Historically, several unfinished capital ships became the raw material for early large aircraft carriers. In this counterfactual, many of those hulls remain valuable as battlecruisers and are completed in their original fast-capital-ship role. Navies must therefore invest separately in carriers rather than treating conversion as the automatic answer to treaty cancellation. That decision changes which yards, designs, and aviation concepts receive money during the 1920s. The altered carrier path is one of the treaty's largest secondary effects even though the headline change concerns Dominion flagships.
Notable Point · 21:35-22:06
Battlecruiser survival forces new carrier choices
Keeping hulls as battlecruisers removes the easiest historical carrier conversions and pushes navies toward purpose-built or much earlier conversion decisions.