It's not even five minutes after the first salvo was fired from the RMS Bismarck, yet, what's left of the Royal Navy Squadron led by Vice Admiral Holland is now hanging on by a thread. During that short period, Hood's A and B turrets had been disabled a couple of minutes ago while her entire bow section was stripped bare of her former visage due to the relentless pounding of Bismarck's secondaries and Prinz Eugen's 203mm guns. With her frontal firepower gone, Hood is deadweight if she can't reposition herself to use her C and D turrets. It's a fact that Holland knows quite well but is sadly unable to remedy, not when Hood's limping at 8 knots due to flooding and a damaged engine room.
Suddenly, a shell hit the conning tower of the Hood and caused a medium explosion to rock the bridge. It destroys the glass of the viewing port and knocks Holland onto his back. The Vice Admiral can feel a stream of warm liquid flowing down his face, he feels someone moving to help him get back on his feet before clarity returns to his concussed mind. He is shocked to see that a flame is raging on the port side of the conning tower, there, part of the superstructure has already collapsed, and had he been standing where the Captain of the Hood was, he would have been very much dead on impact. Nonetheless, it's clear that it's not Bismarck that caused the partial collapse of Hood's conning tower, the explosive power wasn't big enough. It must have been 203mm or 150mm instead. Either way, the point is, Bismarck could have ended the battle sooner, no battleship crew worth their salt only fired a single salvo and still hasn't reloaded after five minutes. No, this is the Belkans mocking the futility of Hood and Prince of Wales' effort in picking a fight way above their weight class.
A hand removes Holland's officer cap before wrapping a bandage over his forehead, apparently, a shard of glass or two have cut a nasty gash, making him bleed quite badly. Holland is just about regretting ever following through with the command of pissing off the Belkans when a sailor, with his attire in a sorry state, shouts and grabs everyone's attention.
"Look! It's the Prince of Wales!" Following the pointed finger and out of the exposed conning tower, the bridge crew can see the damaged visage of the Prince of Wales overtaking them before cutting across the Hood and slowing down, thus presenting a defensive posture that is sure to cover the Hood.
"They're buying us time..." Much needed time, Holland thought grimly as he stands up to see the A and C turrets of Wales turning to engage the Bismarck. Only by doing this, Wales will be receiving the brunt of both Bismarck's and Prinz Eugen's retaliation. Their sacrifice will not be in vain.
"... I want all capable hands to fix the engine, and our guns, now!" Holland ordered with frustration clear in his tone. He just wished that God will at least give his men a fighting chance rather than being lambs waiting to be slaughtered.
As the Hood is struggling to regain any semblance of mobility and firepower, the Prince of Wales proceeds to grab the attention of the Belkans by firing the rest of her operational guns.
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"Inbound projectiles!" A CIC operator aboard the Bismarck warned. "High risk in five seconds!"
"Commence interception!" The XO ordered, letting the battleship's Gepard CIWS systems start firing at the incoming 356mm shells.
*BRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTT*
Four streams of 30mm, consisting of tungsten armor-piercing rounds and high-explosive incendiary tracer munitions, light up the sky at a rate of 4200 rounds/minute per turret. The port side Gepards quickly makes short work of seven 356 shells. However, as if Lady Luck was giving the Prince of Wales a chance to at least earn a noteworthy spot in the annal of history, the last shell comes down pretty close to the Bismarck before it's destroyed by a Gepard turret. The shell explodes in an airburst manner, raining shrapnels down onto the port side hull. The screeching of metals on metals can be heard all the way on the bridge, prompting Admiral Tallulah to ask.
"Report!"
Captain Lindemann immediately goes to check Bismarck's status by a terminal. All sectors still report full functionality, however, a report is quickly made apparent that metallic fragments in the air had injured six crew members manning the auxiliary 20mm autocannons.
"Admiral," Captain Lindemann reported. "The Gepards perform splendidly. However, a lucky airburst incapacitated six of our sailors. Nothing fatal, thankfully."
Tallulah freezes before asking. "Say what?"
Lindemann huffs annoyed that of all the things, a lucky shot was all it takes. "They scratched our paint job, ma'am."
With a twitching eyebrow, Tallulah and Lindemann share a look with each other. They both know that this could have been prevented if they had not decided to play with their food. And now, Tallulah will have to make a bad report because of her negligence. But until then. "... All weapons, focus on the Prince of Wales, I don't care if we have to cut the fun short for the Eugen and our secondary stations, I want that vessel on the bottom of the ocean, now!"
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"Aye aye, Admiral!" Lindemann replied before giving the order for the main guns to reengage. Having already been trained on Wales, all twelve of Bismarck's 432mm guns immediately open fire.
The Prince of Wales is one of the most modern surface combatants of the Erusean navy (Modern as in being constructed in the early 1930s). However, with her B-turret destroyed prior to her first salvo, Prince of Wales had to show a generous amount of broadside to bring her rear quadruple turret to bear. This is no doubt a major weakness in her design, one that is now proving to be her undoing.
The shells from Bismarck cross the distance measuring in kilometers in seconds before slamming heavily onto the broadside of Wales. Of the twelve shells, eleven successfully make contact with the port side hull with only two ricochets at the lower armor belt. This still leaves nine warheads to penetrate the armor plating of Wales' citadel and other critical areas alongside the amidship. The world seems to rock, with a shockwave reaching as far as 5 km, as the Prince of Wales is torn apart from the inside out in a burst of flame, burning metal, and charred body parts. The damage is so intense that the conning tower of Wales and her first funnel collapse under their own weight, and casualties are too high to even count.
