Japan's Giant Aircraft Carrier Was the Largest Warship Ever Sunk by a Submarine

I'm only aware of the book. "Shinano by Joseph P. Enright."

The battle cruiser concept was quietly laid to rest during WW1. So Britain took two of them on the decommissioning list (HMS Furious and HMS Glorious) and converted them to carriers. The USA followed the same path with USS Lexington and USS Saratoga.

PO3 Donald Murphy - I would have thought that a Sailor would know more about the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

But, I am even more surprised that you would not explicitly state what action that you are actually referring to. It was the Battle of Jutland.

The Wikipedia article on the Battle of Jutland covers part of the subject quite well, and has several paragraphs directly related to the subject of battlecruisers and the tactics of their use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jutland

The Wikipedia article on/about battlecruisers is actually pretty good on its coverage of the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty

Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea and Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War combined has an excellent examination of the naval arms race between the United Kingdom and Germay.

SSG Robert Webster - Kind of true. News of the day saw failure. News of the day wanted somebody's head. The concept of the battlecruiser as built, was a British "ism." Britain had a far flung empire and needed/used cruisers to protect its sea lanes. A "battlecruiser" was merely a one-upmanship idea to get a cruiser killer. As cruisers were used by everyone to maintain and attack sea lanes, a nation with large needs like England, would suffer from the loss of sea lanes. So as battleships were too slow to be effective commerce raiders, the battlecruiser was a concept to put battleship armament onto cruiser hulls. The BC was slightly larger. You ended up with a ship larger than a heavy cruiser with bigger guns. The problem was that the armor was not as thick as a battleships.

Now in the battle of the authors (your authors versus my authors) we can both (I'm sure) find books that support our contention. Again, the news of the day saw the loss of three battlecruisers and the severe damaging of two others (HMS Lion and HMS Tiger) during the battle of Jutland. These ships in the press of the day were supposed to be state of the art and "battle winning technology." Also, "we're not fighting a major naval power like France or Spain. We're fighting the Germans." So the loss of the BC's was hard to swallow. Noted authors Burt and Raven plus American author Norman Polmar will put their losses as nothing more than simple mis-use. HMS Tiger's success in the Falklands was due to brilliant utilization. The problem is that because she was successfully employed, it was assumed that any battlecruiser could solve any naval problem.

Invariably you get a "Hood ethic" where someone says "hey, she has the same guns as a battleship; lets' use her to fight battleships" (HMS Hood versus battleship Bismarck). And thats where your problems arise. Admiralty then realized that it couldn't trust command to use common sense and the decision was made to scrap the concept. Hence, you see the Admiral Class reduced to one ship only - HMS Hood. Now picture Hood, largest ship of the day, and imagine the money outlayed to build three of them. While Washington 1922 played heavily on everyone's agenda's, the admiralty had already killed the idea. However, with HMS Hood being the most powerful warship of the day, she was kept alive for publicity purposes. As she was the most powerful, the killing of her two sisters was a useful publicity stunt for Britain to show that she was complying with the Washington treaty. So Hood was kept alive, Tiger and Lion repaired and the RN kept the BC theory alive to pull off Washington 1922. Furious and Glorious were reconfigured as flight decks. But again - in a subterfuge kind of way. Search the original WW1 HMS Ark Royal and you'll see what I mean.