Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "HMS St Lawrence - Guide 264" video.

While researching the cost of converting Jupiter into a carrier, I found that the 1919 appropriation bill that funded that project also had money for investment in zeppelins. $1.5 million was to be invested in building Shenandoah, $2.5M for buying R38 from the UK, and $3.7M to build two hangars for them. A total of $7.7M invested in zeps, vs $500,000 invested in converting Jupiter into a carrier. Was there reasonable evidence at that time, for zeps having more potential for the Navy than carriers?
1
@WALTERBROADDUS OK, zeps have about twice the speed of a fast carrier, like HMS Furious. Range was comparable. Carriers can send planes in several different directions to take a look-see, which was attempted by Akron and Macon. Hadn't they figured out how fragile zeps were yet? Losses of German zeps during the war, other than from being shot at, were pretty high.
1
@WALTERBROADDUS I see your point, but it's the imbalance in the investment between the two experimental weapons systems, more than ten times the money allocated to zeps than to carriers. I did a bit of swaging, and figure that the US could have built a decent carrier conversion for less than they were willing to spend on R38 alone, $2.5M. The surviving Invincibles probably each went to scrap for about the same price as Dreadnought: $176,000. Six Clemson class DDs were cancelled in early 1919, a year and a half after being ordered, so I expect their powerplants were in an advanced stage of construction, so could be completed for relatively little additional money. Two Clemson plants would give an Invincible modern, geared, turbines, a bump from 40,000shp to 55,000shp and 8 oil fired boilers in place of the original 31 coal burners. Then add for the conversion, which would probably be more than that spent on Jupiter, if they wanted to do a decent job. and you have a carrier that can show a decent turn of speed, 25 feet longer and 13 feet wider than Langley. But nope, they wanted to spend the money on R38, which broke up during a test flight in the UK, before the USN even took possession.
1