Hood's loss and the limits of comparing fleet strength

Hood and Prince of Wales are judged capable of winning many versions of their engagement with Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Hood's historical loss nevertheless demonstrates how the location of a shell hit can change the result. A favoured explanation has the fatal shell passing through a wave trough. That interpretation is explicitly left open to a better-supported argument. The same possibility of exceptional damage remains relevant when comparing the larger fleets in the counterfactual.