With her structural integrity failing, Prince of Wales is now listing heavily on her port side, now dead in the water. The 432mm shells from Bismarck has caused so much havoc that many of the bulkhead doors are destroyed, blown off their hinge, while the generators powering the water pumps are now inoperable. What's left of the damage control party aboard Wales soon deems her to be unsavable, but with the total loss of their new chain of command, they aren't sure how to break the bad news to everyone aboard. Although that will be the last of their concern as Bismarck isn't quite done yet with their slight against her.
While the Prince of Wales is struggling to stay afloat, the 150mm turrets on Bismarck start bombarding the poor vessel with HE rounds, fanning the flame aboard the Prince of Wales even more. Not just that, Bismarck is also equipped with two, quintuple torpedoes launchers with one on each side. As such, the port side torpedoes launcher is now launching five acoustic-guidance, electrically-driven pump-jet torpedoes at the Prince of Wales. These torpedoes are launched with the intention of finishing off Wales for good, leaving Bismarck's main battery free to aim at the stunned HMS Hood.
Hood, having been behind the Prince of Wales the entire time of her sudden catastrophic damages, is forced to turn away lest she runs into her companion. The situation is most unfortunate for the Prince of Wales and Admiral Holland knows that she is officially out of the fight. Being on the vessel closest to the Prince of Wales, Holland can just about see and hear the crippling effect that Bismarck has inflicted upon the Royal Navy battleship. Suddenly, the Prince of Wales shooks, hard to the point that she seems to right herself up for a moment, as five pillars of water shoot up into the sky. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Belkans aren't feeling merciful, launching a wave of fish to sink the battleship for good. Holland, however, watches in muted shock as the Prince of Wales falls back onto the water after the torpedo blasts subside, taking in so much water too fast to even struggle afloat. The crew and Holland aboard the Hood watch as survivors, injured and battered, jump off from the starboard side of Wales, grabbing whatever floating debris they can before swimming away. They have to get clear or risk being sucked into the whirlpool generated by the sinking of the battleship.
HMS Prince of Wales, scratched off the record.
While there's a lingering question about the range of the Belkan torpedoes, Holland elects to ignore that futile train of thought, ordering in a grim voice. "Turn the ship around and go at the best possible speed away from here."
"Sir?"
"Get her to come around, let the rear turrets engage the enemy warship at will!" Vice Admiral Holland said the order again, leaving the XO to dumbly respond.
"But the survivors from-!"
"If we sink now, there won't be any vessel left to save someone! Unless you're telling me that we can radio for help now?" Holland asked with a frustrated tone. His hands can be seen holding his personal binoculars in a dead grip.
"...No, sir. Helms, turn the ship around. I will go give the gunners a heads-up." The XO relented with a defeated expression. After witnessing everything from start to finish, morale is low on the bridge and the rest of the HMS Hood at large.
The replacement helmsman of the Hood is just about spinning the control wheel around when the whistling of artillery shells can be heard before a second later, Hood is struck multiple times. Only this time, things ended much more destructive for her as one of the shells hit the worst place possible, her fore magazine, the place which had been stripped bare of any armor under the Belkans' onslaught. Safe to say, it's very effective.
The mighty battlecruiser Hood, though a vessel much outdated for Belkan standard, is still a large surface combatant. Said surface combatant though, is now split into two parts as her entire bow magazine is detonated by the Bismarck's shell. After the major blast that throws even the heavy turrets overboard and tears the conning tower of the Hood a new scar, the subsequent ammunition cook-off ensures that the survivors give the detached bow of the Hood a wide berth as the detonating ammo bathing the area in fragments. Gazing at the burning and exploding husks of the Hood, Admiral Tallulah offhandedly comments, very much impressed, aboard the Bismarck.
"Now that's a lotta damage." The sentiment is shared by the crew of the Bismarck. The same, however, can't be said for Vice Admiral Holland who seems like has aged significantly, staring in disbelief as the ocean start swallowing Hood whole. The sea is engulfing everything that he has come to love about the battlecruiser while the men under his lead scramble to lay out the lifeboats. One such sailor, still hanging on to his duty-bound honor, is quick to run next to the Vice Admiral as the ship is slowly listing at an angle that makes standing upright a chore.
"Admiral, sir, we have to go! The Hood is sinking!"
In response to the urging of his subordinate, Holland only takes shaky steps toward an elevated chair in the middle of the ruined bridge, reserved only for the Captain of the ship. Sitting on the chair with a tired disposition, Holland says without looking at what's left of the bridge crew. "It wasn't supposed to end like this..." They're only two vessels, Holland left the sentence unfinished.
His squadron entire squadron, wiped out.
Seeing that they won't be able to get a word out from the Vice Admiral, the crew springs into action, mostly to save their own skin. "Abandon ship! Abandon ship!"
Soon, the rest of the bridge crew, and by extension, the sailors that are lucky enough to be topside vacate the sinking warship. Those that are still stuck below deck or are too injured to even move a finger, all go down with the Hood, just like the Vice Admiral in charge of her. As the cold Atlantic water pours into the openings in the bridge, Holland tightens his vice grip on the handrest of his chair. Countless thoughts and a variety of expressions go past his face, but ultimately, he settles on a single word and a frustrated rage when the ocean wet his feet.
"BELKANS!!!"
His rage-fueled scream is soon drowned by the ruthless ocean.