Battleship Aircraft Carrier Hybrids?

For those who don’t know, Shinano was originally planned as a Japanese Yamato class battleship. However, midway through construction Japan decided to convert it into a carrier.

Not an aircraft carrier though, a “support carrier” which would only carry 47 aircraft for self defense but held almost a hundred more aircraft as spares and many supplies to support the actual fleet carriers on extended operations. It was sunk by a US submarine in 1944.

Another such support carrier actually did exist, the HMS Unicorn.

What if the Shinano was converted into an actual fleet carrier though? It takes space to house not just replacement aircraft, but additional pilots, mechanics, etc.

So Shinano probably wouldn’t have been able to carry the 120 aircraft it theoretically could’ve. But it still probably would’ve carried a lot of aircraft owing to its size.

The question is, how much? I look forward to your responses!

@king_of_tanks

Good point.

Very cool, reminds me of the efforts to catalog and examine all the fortifications and pillboxes of the Invasion Scare era.

@RJL518:

The real question to be asked is how would a battle have gone if the Missouri and Iowa took on the Super-Battleships Yamato and Musashi.  
As Samuel Eliot Morison, author of the History of US Naval Operations in World War II, once said…“What a brawl that would have been!”
Even though the Yamato and Musashi had 18.1 inch guns compared to the 16 inch of the Iowa class, the Iowas were still faster and still had better range.  
But who knows.  
IMO it would have depended on the tactics and strategy of the captains in a great battle at that time.

And it was a match-up that nearly happened.  Yamato and two of the Iowa-class battleships, Iowa and New Jersey, missed each other by only a few hours in the area of the San Bernadino Straight during the closing stages of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  And if Musashi hadn’d been sunk the previous day, there would have been the potential for a two-on-two fight.  I’d have given a lot to get tickets to watch a slugging match like that.

One interesting technical difference is that even though the belt armour of the Yamatos was thicker than that of the Iowas, its performance might not have been better by comparison.  Japanese industry wasn’t capable of producing 16-inch armour as a single block, so the Yamato belt armour was in two layers rather than monolithic, which reduced its effectiveness.  Also, the Class-A armour components of the Iowa’s defenses were more advanced than the grade of armour used on the Yamatos, and thickness-for-thickness had better resistance to penetration.  On the offensive side, the 16-inch AP shells fired by the Iowas were heavyweight designs, with a greater weight relative to their diameter than the 18.1-inch AP shells fired by the Yamatos (2,700 lb vs. 3,219 lbs), and they were fired at nearly the same muzzle velocity (2,500 ft/s vs. 2,600 ft/s) because the Iowa guns had longer barrels relative to their bore (50 calibers vs. 45 calibers).

@abworsham4

Please send me his strategies and game reports!

good points you raised Epiphany , what comes to my mind thinking about it is,  “Unternehmen Greif” 1944 BOTB.
The plan was causing confusion in the rear of the Allied lines and to force the Enemy to give out wrong Orders. And that was almost exactly what happend. It was getting that far that American Soldiers distrusted their own men and in some cases even killed own people in the confusions.

Imaging small bombing raids combiend with dropped off Japanese soldiers causing confusions like that on several points in the U.S.
Like you said:
@Epiphany:

From a mere terror standpoint, the I-400 might have worked to make American’s a little more frightened and on edge.  Japanese citizens certainly weren’t thrilled when Doolittle hit Tokyo.  It isn’t always the amount of physical damage you cause; psychology can play a vital factor in war too.  America felt invincible having not really tasted the war.  Our reaction to being hit at Pearl would not have been the same to the Japanese knocking down the Empire State Building or the hitting the White House.  Imagine those happening immediately after the Doolittle Raid.

I agree with Kurt that if the Japanese had specifically targeted things they knew they could destroy or that would seriously disrupt the war effort; such as bombing ball bearing factories or factories that produce batteries.  If you can hit the right targets, suddenly you have real disruption.  The I-400 could have afforded Japan some small measure of viable capability.  Small in the sense that it wouldn’t win the war, but I think it would have definitely been worth the investment for the capability alone.

A war brought to the doorsteps of America would be a Horroable thing…Pearl Harbor was still a little bit to far away…

@Imperious:

Yep thats pretty much the sinker.

Id like to see a poll on the best Great War Battleship

The Great War is awesome to study. Wish I knew more about the ships of that era.

@RJL518:

i sometimes wonder what would have happened if Germany had put together a massive battle fleet in the Atlantic like Japan did in the Pacific

They  didn’t have the naval knowhow that Japan and US had. The Germans had plans for building carrier vessels, but they weren’t able to do it.

But if they had done it, it would be much easier to knock out UK pretty early, and then Barbarossa also would be easier, but far from guaranteed.