Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 17, 2021
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HMS Hood was a battlecruiser of the British Royal Navy, commissioned in 1920. Hood was the largest warship in the world for 20 years and was nicknamed "the Mighty Hood". She was involved in several showing-the-flag exercises prior to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. She was scheduled to undergo a major rebuild in 1941 but the war prevented this. In July 1940 she participated in the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir. On 24 May 1941 Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales intercepted the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank with the loss of all but three of her crew of 1,418. The Royal Navy conducted two inquiries; both concluded that Hood's aft magazine exploded after a shell penetrated her armour. Hood's wreck was discovered in 2001. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battlecruisers of the world.)