Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Hull Form Design - Doing better than a floating brick" video.

regarding the design of the stern of a carrier: the Lexington class had a sharp stern and the sharpness was carried up to just below the flight deck. In purpose built carriers of the 30s, like Yorktown and Ark Royal, the stern is sharp at the waterline, but then rapidly flairs above the waterline, which allows a longer hangar deck. USN drawings of purpose built carriers from the early 1920s show this was a known factor as those drawings show a hangar extending nearly the full length of the aft end of the flight deck, while the drawings of the battlecruiser conversion show the hull tapering at hangar level, and a short hanger. Was it impossible to rebuild the aft part of the Lexington hulls to provide more buoyancy to support the wider above waterline stern and longer hangar, or was such a rebuild expensive to he point where it blew the selling point to the politicians that the conversions would cost less than purpose built carriers?
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@matthewrademacher5183 The US engaged in several "big stick" waiving exercises in the Caribbean during the period Connecticut was in commission, including interventions in Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Offhand, I don't know if Connecticut fired any 12" ammo during those interventions. A search of newspapers of the period, especially 1915-1916 would probably provide detail on her activities as the Wiki entry does say she was deployed to both Mexico and Haiti during that period to support ground troops.
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@gregorywright4918 I floated the same question in another forum and the discussion came down to cost. Harding, and Congress, didn't want to spend anything on the Navy, so the Navy was probably willing to settle for a less than optimal design because the alternative would be nothing.
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@gregorywright4918 I don't think the entire cost of the Lexingtons had been appropriated in 1916. The government usually funds things on a year by year basis. In reading about the Washington treaty over the winter, the thought in the back of the minds of several US officials was that Congress was going to cut off funding for the ships already under construction, whether they had the treaty or not. I remember Congress cutting off funding for the Clinch River breeder reactor and the SST that Boeing was working on, and, more recently, we saw how the production run of Zumwalt class destroyers was cut off. According to the Wiki article, conversion cost for the Lexingtons was $22.4M each, on top of the sunk cost of $6.7M, vs $27M for a purpose built carrier of comparable size. On the other hand, Ranger only cost $15.2M, so they could have built two Rangers for less than the conversion cost of the two Lexingtons, and embarked air groups of nearly the same size because Ranger was more efficient at carrying aircraft. People may complain that Ranger was a waste of displacement because it was so less capable than a Yorktown, but you could build a Ranger out of the displacement that a Lexington wasted vs a Yorktown, because of it's inefficient design.
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