HMS Hood

Date of Issue: April 29, 1985
Scott #: 186

This pair of stamps show the top and side views and HMS Hood in action.

HMS Hood (pennant number 51) was a battle cruiser of the Royal Navy, and considered the pride of the Royal Navy in the interwar period and during the early period of World War II. Hood had served in the Royal Navy for over two decades before her sinking in combat with the German battleship Bismarck at the Battle of Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941.

She was one of four Admiral class battle cruisers ordered in mid-1916 under the Emergency War Program. Although the design was drastically revised after the Battle of Jutland, it was realized that there were serious limitations even to the revised design; for this reason, and because of evidence that the German battle cruisers that they were designed to counter were unlikely to be completed, work on her sister ships was suspended in 1917. As a result, Hood was Britain's last completed battle cruiser. She was named after the 18th-century Admiral Samuel Hood.

Click here to read more about HMS Hood.

Source: wikipedia