Sunk by the Bismarck: The life and death of the battleship HMS Hood

by Edwin P. Hoyt

Launched in 1918, the ‘Mighty Hood†symbolized British power at sea until 1941, when it was sunk after engaging the German battleship Bismarck. Hoyt tells the story of Hood, including life on board and the difficulties of maintaining so large a ship. Yellowed pages.

Genres: World War II, History

149 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Edwin P. Hoyt was a prolific American writer who specialized in military history. He was born in Portland, Oregon to the publisher Edwin Palmer Hoyt (1897–1979) and his wife, the former Cecile DeVore (1901–1970). A younger brother, Charles Richard, was born in 1928. Hoyt attended the University of Oregon from 1940 to 1943.

In 1943, Hoyt's father, then the editor and publisher of The Oregonian, was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as the director of the Domestic Branch, Office of War Information. The younger Hoyt served with the Office of War Information during World War II, from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 and 1946, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Denver Post (of which his father became editor and publisher in 1946) and the United Press, reporting from locations in China, Thailand, Burma, India, the Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and Korea.

Edwin Hoyt subsequently worked as an ABC broadcaster, covering the 1948 revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Arab-Israeli conflict. From 1949 to 1951, he was the editor of the editorial page at The Denver Post. He was the editor and publisher of the Colorado Springs Free Press from 1951 to 1955, and an associate editor of Collier's Weekly in New York from 1955 to 1956. In 1957 he was a television producer and writer-director at CBS, and in 1958 he was an assistant publisher of American Heritage magazine in New York.

Starting in 1958, Hoyt became a writer full-time, and for a few years (1976 to 1980) served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Hawaii. In the 40 years since his first publication in 1960, he produced nearly 200 published works.

While Hoyt wrote about 20 novels (many published under pseudonyms Christopher Martin and Cabot L. Forbes) the vast majority of his works are biographies and other forms of non-fiction, with a heavy emphasis on World War II military history.

Hoyt died in Tokyo, Japan on July 29, 2005, after a prolonged illness. He was survived by his wife Hiroko, of Tokyo, and three children, Diana, Helga, and Christopher, all residing in the U.S.

Reviews

[Miles Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun an interesting little read. I say "little" because like all large print books it does not take much time to get through (in my case, about 3 - 4 days, just reading portions at night before bed or over coffee). It is the story of the HMS Hood, the official/unofficial flagship of the Royal Navy from its construction in the aftermath of the Great War, to its destruction in 1941 at the Battle of Denmark Strait. Edwin Hoyt brings a keen understanding of seafaring life and jargon to his work, but is quite good at using context clues to define the verbiage, making landlubbers like myself comfortable with the subject.

The Hood was the pride and joy of the RN for many years, a massive battleship built to intimidate and dominate, and Hoyt brings us along its 20 year journey through the seas from its shakedown cruise to its demise at the hands of the Bismarck. He gives us some local color by telling us about the ships' various captains and their personalities, quirks, and eccentricities, and finally, its role in the opening years of WW2. By this time, Hoyt tells us, the Hood was more symbolic than practical, being outdated and in need of numerous overhauls it never lived to receive, but the symbol was so powerful in human minds, that the British and German Admiralties both came to believe it was just as battle-ready and seaworthy as its more modern counterparts. In a sense, the life and death of the Hood closely paralells that of prize-fighters like Dempsey and Tyson, who were still considered invinicible even after they had begun to decline, and whose defeats shocked the world -- not because it necessarily made sense, but because the myth of their invincibility had hardened into something like fact. The Hood was built for a war it came too late to see (WW1) and did its damndest to fight up to its reputation in the war actually got (WW2), escorting convoys, chasing raiders and patroling hostile waters. In the end, it was not enough: the ship was totally destroyed with the loss of all hands but three (out of a crew of 1,500), and sank so rapidly it didn't even leave wreckage, much less survivors. Turns out the modifications it needed, but never got due to wartime exigencies, might have saved it, or at least prolonged its demise long enough to save some of its crew. So in the end, the story is a tragedy, but it's not oddly enough, a tragic-feeling book. Something about the life of the ship suggests its end, and while the men who died aboard her would doubtlessly have preffered to live, the ship herself was due for the scrapyard after the war. The end she met -- in battle with her own successor -- was more fitting. That is how champions lose.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I'm getting crotchety in my old age, and Hoyt may be prolific, but I was not very impressed with this effort. It felt amateurish, in fact. Numerous basic poor historical writing in some cases, weak information in others. Not terrible, but not great. Not much life breathed into what was a great tragedy. Seems it could have been told in a more compelling fashion.