Drowned in a storm: Capt. Arthur Hood (1755–1775)
Three Hood brothers (Arthur, Alexander, and Samuel) all served within the Royal Navy within the latter half of the 18th century. They had been the second era of the Hood household to go to sea; two of them didn’t survive to retire from the service. Arthur Hood served aboard the 18 gun sloop of warfare HMS Pomona within the West Indies.
When the Pomona was caught in a hurricane within the West Indies, Hood drowned within the storm. He was the primary of the Hood household to die at sea.
Killed on the Final Minute: Capt. Alexander Hood (1758–1798)
Alexander Hood was the youthful brother of Capt. Arthur Hood. On April 21, 1798, Hood was captain of HMS Mars, a 74-gun third class ship of the road, when he engaged the French ship Hercule off the Brittany coast. Regardless of the 2 ships being practically evenly matched in firepower, mounting 74 weapons every, the French acquired the worst of the battle, dropping greater than 300 males to British losses of 31 males killed and 60 wounded.
Capt. Hood didn’t reside to savor his victory—he was mortally wounded within the ultimate moments of the battle and died as he was being introduced with the French captain’s surrendered sword.
Household ravaged by yellow fever: Lt.-Gen. John Bell Hood (1831–1879)
John B. Hood served as a Accomplice normal officer throughout the American Civil Conflict. He was a daring fighter and excelled as a fight chief on the brigade and division ranges, however in additional senior positions of command his boldness verged on aggressive foolhardiness. His appointment to the command of the Military of Tennessee within the final yr of the warfare was a poor alternative by the Accomplice authorities, as a result of in a matter of weeks his repeated assaults on a lot stronger Union forces all however destroyed the ranks of the military that his predecessor, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, had managed to maintain intact within the face of overwhelming odds. The poet Stephen Vincent Benet was not far off the mark when he described Hood as “all lion, not one of the fox.”
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Hood was twice severely wounded: his left arm was crippled by shrapnel on the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, and he misplaced his proper leg at Chickamauga two months later. After the warfare ended he took up work as a cotton dealer and insurance coverage dealer in New Orleans, however in 1878 his enterprise was ruined throughout an outbreak of yellow fever.
Inside a single week, Hood, his spouse, and his eldest youngster all died of the illness. His different 10 youngsters had been left orphaned.
Misplaced At Sea: Rear Adm. Sir Horace Lambert Alexander Hood (1870–1916)
One other scion of the British Hood household of Royal Navy fame, Horace Hood started his naval profession in 1882 on the age of twelve. As a commander of riverine gunboats on the Nile he served within the Mahdist Conflict in 1898, and in 1903 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for motion towards the Dervishes in Somaliland. By 1908 he was commanding the battleship HMS Commonwealth, and as a flag officer in 1916 he took command of the third Battlecruiser Squadron with the rank of rear admiral.
On Could 31 of that yr, aboard his flagship HMS Invincible, Hood led his squadron into motion towards the German fleet on the Battle of Jutland. Within the first change of fireside Invincible succeeded in fatally damaging the German cruiser SMS Wiesbaden, earlier than she herself was focused by the mixed gunnery of battlecruisers SMS Lützow and SMS Derfflinger. A shell from one in every of Derfflinger’s 12-inch weapons penetrated Invincible’s starboard “Q” turret and denotated its retailer of cordite propellant, inflicting a large explosion that actually reduce the ship in half.
Invincible went down in minutes. Rear Admiral Hood perished along with his ship and all however six of his 1,021 males.
Catastrophic explosion: HMS Hood (named for Adm. Samuel Hood)
HMS Hood was an Admiral class battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, laid down in September 1916 on the peak of the First World Conflict. Initially deliberate as a category of 4 ships, Hood was the one ship of the 4 to truly be constructed. By the outbreak of the Second World Conflict, Hood was overdue for modernization; advances in gunnery and vary discovering made her notably weak to plunging fireplace from heavy weapons on account of her thinner deck armor, and issues together with her steam condensers meant that she was unable to achieve full pace when maneuvering.
In 1941 Hood was dispatched because the flagship of the battle group despatched to intercept the German battleship Bismarck. On Could 24, the British introduced Bismarck and her escort, the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, to bay within the Denmark Strait. The 2 German ships concentrated their mixed fireplace on Hood. Hood sustained repeated hits, after which simply earlier than 6:00a.m. she was struck by a salvo that blew up her aft journal in a catastrophic explosion.
Hood went vertical within the water, taking place by the strict, and he or she sank in lower than three minutes with a lack of 1,415 males. Solely three members of her crew survived.
Greater than 40% Casualties: Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division (1914–1919)
The Royal Naval Division (RND), one of the distinctive fight items ever fielded by the British army, was an thought conceived by Winston Churchill throughout his tenure as First Lord of the Admiralty (1911–1915). Initially comprised of sailors from the Royal Naval Reserve and Royal Marines, every of the RND’s battalions had been named after well-known British admirals corresponding to Hawke, Drake, Nelson, Howe, and naturally, Hood. The Hood Battalion fought with the RND in a few of the most vital battles of the First World Conflict together with Gallipoli, the Somme, Gavrelle, and Passchendaele.
Twice, the Hood Battalion practically fought itself out of existence as a fight efficient unit, sustaining casualty charges of virtually 50 % till its ranks could possibly be replenished.
Regardless that the RND represented solely 5% of the Royal Navy’s complete energy throughout the First World Conflict, the division’s fight losses accounted for greater than 40% of the naval service’s complete casualties, and people losses occurred on land, not at sea. When the RND was formally disbanded in June 1919, the Hood Battalion was one in every of solely 4 of the unique eight battalions remaining within the division.
A troubled Historical past: Fort Hood, Texas
A US Military set up named for Accomplice Lt.-Gen. John Bell Hood, Fort Hood is situated exterior Killeen, Texas. Masking an space of 214,000 acres, it is likely one of the largest army installations on the earth. Based in 1942, the submit has lengthy been a coaching middle for armor warfare and since 1971 it has been residence to the well-known 1st Cavalry Division.
Fort Hood was the scene of social activism and soldier protests throughout each the Vietnam Conflict and extra lately the Conflict on Terror. It additionally has a troubled historical past of incidents of scandal and felony violence, one of many worst occurring on November 5, 2009. A self-described jihadist named Nidal Hasan, who was then a US Military medical corps main, carried out a taking pictures assault within the submit Soldier Readiness Heart, killing 13 individuals and wounding 32. Hasan was sentenced to demise by court docket martial in 2013 and is at present on the army demise row on the Fort Leavenworth jail.
In recent times Fort Hood has gained a grim notoriety for sexual assault and sexual harassment issues, so egregious that in 2020 the Secretary of the Military relieved 14 senior leaders on the set up for “management failures.” In Could 2022 the Military introduced that as a part of the choice to redesignate any submit bearing the identify of former Accomplice troopers, Fort Hood shall be renamed Fort Cavazos in honor of Normal Richard E. Cavazos, the primary Hispanic soldier to ever maintain 4 star rank.
this text first appeared in army historical past quarterly
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