Battlecruiser ambitions behind the conversion

The eight-inch guns partly inherited the ambitions attached to the battlecruisers the carriers replaced. The original ships were intended for reconnaissance, hunting raiders, and projecting power far from American home ports. Maximilian von Spee's armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, defeated at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, represent the kind of distant-ocean threat US planners wanted the Lexingtons to answer. Jutland stands for the fleet battle required by sea control, while the Falklands example shows a navy imposing its power far from home. The United States wanted information, presence, and distant intervention, although cruiser guns on a carrier were a poor way to preserve that ambition.