Shipbucket

By 1935, the career of a great liner had drawn to a close. The Admiralty, however, saw a large hull that - with a LOT of work, could still be made useful. Therefore, the White Star liner R.M.S. Olympic was purchased by the Admiralty for conversion to a carrier. In May 1937, she emerged from Portsmouth Navy Yard as the H.M.S. Olympic, and served throughout World War II as one of the fleet's largest carriers. She was finally scrapped in 1948, after thirty-five years of service.



-Matt

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They'd probably plate over the portholes at the very least. Not sure how practical a conversion it would be, she would have been much more useful as a troopship like Aquitania.

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The Furious superstructures did fit well to the Olympic hull. Looks good this way. But in reality, under the original circumstances it would have been an uneconomical efford to rebuild an existing ocean liner to a fleet carrier. A complete new ship, maybe a second Ark Royal or another Illustrious-class would have been ready much more faster.
However, this is a personal design and it's ok.

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I'd suggest Mauretania as a better subject if we're talking implausible 1930s British carrier conversions. She could at least keep some kind of speed; in 1937 Olympic would be an escort carrier in speed terms.

Or, I suppose, more entertainingly, a precursor to the amphibious assault ship, if someone had made helicopters work in the 1930s. That would be an interesting AU that you might want to think about! In principle there's nothing preventing gas rotary engines of the 1930s from powering simple helicopters, and indeed some fairly useful battlefield helicopters were fielded with essentially WW2 engine technology; they just needed to be invented and the stabilization required properly understood. So if you're looking for liner conversions I suggest considering working on an AU where helicopters were invented in 1930. It would not be very plausible but it could be quite a lot of fun, and in that case I could actually see this done, with huge davits along the sides for a large number of landing craft, probably a recessed, smaller flight deck, or one offset for stability with the landing craft on the same side as the tower.

Regardless of any of these considerations or idle musings, however, Canis is right. The portholes would all be plated over with a vengeance.

Uhm. And I was a total ditz. So where do the uptakes go? Angled-down funnel to port like on some of the specialer Japanese carriers ?

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Not necessarily, because even a lot of purpose-built warships had a lot of portholes. It depends on how altered the effected area is, for say hangars and such.

For a ship launched in the early 1910s, and as an ocean liner (and a poorly built one at that), the hull would be strained by WWII service, and this might have an effect on its launch/recovery operations too (limiting its usefulness as the "RN's largest carrier"), but in 1935 at least it would be similar in vintage and concept to the conversion the Italians did with Aquila (and Sparviero, a much more austere conversion of Aquila's sister ship). Aquila ended up being a very extensive rebuild though.
A large platform able to still embark useful types like Swordfish and Hurricanes would probably spend a lot of time on-station in the Atlantic covering the Gap and whatnot; though this would mean a lot of strain on a very worn hull, not to mention U-Boat bait.

Or possibly as a repair/depot ship, saving the RN from having to build Unicorn.

I applaud this effort.
A long time back over at Warship Disscussion 3.0 I posted a carrier conversion of Britannic. Using that ship makes more sense, if work was begun in 1915 to turn her into a flat top she could have been ready by late 1918 alongside the Argus and would have made a formidible carrier. By using the upper passenger decks it might have been possible to make a large internal hangar rather than the one added above the main deck here. Trunking the funnels (three usable) may have been the biggest problem but a Courageous type refit post war might have given more life. By 1939 it would be obsolete but could have still carried a reasonable air group. It's been an idea I've come back to several times but never drawn again.

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I don't suppose you still have the original drawing at least?

Heh, no that's going back around 8 years or so ago. Prehistory as far as Shipbucket goes and my drawing days. Seeing Canis' excellent drawing made me want to try but I've never really worked out all the details. Maybe one day.

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Never-Were British Aircraft