Trumpeter HMS Hood 1:200

The newest announcement by Trumpeter is their 1/200 scale HMS Hood! Expected to be one of the hottest kits of the year, the Hood was built in 1918 for the Royal Navy. Because of the serious limitations of her design and the revisions that needed to be made after its initial launch, the Hood was the only ship in her class to ever be completed. One of the largest and most powerful warships of its time, it was known simply as “The Mighty Hood.”

 

At the start of World War II, the Hood was forced into service without the gunnery upgrades she needed, and was deemed less useful than she could have been. Regardless, she spent the next few months hunting for German commerce raiders and blockade runners in the Northern Europe Seas. In May 1941, the Hood and the Prince of Wales battleship were en route to intercept the German Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen, en route to the Atlantic. However, in the Battle of the Denmark Strait just a few weeks later, the Hood was hit by many German shells, exploding one of the largest ships of the era and sinking it to the bottom of the sea. Because of the perceived invincibility of the Hood, the loss of the ship devastated the morale of the British military and people. The discovery of the ship’s wreck in 2001 confirmed the reason for its sinking as a mixture of torpedo fire and a magazine explosion inside one of the ship’s gun turrets.