how Ted is.
01:08:08With the ROV safely repaired and on its way back down,
01:08:11David can now concentrate on his next task, the arrival of the hood's last survivor.
01:08:18After 24 hours hard steaming, Ted Briggs sees the Northern Horizon,
01:08:33right on the spot where he last saw his own ship sink.
01:08:42Northern Horizon, Northern Horizon.
01:08:45Lawson, eyes are coming.
01:08:49Get in, er, find.
01:08:50Good morning again, Christian.
01:09:22It's fantastic, isn't it?
01:09:28Yeah, it's great, Ted.
01:09:30We did it.
01:09:32We're going to get there.
01:09:34David decides the safest way to transfer Ted is to take him by rubber dinghy in a protective suit.
01:09:46Take me to your leader.
01:09:52Come on, Dave.
01:09:54Come on, Dave.
01:09:55Now, now, don't worry.
01:09:57Take him away from the shark.
01:09:59He's a big lad.
01:10:14Yeah.
01:10:14Yeah.
01:10:16Okay.
01:10:17Ted, take him.
01:10:20With Ted safely on board, David is at last able to show him his former ship.
01:10:26The ROV has had a successful last day.
01:10:30There are now many more pictures of Hood.
01:10:32Each with its own story to tell.
01:10:45Completely ripped off is a section of the back half of the ship on which are mounted the massive propellers.
01:10:50Just beneath them are the rudders, and they are permanently set in a turn to port.
01:11:01Many had doubted that Admiral Holland had called for this crucial turn, which would have protected his ship.
01:11:06The ROV pictures prove that Holland's tactics had been virtually perfect, only out by a few cruelly unlucky seconds.
01:11:19Lying close by is another extraordinary sight.
01:11:23It further corroborates the theory that the ship did not just split in two as eyewitnesses saw, but also exploded again at the front.
01:11:30The bow lies completely shorn off in one single, 100-foot-long piece.
01:11:38The anchor chains stream out.
01:11:42So that's the bow.
01:11:43That is on her side.
01:11:44When I first saw it, I thought, I can't beat the bow.
01:11:47Yeah.
01:11:48Then it so obviously is.
01:11:50Yeah.
01:11:51Now this is where we would like to lay the plank.
01:11:55Yes.
01:11:55Are you happy with that?
01:11:56I would agree with that, yes.
01:11:57Okay.
01:12:00The ROV has been set up to carry a bronze memorial plaque to the sailors who lost their lives in Hood.
01:12:28Ted Briggs will release the claw to lay it.
01:12:32Hold that.
01:12:33Well done, try it.
01:12:36Okay.
01:12:38You want to release there?
01:12:40And this bottom button, please press that.
01:12:43Push ahead.
01:12:45Very nice.
01:12:46All right.
01:12:46Hey, we're at it.
01:12:47Arm up, Ron.
01:12:48Ted, on behalf of Oceaneering and the Magellan Deepwater ROV crew,
01:12:52it's an honor to place this plaque in the memory of those sailors.
01:12:56Thank you very much, gentlemen.
01:13:05At last, there is a memorial on the battlefield beneath the waves.
01:13:10On it are the names of the 1,415 men who gave their lives on the 24th of May, 1941.
01:13:18This expedition has told a new generation of the sacrifice those sailors made.
01:13:24It's so important because for years I've lived with it as a dreadful memory.
01:13:45And now, it's something I can look back on with pride.
01:13:50The ghostly day.
01:13:51For over 20 years, HMS Hood ruled the waves.
01:14:07Her very existence was a feat of engineering unlikely to be repeated.
01:14:11Her loss proved to the British that the days of the big battleship were coming to a close.
01:14:19Celebrations on board the Bismarck were to be short-lived.
01:14:23The British wanted revenge.
01:14:25Less than two hours after the loss of HMS Hood, the Admiralty in London issued a now famous command.
01:14:40Every British warship and aircraft within striking distance was ordered to sink the Bismarck.
01:14:48The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:18The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:19The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:20The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:21The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:22The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:23The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:24The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:25The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:26The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:27The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:28The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:29The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:30The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:31The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:32The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:33The British war was ordered to be short-lived.
01:15:34The British war was ordered to be short-lived.