Three survivors. That is all the Royal Navy pulled from the freezing North Atlantic after HMS *Hood*, the pride of the British fleet and the largest warship in the world, exploded and sank on May 24, 1941. At 6:00 a.m. In the Denmark Strait, the German battleship *Bismarck* and heavy cruiser *Prinz Eugen* opened fire on *Hood* and HMS *Prince of Wales*. A salvo from *Bismarck* pierced *Hood*'s rear magazine. The detonation tore the 860-foot battle cruiser apart in seconds, killing 1,415 sailors. Britain reeled, *Hood* had been a floating symbol of imperial naval supremacy for two decades. Winston Churchill immediately ordered every available warship to hunt *Bismarck* down. Three days later, Royal Navy aircraft and destroyers cornered and scuttled her in the Atlantic. The brief, brutal exchange proved that even the mightiest surface warships were vulnerable to modern guns and airpower, accelerating the shift toward aircraft-carrier warfare that defined the rest of World War II.