A 'What if?'

After I had written the blog entry about the Beardmore Aviation Ship, I began thinking about the design and wondering if it might have developed into a full-blown aircraft carrier. In my 'what if?' design I assumed that by raising the deck level the hangers could be incorporated into the ship's hull rather than its superstructure. This would have allowed more aircraft to be carried and made the ship less prone to shipping water over the bows in heavy seas. I also assumed that the superstructure would have been considerably reduced in size and concentrated on the starboard side. The resulting ship looked like this:

Now I am no ship designer, but it seems to me that the design could have been developed along these lines, and if it had, it might well have meant that the Royal Navy would have had the beginnings of an aircraft carrier force available by the time of the Battle of Jutland.