Hahaha Graf Spee????? Terrible vessel. Oversized, underarmored, and generally outmatched. It was doing a cruiser's job, it was just being a bigger target while doing it.
River Platte was an interesting battle (Really showed the weaknesses of the panzerschiff [Read: destroyed reputations]) but was more of a running action, as I remember, because the admiral about the Spee realized he was outmatched. I believe he made it to port, was told by the Argentinians that "we don't serve your kind here", and the scuttled his vessel out in the harbor. I could be wrong, though. I'm tired and really shouldn't be writing a rant. That said, I'm going to continue! YEAH FAULTY REASONING AND STUPID STATEMENTS!
Yeah, I understand all that about the Bismarck, but it was still a well-protected yet overall balanced design. Even after it was crippled, though, it took the British battleships to the limits of their fuel---they didn't even sink the Bismarck, a light cruiser had to go in a torpedo her.
The commanding officer of the group, a rear admiral aboard the Norfolk, I believe, ordered the then-badly-outmatched Prince of Wales out of the fight, as it was a new ship, with at least one gun out of commission, with a new crew, who made new-crew mistakes, and so could not finish the fight. The Hood itself, however, most likely did NOT get destroyed due to a magazine hit. British cordite in WWII was much more like WWI German cordite, in that it did NOT explode uncontrollably, usually. Also, British precautions and magazine armor had improved beyond all recognition on the battlecruisers. So, no, it was probably not the cordite. When did Prinz Eugen get mentioned? The Hood went down when its own torpedoes went off. Most people thought it was a repeat of Jutland (Three or four British battlecruisers exploded in similar fashion. Took hits to 'Q' turret, sudden, massive explosion, ship gone), but two boards of enquiry thought it was something else---Hood's magazines were too well protected, German armor-piercing shell too ineffective, to have reached the magazines. Like I said, it was probably the torpedoes stored amidships. If not, it might have been the antiaircraft gun ammunition stores, which were much less armored, closer to the outside, and may have set off the main battery magazines. But we'll probably never know for certain, as it's very hard to know what you're looking at when what you're looking at is 80 years old, rusty, and has the minor issue of having been exploded.
