THANK YOU DUNCAN!! It is nice to have someone else actually SAY that!dunmunro wrote: The 5.25in gunnery problems may, in fact, give us a valuable clue that Hood actually exploded at 0558-0559 so that PoW was making her emergency turns sooner, thus allowing for the 5.9in hit to disable the forward HADTs, but it may be that the geometry of the hit can still be explained without PoW making an emergency turn but I haven't looked at that in detail.
Please see my post on page 6 (7th post down) of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6314&start=75
Even Fritz Otto Busch observed and reported the same sequence....
We also know that Jasper "zeroed in" on PoW at about 0559 - so the hit could very well have been 8-inch - especially since we know PG fired other dud shells.Now the [opponent’s] ship fires: the housings of the stacks light up bright pink in the reflection of the afterglow. Now his intermediate artillery also fires. Flashes came from below the superstructures and from behind the aft funnel. It is not a continuous level string like on the “Hood”: these are distinct separated shot groups from the 13.2 cm guns that are firing here.
The opponent turns now somewhat towards us, since – as it became known shortly thereafter – he had to dodge the ruins of his flagship.
McMullen's report nails down the timing of this hit and no amount of bearing estimation which, you rightly said, is just that...estimation....can negate that.