 On the evening of 21 May 1941 Hood and the newly completed battleship Prince of Wales sailed from Scapa Flow to join the heavy cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk patrolling the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland on the news that Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen had sortied into the North Atlantic . They had not yet reached the Strait when Suffolk spotted the German ships north of Iceland in the early evening on 23 May . Hood and Prince of Wales altered course and increased their speed to intercept . The British squadron spotted the Germans at 5 : 37 a.m. , but the Germans were already aware of their presence . The British opened fire at 05 : 52 with Hood engaging Prinz Eugen , the lead ship in the German formation , and the Germans returned fire 05 : 55 , both ships concentrating on Hood . Prinz Eugen ( probably ) was the first ship to score when a shell hit Hood 's boat deck , between her funnels , and started a large fire among the ready @-@ use ammunition for the anti @-@ aircraft guns and rockets of the Unrotated Projectile mounts . Right before 06 : 00 , while Hood was turning 20 ° to port to unmask her rear turrets , she was hit again on the boat deck by a shell from Bismarck 's fifth salvo . The exact location and sequence of events is unknown , but her aft fifteen @-@ inch magazines exploded . This broke her back and she sank with the loss of all but three of her crew . 
