Well it's been done before. Think of VICTORIOUS coming out of a 6 year refit in 1955, aged 15 years, 30ft longer, with steam catapults, and an angled deck so large that they had to demolish a building beside the dry dock at the last moment before they could float her out.
And ARK ROYAL (IV), in 1969 with a new waist catapult instead of the starboard forward cat and direct acting arrestor gear, completely redesigning the hangar deck-head. It's surprising what you can do to an old hull.
Lovely discussion, chaps, keep it up.
An old badger (of a sort)
I take aboard what you are saying and we NEED Mr Boffin to offer his thoughts regarding this and doing a little research I see that the good ship Centaur also underwent this type of conversion with her hydraulic catapults removed and steam catapults installed, plus the invaluable angled flight deck. They must have quite literally torn those ship's apart to do that type of 'plumbing!' It would be so interesting to compare costs taking into account inflation costs of materials etc
Paging Not-a-Boffin, paging Mr Not-a-Boffin.
