Hey Indy and team. I’ve been reading up on some of the navies of the war and noticed that Japan had a tendency to re-purpose vessels rather drastically from their intended use. The aircraft carriers Taiyo and Shin’yo (formerly the Japanese passenger liner Kasuga Maru and the German passenger liner Scharnhorst) and the aircraft carrier Kaga (what was built out of the hull of a Tosa class battleship) and Akagi (a re-purposed Amagi class battlecruiser) come to mind. While this does make sense in the context of Japans resource scarcity and the Washington Naval Treaty, did any of the other powers re-purpose ships like this? Not necessarily as aircraft carriers, just different to what they were originally built for.
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This question was asked before this article was published, and the article provides some useful information related to the question https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-us-navy-took-battlecruiser-and-made-it-aircraft-carrier-66892
Basically, even the U.S. had the same experience as Japan did in re-purposing ships, whether due to the Washington Naval Treaty (think of CV Saratoga as the equivalent to Kaga) or due to tactical necessity - After Pearl Harbor, nine Cleveland-class light cruisers and two Baltimore-class heavy cruisers became carriers.
Note that much of the repurposing is from non-carrier to aircraft carrier. This is likely because of 1. cost (it’s relatively easier to just build a big flat deck and attach it to a ship, than worry about loading the heavy guns and machinery a heavy-cruiser needs but a civilian ship might be unable to support) 2. The context of the Naval Treaty, which was made to focus on slowing the arms race of big-gunned ships and was written in 1922 before the military value of aircraft carriers was made known by the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse and of course Pearl Harbor.
Why didn’t Germany convert ships to carriers? Unlike Japan, they had very little experience with carriers (they too did not see carriers equal to capital ships) and were only in the middle of designing and constructing their first by the time the war had started. Once the war started resources and equipment shortages basically prevented the Germans from fully assembling a working carrier. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/hitlers-big-mistake-why-didnt-nazi-germany-build-aircraft-carriers-46577?page=0%2C1
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