HMS Indefatigable, Queen Mary and Princess Royal all blew up after having magazines hit by German shellfire. Hood was laid out on the same principles and was a detonation waiting to happen.
Bismark's gunnery was magnificent having straddled Hood with her second salvo, and then killing Hood with the next.
Wizdum wrote: “The British found out in WW1 how vulnerable their ships were to the type of detonation that sank the Hood.”
It was later determined that the loss of those three battlecruisers had more to do with operating procedures than lack of armor. At the time, British Captains prioritized rate of fire and removed safety features such as flash/blast curtains between segments of the main batteries. These curtains were there to prevent just such a happening. There were also provisions limiting the amount of powder bags that could be removed from their safety containers which were ignored and powder bags were stacked in the turrets ready to use.
It is often overlooked but these incidents were more the result of rapidly burning propellant than bursting shells. These changes improved the rate of fire but allowed burning propellant to propagate throughout the turret shattering the ship.
Sorry, Invincible was the 3rd British battlecruiser to explode...
I wonder who the guy was that first thought,
“Instead of shooting straight across at another ship, let’s drop shells down on top of them so they can penetrate and go deep.”